This past Sunday night I was invited to chat with Dr. Phillip Dembo on his radio show about how not to lose your Muchness during the holidays. You can listen to the conversation here. Please let me know if you do!
This is the third time I’ve been so generously invited to speak with him. The first time I was, quite literally, shaking like a leaf with nerves. I called in from my work phone while hiding on the floor of one of the showrooms, praying my boss would not look for me. The second time I was still pretty nervous, but this time I really just had a great time chatting. Dr. Dembo has a great way with words and sometimes seems to have better way of describing The Muchness than I do!
We talked a bit about the larger journey I’ve been on to Find My Muchness. The fact that I’ve taken this (some might say insane) leap and left my day job to pursue spreading The Muchness full time.
I told him this was really just another major step in Finding My Muchness – a specific Muchness I’d lost in the past.
Growing up, I’d always envisioned myself as an entrepreneur, and in my twenties I started a handbag company that I was passionate about and ran single handedly for 6 years. I manufactured in New York and overseas and sold my products around the world. But then, after trusting a business partner that was undeserving of my trust,that business failed. I told myself I’d never start a business again. I convinced myself that not only didn’t I want to, but that I couldn’t do it successfully.
I’d started to believe what so many others – including my former boss when I quit just a few months ago – had tried to convince me of – that as an artist, I was somehow not equipped to run a business. I wasn’t smart enough, organized enough or capable enough.
Convincing myself of that story was probably the first big step in me losing my Muchness.
Why do we tell ourselves these things?
What we tell ourselves in our heads in time becomes our reality.
Somehow, instead of telling myself how proud I should have been of my successes, I told myself I was not good enough. Not valuable enough, not deserving enough, not smart enough.
This, despite the fact that the FACTS didn’t even support that self-minimizing lie! This is me, in a 2005 article in Entrepreneur Magazine.
This was written many months before it hit the stands. When the interview & photoshoot took place, I was on top of the world, yet by the time I saw it in print, I had been screwed over by the business partner I mentioned above, was feeling insecure, full-of self-doubt and was almost embarrassed by the article, convinced I didn’t deserve the paper it was printed on.
(Off-topic side note I just can’t keep to myself: I recently fit back into those white jeans for the first time since 2005!!! Thank You Muchness Meals…. Side note to self: Share more info about Muchness Meals in the future.)
Yet here I am, once again jumping off this cliff into entrepreneurship, based ENTIRELY on passion and the belief in what I am doing. Based entirely on wanting to help people refind their joy, their identity, and connect with their own passion and purpose. Because I KNOW anyone can find their Muchness, and I could no longer sit at a desk and not make this my life’s purpose. Maybe jumping off that cliff without a sound business plan is the artist’s way of doing it, but i am ready now to own that, because it’s who I am and I trust in myself. THIS FEELING IS THE MUCHNESS IN ACTION. I am walking proof that despite the challenges we face, despite the responsibilities we have and the crap that exists in the world, the passion that lives inside us CAN come out and SHOULD come out. Sometimes it just needs a little nudge in order to find it’s way to the surface.
If this post resonates with you, I’m going to ask you to TAKE ACTION! In the comments below, share something you tell yourself in your head that steals your Muchness, that you want to stop hearing. A self-sabotaging thought that invades your brain rent-free and makes you doubt your abilities, capabilities, or strengths. And then, write a new script. Right there in the comments. Decide what voice you’d rather hear in your head and type it out. read it. Say it to yourself. And do your damnedest to believe it. And even if at first you don’t believe it, say it again.
