We.Are.Fucking.Rockstars

To my fellow high-achieving, weight-of-the-world on our shoulders, stressed out, women business owners…

We. Are. Fucking. Rockstars.

We kick ass every single day. We make crazily complicated business decisions on the fly. We motivate employees and we console employees. We convince customers to trust us with huge sales, and we negotiate with our suppliers for better terms so we can make cash flow work this month. We deal with bankers and insurance agents and everyone else and convince them that we know what we are doing (whether we do or not). We fix broken pipes and dumpster fires (both literal and figurative). We figure out how to make it through fucking worldwide pandemics and recessions. We plan for what our company will look like ten years out while also wondering how the fuck we are going to get through this week.

And that’s just our day job. Some of us also care for aging parents, try to maintain some semblance of a healthy relationship with our spouses/partners, raise happy/healthy/well-adjusted kids who want to play all the sports and do all the things, try not to kill the dog/cat/hamster/fish, maintain a (maybe) cleanish house, and manage household finances.

And then, for the cherry on top, we somehow make time for ourselves. Time to eat, rest, exercise, play, love, laugh, cry – time to just live life.

So when we fail at something, why are we so hard on ourselves? Why do we beat ourselves up and tell ourselves to do better? Why do we put that pressure on ourselves to succeed at every fucking thing we try?

I had an epiphany the other day talking with two other women business owners. I posited that if we hard-working, successful women business owners don’t succeed at something, it’s because we’ve chosen not to.

We are bad-ass women who tackle problems with everything we’ve got. We figure shit out, because it simply isn’t an option not to. Got an issue you can’t figure out? Go ask a woman who owns a business and she’ll help you figure it out. We are simply used to finding solutions, because we are asked to all day, every day, by everyone in our life.

So when we fail, what if it’s because we’ve chosen to fail? What if we have made a decision that, for better or worse, succeeding simply isn’t worth whatever it’s going to cost us? I don’t mean failing at things beyond our control or failing because of societal constraints or privileges. I mean when we fail at something because of factors we can control.

And then what if, instead of saying that we FAILED at something, we say to ourselves that we CHOSE not to succeed at something? If we have to figure something out, make something work, make a situation happen – we make it happen. If there’s no other alternative, we fucking make it work. So if we don’t make it fucking work – we CHOSE not to make it work. Somewhere inside of us, in the wisest part of our soul and brain, we CHOSE not to make it work because we knew the success wasn’t going to be worth the cost. 

So I’m going to try and change my mindset over the next few months. Instead of telling myself that I failed to gain 5 new clients this month, I’m going to tell myself that I CHOSE not to get 5 new clients this month. Instead of telling myself that I failed to get that really big contract I wanted, I’m going to tell myself that I CHOSE not to get that really big contract. Instead of telling myself that I failed to lose 5 pounds this month, I’m going to tell myself that I CHOSE not to lose 5 pounds this month. For whatever reason, I CHOSE not to succeed at some things so that I could CHOOSE to succeed at other things.

I’m hopeful that this will help me to reset my brain. To help me look at everything I do as a choice at what I want to most succeed at for that moment in time. I can CHOOSE to succeed at something or I can CHOOSE to not succeed at something. And when I CHOOSE not to succeed at something, it’s because I know it’s not worth the cost.