BUSINESS OWNER, ENCOURAGEMENT, ENTRE SUCCESS, MOTIVATIONAL, RECOVERY

6 USEFUL THINGS YOU CAN LEARN FROM ROAD CONSTRUCTION

Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash
Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash

Stress.

We’ve all been there. You think you’re getting somewhere in your life and you might even be early getting there for a change. You’re travelling along at the perfect speed, listening to your favorite song blast through the speakers, just starting to feel like things are going to finally go your way. Then BOOM! Road Construction.

How aggravating.

Aggravations like road construction can derail a perfectly good mood on a perfectly good day if you let them. Instead of turning 12 shades of red and feeling your blood pressure stand your hair on end, let’s try to find the positive in the situation.

Here are some useful things you can learn from being caught in road construction.

1. The road you are on could be better.

Sure, you’re not the one doing the repair. That’s not your job. But it’s someone’s job, and they’re doing it! It’s an awesome time to just be grateful that someone is tending to the dangers that are seen and unseen. Your way will often be less than perfect. This may be the time to slow down and be cautious while someone else sorts out the problems.

2. Speaking of slowing down, maybe you’re just in too big of a hurry!

Road construction forces us to come to a screeching halt and take stock of our surroundings, whether we want to or not. This is a good time to ask some very important questions. Are you prepared to go forward? Are you recognizing and heeding all the warning signs? It seems elementary, but the red flags are there for a reason—danger. Stop. Check yourself. Only move forward when it’s safe to do so!

Photo by Liam Macleod on Unsplash

3. You need a REALITY CHECK.

Distraction causes us to miss a lot of opportunities. If you aren’t paying attention to the flag man, you could miss your turn to move forward and inadvertently force everyone behind you to wait until the people moving past you in the opposite direction have all gone by. This could cause anger and negativity among the ones closest to you. Pay ATTENTION! Keep your eyes focused on moving forward when it is your turn to do so.

4. You may have forgotten to do the GROUNDWORK.

Have you ever noticed all the steps it takes to build a road? From just the part we can see, you have to level the ground, fill in the holes, put in drains and ditches, lay gravel and asphalt, spread it all out, get it smooth, test it, paint stripes, and I don’t even know what else! All of this hugely matters as you travel your road. What if you forget a step? You may have to tear the road up back to that point and try again. Whether you are laying the groundwork or someone else has done it for you, make sure that your foundation is SOLID! One pothole can take you out of the journey if you hit it wrong.

5. You may not have noticed the BEAUTY along the way!

Sometimes as we speed towards success, we forget to notice the lovely things—like the pretty yellow flowers that grow by the roadside, the bird that pecks the ground on the shoulder of the road, the tree limbs that are gently swaying with the breeze, or even a turtle as he laboriously makes his trek across the pavement. As we are forced to slow down or stop, it’s an opportune moment to take delight in the things that we didn’t even notice before.

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

6. You may need to go a DIFFERENT DIRECTION.

We’ve all been in a long line of cars waiting for the flagman when there’s that ONE GUY (or gal) right in the middle who breaks out of line, turns around, and goes back the way he came! For those of us waiting, “Yay!” We are ecstatic because we can finally move forward a few feet, and hey, any progress is progress! But let’s talk about the guy who turned around.

*He may know an easier way to get where he’s going, without the hassle of the road construction. For him, that’s a lesson learned with a small bit of aggravation! Even if the other way is a little longer, he (or she) has counted the cost and decided that it’s worth it!

*She realized she didn’t need to go where she was going after all! She could probably do more with what she had if she headed in a completely different direction with it! That moment (or agonizing few minutes) waiting in the road construction afforded her an opportunity to look at where she was headed and make a decision. If you find yourself stuck somewhere, maybe you need to PIVOT!

Ask yourself: “Do I really want to go where I’m headed?” and if so, “Is there an easier way to get there?” There’s no shame in your game if you change your mind. Take the time you didn’t mean to have as an opportunity to think about your choices!

These are the 6 things that I learned while I was stuck in ROAD CONSTRUCTION. What have you learned from being stuck on the road you were travelling? Remember, no matter what you might have heard, finishing well is not the only important thing. The trip itself is what makes life worth living.

Don’t miss the beauty along the way.

KISSES Y’ALL

photo of computer screen
BUSINESS OWNER, ENCOURAGEMENT

FRUSTRATION

When every move you make seems to lead to complete and utter aggravating frustration…and you quit drinking two years ago.

I could pull my hair out in–you guessed it–frustration! I’m not a high-tech person. I’m also not a low-tech person, which makes me fall somewhere between decent and horrible with building a web-site. Well, maybe slightly better than that.

Anyway, I have been working on one page of this website for what seems like a hundred years. I’m about to lose my mind (up in here). I mean, it’s beautiful. The front page, although not quite finished, is just lovely. It has most of the information that I want on there and only a little that I don’t want. When I’m on the admin side of things, I feel really close to success!

I’ve even learned about SEO and what it takes to get your pages on Google for the most attention-getting. This includes downloading plug-ins and affiliate programs (by the way, there will be an affiliate link or two in this post that I could possibly make money from). Oh, and I’ve got a Facebook Messenger pop-up that actually annoys the devil out of me and needs to be moved to a different page and linked to MoodyOops.

photo of computer screen
Photo of failed webpage

Clearly , at least in my own mind, I’m doing pretty good with this website building. Of course, I don’t have any of my gazillion products uploaded yet, but no one completely has their crap together. AND, if you need further proof that I’m one of the many who does not, let me get back to the front page of this thing and start the hair-pulling. After I got all that wonderful work done, checked and double checked it a hundred times, was completely satisfied with how the text and the photo worked together, and got my message across, I click on “view page,” and…there are literally zero images. Not even one. Where did they go?

