In business, most of us make plans and schedules, as we feel these things help to keep us on our path to what we deem our professional success quotient.  You give yourself milestones to reach and look forward to celebrating your arrival at those landmarks, but life has a funny way of throwing in a 'gotcha', every once in a while that is sent not to throw you off your path, but to challenge you.  To see how you step up and tackle adversity.  Now, if you've been travelling down your professional and business path for a while with no hiccups that 'gotcha' could be well... potentially damaging to your career or business; intimidating; scary; seem larger to climb than Mount Everest; deflating; and well, you get the picture.  However, at times like this in business, I often tell others that you need to step back in order to think clearly.  Leaving yourself in a mindset where all you think about is the negatives of the 'gotcha' experience, will lead you on a downward spiral and make it difficult to push forward.  I am not shy to say that this 'gotcha' moment has just happened to me and my career, but as life has a funny way of sending us messages (I strongly believe one of the biggest assets to business is being open to seeing and acknowledging these messages), I received a tonuge in cheek one.  As I was lamenting in the 'gotcha' space, I called a friend, who started off as being my professional business coach, roughly eight years ago.  Nonetheless, I called to extend birthday wishes and the call extended past the birthday discussion, to things that were happening in his life.  While explaining some tricky moments he had experienced he said "but I always remember one of the things you told me when we first met. You said, give yourself 24 hours to bleed and then start looking for solutions".  You have no idea how that line, and remembering that it was one of my mantra's now being told to me, at this moment, knocked me off of my feet.  All it took was someone relating back to me, one of my beliefs that while stuck in the weeds, I was unable to live by and to think, he related it to me by chance, as he was talking about his life, and not realizing how much those words meant to my professional life, at the moment.

That simple line put so much into perspective that it would have been a 'shame on me' to not share it publicly here.

Well, my 24 hours are up and the bleeding has stopped.  No one is saying we've triumphed over the hurdles yet, but I am well on my way.

Signed, Beverly - being open and transparent