Overcoming Challenges

 Being an entrepreneur is a leadership position that requires a sense of confidence in yourself, belief, and faith that you can accomplish what you set out to do. I ran a photography business for 11 years, and stepped away for 3 to work on myself. This was a challenging part of the journey, because I didn't know why I had to go through loss, changing my entire life, growing pains, and struggle. But here are a couple things I learned along the way.

1-Have an "I can and I will" attitude, its free for the taking.

Ive always been a "let's do it" kind of person, and signed up for challenging things. It was once I got into it, the challenges were about being committed, even when the going got tough. I would find myself finding the fastest way out of a responsibility, or putting it off. Sometimes, my mind would make excuses or even say "I can't do this". Then one day I was talking with a co-worker about a task that did not seam possible. He said to me "you need to tell yourself I can, and I will". I started practicing these words when challenges came. What happened was I was able to pull myself out of a negative thinking pattern, and working more on the goal. Within a week, I had accomplished many goals and felt good! I started to see blessings, instead of failures, and my life was beginning to make progress.

2-Have gratitude for what you are given, and continue to work and earn greater blessings

Having a negative feeling about yourself will only attract negative. I know because I have been there. I then started writing down 5 things I was grateful for each day. No matter how big or small they were, they were good things. I noticed sometimes things were handed to me, and I didn't work for them very hard. I wanted to reject the good...isn't that sad? I now view these opportunities or gifts as blessings, and continue to work on my goals to help others.

3-Be honest with yourself

I had a friend tell me, "You can lie to me, just don't lie to yourself". What an accountability thing to say! It was about being honest with yourself in all situations. It's okay to have bad days, make mistakes, or even be unsure about a decision. The worst thing you can do is make excuses for bad behaviors, or not following through with something you said you would do. Honesty teaches others that they can trust you. If your not honest with yourself, that means you can't trust yourself.

4-Follow your passion

Through this journey, I took many classes. One of them was a sales class where I learned how to discover my passion. I wanted a different passion, so I tried to find it. As I went, my passion stayed the same. Nothing could replace it. You know what they say about love "If you truly love someone, you have to let them go. If they come back, you know it was meant to be." Well, this was the story of my passion. I've now learned many new tools to run a business, and my passion is photography. This is something I can give to the world, and my family is the reason.

Challenges will always be there. We must continue to push forward and not give up.