Recommitment and Risks: A Different Kind of Mother's Day Post with Barbara Bush's Words as a Backdrop for Planning Life Beyond the 9-5
Barbara Bush was right: I’m paraphrasing but put those you love first, and you won’t regret it.
Around the time this post was originally published in 2022, I wrote a post about “Just Saying No” to corporate and allowing yourself to go beyond the 9-5, into a location-independent life. For entrepreneurs doing this, recommitment and risks are constant. Since May is National Recommitment Month (which I know courtesy of my friend Cyndi up in New York!) and also hosts Mother’s Day, I’m sharing some thoughts on taking risks being inherent to changing your life around and am digging deeper into my why.
In the process, I’m dropping another reference GenXer’s might recognize: Barbara Bush’s quote about family, work, and life.
RELATED: Ascent Storycraft’s founder Cyndi Zaweski offers amazing content prompts that really get you thinking- click here to get on her mailing list!
This post was updated slightly on May 3, 2024.
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Living Free At 50 everyday but still taking time to recommit.
Let me be clear: by saying I’m recommitting to my Free At 50 life and to building my business through this blog I do not mean I ever stepped away from it.
I do believe that sometimes we get caught up in what we’re doing so much that our "why" slides into the background a bit. This has happened to me a few times (you too, right?) and two things have helped me immensely:
- Revisiting my why.
- My business coach telling me to revisit it.
RELATED: Finding Your Why is the theme in my Ditching the 9-5 Facebook group May 2024
Revisiting my why.
Yes, I want to earn income through my blog (the ads you see on this page for Groove, the platform this blog is hosted on as well as affiliate links for products, people, and services I believe in like my friend Margaret Bourne's courses, e-books, and templates- jump in to view it here.
But, shockingly, earning income isn’t my why.
Owning my time is my why. It’s why I’m choosing to earn income THIS WAY.
I’m getting older – I topped 50. This means one obvious thing: the people I love are getting older as well. Including my parents.
And this thought hit me: if they ever need me to drop everything and be with them, I want to do it.
- Without asking for time off.
- Without rescheduling travel and speaking engagements.
- Without having to sneak onto conference calls and step away from them.
And on and on.
By blogging and becoming an entrepreneur, any day can be Mother’s Day in truth. In fact every day is, same with Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and so forth.
Any day I want or need to be “special” can be special. It’s why I chose to write about this for my “Mother’s Day post” and why recommitment to my why is something I wanted to share with you all and have you consider doing on the regular.
RELATED: Click here to read my cheesecake and freedom post about remembering your why.
Empowering and encouraging others is my why. It’s another reason I’m choosing to earn income this way.
By being your resource queen I’m sharing tools for you to make escaping the 9-5 and building your next chapter a REALITY. And that makes me SO HAPPY.
One of my favorite parts of the years I ran a national staff training program for our member-driven company wasn’t sharing the information about our company (sorry guys!).
In actuality, it was watching people thrive. It was playing a role in the professional (and often personal) growth of the people in the program; about showing them the opportunities created by using their skills.
I had more than one person tell me that traveling to our annual training meeting, an opportunity they gained through being part of the program, would be their first trip on an airplane.
Comments like that fueled my passion and, as corny as it sounds, made my heart smile.
When I read The 4-Hour Workweek and began the exercise of putting my passions and skills together, blogging to encourage others became an obvious path for me to travel on.
RELATED: Get the 4-Hour Workweek here and do all the things Tim Ferriss recommends to marry your skills and passions.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
My business coach telling me to revisit it.
What is a coach for if not to keep you on track to get to where you want to be, and to offer support, encouragement, and ideas to help?
Tegan Marshall is my coach, and she does it all – to the max. It’s because of her I created the Cheesecake and freedom post.
Finding my why has been part of this journey all along but I realized something: knowing it early on benefitted me to shift my mindset and get on every other step of my entrepreneurial journey. It’s the foundation of it all in truth.
So when I collaborated with my coach on putting together my 6-Step Checklist to Escape the 9-5, it was step 1. I had already noted that in my post about my Covid layoff being a blessing!
I genuinely believe it doesn’t matter where you are in the journey, you should always dive into your why, circling back to that vital first step. (Grab the checklist here!)
RELATED: Click here to read about my Covid layoff being a blessing and grab more resources and inspiration!
Photo by Frank Eiffert on Unsplash
Risks can be scary but it’s worth taking them.
Recommitment alone isn’t going to get you where you want to be with owning your time; you need to incessantly take risks.
The certainty about planning life beyond the 9-5, becoming an entrepreneur and continuing with entrepreneurship is that every decision you make is yours to own. Sometimes there are negative results but that’s OK.
Imperfect action is OK. It is something Tegan has shifted my mindset towards.
Remember that by choosing to create life beyond the 9-5, you left behind the tradition of not only “clocking in and clocking out,” but having a boss to approve or dismiss your work. Every decision you make to move forward and post content, market a program, invest, take on a client and so forth is yours to make.
So embrace it. Move forward and evolve as you need to.
RELATED: If you want to discuss blogging or any aspect of taking action for your next chapter, use my booking page to schedule a FREE call.
Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash
Planning life beyond the 9-5 is about taking action followed by another action.
My checklist ends with Step 6: taking action. But you can’t stop there!
Every action needs to lead to your next one. Tegan and I talked about it in the Ditching the 9-5 Facebook group (check the end of the post!).
Action requires a bit of risk and encourages recommitment to your why. But don’t be overwhelmed or intimidated because I’m here to tell you: every action counts. Big or small. The point is to keep moving forward.
Happy May!
Happy Recommitment Month!
Happy Mother’s Day!
Cheers to professional freedom planning life beyond the 9-5, every day of the year, because Barbara Bush was totally right in my opinion: you will never regret time with people, moms, and all others you love!