The answer to that is I don’t know the answer to that. I look back at the admin side of things. The photo is there. View the page. No photo. Admin side, photo. View page, no photo. FRUSTRATION!

I’m sure that there is a perfectly reasonable solution and equally sure that I’m not going to find it tonight. I did look on Amazon and found some incredible resources, for myself, and in case anybody runs into this same problem! It’s super rewarding to have a website that will pay you with passive income, which is the goal I’m aiming for. If you’re like me, circumstances are going to cause you to have to do a great deal of the work yourself, at least right at first.

This is what I found on Amazon:

You can click right on that link and go straight to the book. It’s eligible for Prime, which is cool. I hate paying shipping on anything.

I found another book too. You know all of these are good! I bought a Social Media Marketing for Dummies book a couple of months ago that I’m finding a lot of valuable information in. It’s true that some people think that reading is obsolete and would rather just use the web for everything, but the reason that I like to buy books is because you always have a reference to go back to. If you forget, there’s no question of where you got your information! Anyway, here’s that link:

I know that I should have done more reading and research before I jumped into the deep water. It’s not enough to be able to write, paint, and do creative things. Well, it would be enough if I had someone else to create this webpage for me. Sadly, I do not. The cool thing is, all of this frustration is a great learning experience! As soon as I get this one done, the BossNonny website is waiting for me to get started on it. With my books and my experience, I ought to be able to knock it out of the park.

Then maybe I can teach y’all all the tricks I learned along the way.

April 16 (one minute to April 17)edit:

I located the problem with the photos. The Pinterest hover button will not work with one of my plugins. Since it’s my most important plugin, I can’t remove it. So I had to change the image settings in the plugin.

If you deal with WordPress, you probably already know all about this known issue. If you don’t, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. But, if you hover in the middle, and need to know more, feel free to ask me questions! I will identify the plugin and the steps I took to correct the problem.

Whew! Frustration over for a while.

BUSINESS OWNER, ENTRE SUCCESS

What’s Your Side Hustle?

Things Are Different Now.

The world is changing, and the way that we do business is changing with it! The things that used to get you through life don’t work anymore. The good old Internet has caused a dramatic shift in the mindset of entrepreneurs. While it was once the norm to have one job, lots of people now have a job and a side hustle.

Women, especially, have taken on the task of creating businesses with an eye toward the future. One of the main reasons for this is the uncertainty of the economy. Another is the long term sustainability of retirement programs and social security.

I Get That You Want to Contribute.

But Do You Have the Support You Need?

These goals, no matter how much we believe in them, aren’t always met with acceptance and support from those closest to us. People who have vowed to stand beside us through thick and thin sometimes have trouble looking down the road. They don’t always see the myriad of possibilities and potential benefits of personal business ownership. Instead, they feel an overwhelming sense of impending threat. There isn’t always a clear answer for why this happens. It seems that rational decision making flies out the window, and it becomes a struggle for power and control instead.

Instead of embracing the reality of mutual benefit, sometimes a significant other can pull so hard on the other end of the rope that you are either forced to let go of the rope, or be dragged into chaos, control, and confusion. That cannot be the way that God intended relationships to be.

A situation like this is made even more impossible when the initial response was positivity! Later, that pseudo support suddenly morphs into a hostility which makes the person and relationship completely unrecognizable. It can be a sad postscript to a relationship that was troubled from the start but showed great promise.

I Have Something to Ask You.

So this reality leads me to ask the questions: What’s your side hustle?

And if you have a side hustle, which most of us do, does your spouse support you? In what ways are you supported or not supported? Is it worth pursuing? In other words, is the benefit worth the cost?

What are your long-term goals? Your reason for starting the business? What’s your WHY? How would you feel about someone who tried to steal your dreams? If God starts something, does man have the right to stop it?

Asking for a friend….😂

ART AND DESIGN, BUSINESS OWNER, ENTRE SUCCESS, MOTIVATIONAL

12 THINGS WE CAN DO FOR YOU

Okay, so I’m slowly getting this website together. I realize that I need to get the online shop going, get the design stuff up with the price list, have great product photos, ways to sign up for our freebies, classes, and news, and a whole lot of other things.

Time is a factor. Frankly, I don’t have any. I’m working it out. Mostly I just stay up most of the night and get up early in the morning to start over. There are definitely things in my life that need tending to that I’m not tending to. There are bills to pay and vehicles to clean out and people to go see. I probably should take my head out of my cell phone more often than I do! I need to finish writing my book so I can get it published–because I love it and I know you will love it too.

Right now though, I’m just going to go ahead and show you a live video that I made a few weeks ago. It’s awkward because I’m awkward! Don’t let that stop you from watching it. I had a great time with it. I just wanted to tell you a few of the things we can do for you. One more thing not mentioned is transferring photos–particularly onto old wood. I did a couple of those this week and they turned out so good! I can’t show you right now because of Christmas–but I will put them up as soon as I’m able. I will post again soon!