Day 97: My Work's Purpose

Image from Kelly Rae Roberts.

I think I discovered my life's work today. That's kind of a big deal, right?

I was listening to Kelly Rae Roberts and Beth Nicholls talk about their course, Hello Business, Hello Soul and one of the questions they brought up is: What is the point of your business? Starting with your passion (painting, artwork, etc.), take the conversation to a deeper level and say why your business is important. Why is it you're doing what you're doing?

The answer popped into my head: "I want piddix to help people achieve their dreams." Immediately pieces of my life's work started falling into place: one of my first job titles out of college was "butterfly wrangler," where I helped men with huge ideas get them down on paper into book form. Later, at a great non-profit, my job description (literally) was to "give dreams wings." Managers would come to me with an idea or end-goal in mind, and I was responsible for figuring out a way to get there. Michael Gerber in his book, The E-Myth Revisited, would label me a Manager, someone who "turns visions into action."

With piddix, my collage sheet customers are incredibly kind and giving. They put others, especially family and loved ones, before themselves. They have dreams of taking time for themselves to be more creative, of selling crafts to help support their family financially, of feeling the loving response from friends and coworkers when they give them a handmade gift. By offering high quality, crisp, legal, easy-to-use images, and pairing them with all kinds of free tutorials (oh, the possibilities!), I'm able to offer the inspiration to move people toward being more creative and fulfilled. This goal of inspiring others leads much of what I do at piddix: it's why I write articles on how to sell on etsy; it's why I send out newsletters filled with inspiring links and free downloads.

Yes, I realize it might sound a bit lofty to think that a craft supply can help people achieve their dreams. For years I quietly struggled with the idea that my artwork and piddix wasn't nearly as important as the work I'd done previously in social service. But I believe piddix customers want to create, to be loved, to be fulfilled, and to offer something beautiful to the world. And I love the idea that my collage sheets can help in that process.

Day 89: This One Almost Made Me Cry

Screen capture from Brene Brown's Ted Talk.

I've had a couple of moments in my 100-day-quest of goosebumps: when I heard back from a distributor I'd been courting for years, when I received this generic email that felt written directly to me. But up until this point, I've never felt such a strong connection with another person's words that I wanted to cry--like goosebumps times a thousand--until tonight.

Watching Brene Brown's Ted Talk on The Power of Vulnerability kind of freaked me out. I realized that making myself vulnerable is at the heart of my fear of rejection: that I am saying "I love you" first, I'm making the attempt at connection, and someone else may just leave me hanging out there all alone. By sending an email or making a call I am opening myself up…standing there a bit naked and waiting to see how someone else will respond. And not just once, but over and over again with the hopes someone will say "yes, I have the time and interest to get back to you."

And here's the beauty in it…vulnerability leads to joy. No one can say "yes" if I don't ask. How can we achieve our goals and dreams if we never open ourselves up to the possibility that we are worth a response? That we are worthy of our dreams?

Since Brown's video has been seen over seven million times, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has connected to this message about fear, vulnerability, courage and joy. But I also have a feeling that part of the video's success has been that it resonates in a personal way to many people in many different ways.

To me, my own take was that, in order to make connections (which are at the very foundation of what we as humans need in order to be happy) I need to...

…be my authentic (nerdy/night-owl/know-it-all) self, to lean into the discomfort of the work, to fully embrace necessary vulnerability, to not let the fear of shame stop me from jumping, to be courageous and tell the story of who I am with my whole heart, to have the courage to be imperfect, to let go of who I should be in order to be who I am, to be willing to start a project when there are no guarantees of how it will end, to let myself be deeply seen, to believe I am enough,
or,
to knock discomfort upside the head.

If you take 20 minutes to watch Brown's talk, let me know what you think.

Day 83: In Good Company

Where Camp Mighty Happens. Image from Mighty Girl.

I woke up this morning to an email from Camp Mighty that gave me goosebumps. Immediately an image of me leading a seminar popped into my head. I started planning what I'd say if I spoke there. I thought of all the women sitting around tables with dreams and ideas, but without a 100% clear path to achieve them. I designed small group exercises in my mind, and made my phantom students post to Facebook and their blogs their intentions so they'd have a public support system in place to turn their dreams into reality.

And then I checked out the real speakers from 2012 and 2012. And gulped. It's the founder of pinterest, and the co-producer from the Oprah Winfrey Show, and some "Top 10 CNN hero of 2011" for goodness sake!

But I put together an email anyway and sent if off to the organizers to see if I could speak at Camp Mighty. A year ago my ideas would never have left my brain and made it into an email. But over the past 83+ days, I've grown more comfortable with the ideas of both rejection and success and I've love to pay a bit of that enthusiasm forward.