I Owe It All to My Designer Shoes

The day we chose our career path based on our college degree, I marked out two fields in dark black marker with a vengeance. 

The first I marked off was accounting. I had recently switched from an accounting degree to a finance degree after the former almost made me forsake my higher education forever. However, I quickly found out the latter had just about as much accounting. I had not done my homework.  So I was still neck deep in FIFO and LIFO, and ready to get as far away from accounting as possible. 

The second I marked off was banking. Because, well it was at the bottom of the income earning potential for the finance degrees.  And I had high hopes for a corner office, killer suits, and Jimmy Choos. So duh. I marked it off too. 

Here’s where it gets good. My first job out of college was as an adjunct professor of FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING. Hilarious God. Really. Really. Funny. 

My second job was in, you guessed it, BANKING. For crying out loud. What a great planner I turned out to be. 

Have you experienced something like this?  Your best laid plans, suddenly go awry. As if your opinion on the subject was ignored. 

Does this sound familiar?  You’ve worked for the promotion. Done everything by the book. But you’re passed over without even a glance. 

You’ve given your heart to a company, only to have it ripped up when they “rightsized” your position. 

You’re working along, pleased with your salary until you find out the guy next to you doing the exact same job (not as well mind you) is making more than you. 

So what’s a girl to do?  Give up on her dreams?  Throw in the towel and forget the Jimmy Choos?  I hope you’re screaming a resounding “No!”

You see, all the little side bars. All the frustrations. All the hurdles. They make you who you were meant to be. 

If I had never had the accounting job, I would have never known I loved to teach and speak.  Nor would I have been asked to be a credit analyst at my local bank. 

Later, I wouldn’t have been able to understand my banking clients’ needs as their loan officer, helping with financial decisions to run their small businesses. I wouldn’t have been able to understand how to help manage the assets and liabilities of a three hundred million dollar bank while on the board as the President at that bank. 

And as a leader in a growing bank, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to train and develop leaders. I wouldn’t have known the hurdles that women in particular often face in the workplace while balancing their career and personal life.  

So what does this all ad up to?  Here's the bottom line. 

What you are doing now matters. Nothing is wasted. Please read that again. I mean it. Nothing is wasted. 

If you are in what seems to be a holding pattern right now, it’s possible and even likely, that you’ll one day look back on this season and say, “Oh, I get it now!”  

So don’t waste it. Be smart while you’re waiting. Learn all you can. Keep a positive attitude. Help others succeed along the way. I bet you’ll come to appreciate the path you’re on. And hopefully you’ll be rocking a killer pair of heels. 

5 Reasons You Aren't Reaching Your Goals

Through my work with high performing women, I’ve noticed a common problem in achieving their ideal goals and ideal life.  The problem is not lack of drive or motivation.  The problem is not ability or skill.  The problem is not a lack of ideas or creativity. 

On the contrary, high performing women have tons of drive, motivation, ability, skills, ideas, and creativity.  But the problem is the overwhelm and stress they find themselves in due to their high-performance standards. I understand this stress and never-ending drive for perfection, but often getting derailed by distraction.  That’s why I created the Momentum90 Plan, to zero in on only the major projects that matter that will take you directly to your goals.  This cuts out the clutter of those things you think you should be doing, and gives you a laser focus only on the things that do. 

While developing the Momentum90 Plan, I studied high performing individuals and learned the major areas that were lacking in goal production.  Any one of these areas can trip us up, rendering our performance lack luster, chaotic, or less than our best.  As we walk through these, take note of any that resonate with you that have been holding you back.

Reasons You Aren’t Reaching Your Goals:

1)     No written goals.  People who try to wing it with their goals will only go so far.  A certain level of achievement can definitely be reached without clear aim.  However, the most successful people, have a clear vision of where they want to go, and they write it down.  That way, when distractions pop up, as they always do, you can more quickly and easily get back to the momentum tasks that will drive you towards accomplishing your goals.

2)     No Daily, Weekly Action Plans.  Some people write down their goals, but then they fail to make the incremental action plan necessary to get to those goals.  This happens often with new year’s resolutions.  They sound great on January 1, but with no action plan of how to get there, most people get overwhelmed and discouraged, and ultimately quit.

3)     No action taken.  Even the best laid action plan will fall short if you never act!  I am famous for this.  I love strategic brainstorming and planning.  It’s a strength.  But I love to plan ad infinitum.  The plan will look perfect when I am done with it, but I won’t have accomplished anything, because I never put the plan into action.  In my business, I’ve always surrounded myself with people who encourage me to act on the good ideas formed in the strategic planning phase. 

4)     No accountability.  Often this is where most people get tripped up.  High performers can achieve much on their own, and sometimes it feels easier to go it alone.  However, when times get really tough, when goals get uncomfortable, it is imperative to have someone who will hold you accountable and help keep you on track.

5)     Overwhelm.  You’re a high performer, so you have lots of ideas and energy.  But chasing after each idea without completing the projects on the board, just leads to chaos and ultimately burnout.  In the Momentum90 Plan, I teach the best way to deal with these ideas is to create a list of “Great Ideas for the Momentum90 Plan”.  This means you can still do those things, but they will just need to wait for the next quarter to make your project list.  You will achieve less stress and overwhelm with this one easy habit implementation.

So which goal blocker resonates most with you?  Look at everything on your project and goal list.  Which category do you fall into right now?  We will all be in one of these categories at one time or another.  The key is to identify where you are stuck and get the help you need to move through so you can keep on crushing those goals.

If you would like to surround yourself with a group of high performing women to hold you accountable, check out a Momentum Mastermind Group.  We are launching new groups this now!