Life is a highway....

Yesterday I had breakfast with what I call my CEO club - two other women also starting companies with high hopes and nascent business skills. Ironically, the one most worried is the only one with actual sales for her product - not enough to break even yet, but actual shipments going out and checks coming in. She is deathly afraid of failing, but the other woman and I kept reminding her over our tea, she'd already succeeded.

She had been a stay at home mom of three for 16 years, living on a shoestring budget and had a dream of creating a product to help children. Her husband said "Go for it, just don't spend any money," because times were tight. She used the university system here to design her idea a place called Fab Lab (open to all inventors). Her daughter spoke some Chinese so she placed the actual calls to factories using her daughter's basic vocabulary and found one to make her product. Then she waded through her own trademark registration, customs laws, etc.

I look at that and think she can't fail because she's already succeeded. She really is a different woman than she was when she started two years ago, more confident, more knowledgeable, more willing to take on risks. I have enormous, enormous respect for her.

She has told me she has many, many other business ideas and I am sure that even if this product doesn't have the market success she hopes for (and I actually think it will), another idea she develops will. She will be starting from a new, stronger position.

Even if she never chose to do another business, she still has the strength of character she gained from this endeavor. We go out of this world with no more of the outer trappings than we came into it with. But, hopefully, we depart with a spirit that has evolved to a higher self. My friend has traveled down the road of risk and challenge and hardship and persevered, so she has evolved in this lifetime and become more of the woman she wants to be. Surely that defines success!

I share that story because I see so few women who realize how amazing and successful they are. Any time you are trying to become a better you, whether by learning to meditate, trying to laugh more each day, reading a self-help book or taking a class, you are going further down the highway of the journey of self-development, you are evolving and thus you are succeeding. Good wishes! Happy December.