Being Present

Hey Self Love Beauty followers, it has been a minute since I have sat down to write. I have had so much to say but every time I put my hands on the key board, the running a business, being a good friend, boss, trying to stay healthy/fit and more come up and fill my brain. As a creative person, I sometimes as though I am a ‘squirrel’ meaning my attention spam is a short time as my to-do lists have gotten long. However, if you were wondering or worrying, I am doing great, but the story to get back to that will be written in another blog at another time.

Today was a beautiful day in Michigan, probably one of the warmest days and overall gorgeous so I took sometime off. I say some time off because yes I still woke up at 6:30am to work for two hours before I headed to a spin class and took the afternoon off. You see this is a big deal because last year I didn’t take many breaks and I missed out a lot on the fun of the beautiful summers in Michigan.

I missed her

Not only that but when I was with people I was either exhausted, not present or worrying about the hot mess of work I was going to have to do just because I took some time off. I wasn’t focusing, I wasn’t myself and overall I wasn’t the Lisa I love, and I missed her.

Like we all do around the new year, I made a list of goals and one of them was to be more present in the summer, take breaks and well…have fun. You hear the sayings a lot “work while everyone is sleeping” “success comes to those who hustle” and I could probably come up with 50 more. While I 100% believe these are true and our success sometimes is on the amount of hustle we have and the hard work we put in, but I know it also about self-care and love to yourself. Taking care of yourself is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

Advice

Over the past couple of years, I have loved to research and learn from other successful people. I like to learn how they did it, advice they give and also to hear sometimes their failures that came to be success because they didn’t give up. One day I came across an article that made me really think. I can’t remember the successful woman’s name to save my life as I type but I do remember she is a millionaire at the age of 40. She gave some advice that has stuck with me….it was to not waste away your years working because you will miss out on what is right in front of you.

She shared to take the breaks you need, travel and enjoy the moments with who matters most to you. She shared what she regretted the most was missing out on being with friends, laughing, being present and events with those she loves.

That advice was shocking to me because that isn’t what I normally read. I sat and reread it and then I thought about my life. I thought, how it was sad that her advice was so hard for me to understand, was I focusing so much on money, working on building my company, working side jobs to build it and do a million things at once that I was missing out on super important things like a bike ride with a friend or a birthday party of someone who could pass in the flash of an eye? I was.

Defining Success

I have a guy friend that always like to reminds me that sometimes I need to stop having fun with friends in order to get ahead. While he might be right in his eyes, I think we each have to decide what success means to us. If being a millionaire means I would have to miss out on my best friends big events or that I am so exhausted to even be present if I did show up then I think I needed a reality check on what success means to me vs. what someone else might define it as.

So today I focused on being with friends, I focused on putting the phone down and I focused on my sweet puppy who so desperately wanted me to play ball with him. I focused on getting enough sleep, shutting the phone and computer down for more than a few hours and just being present.

You see, we all want to be successful. We all want to make it ‘big’ in our lives and for me I want to impact as many people as I possibly can.

So don’t forget to be present, to know you are enough and define what success means to you.

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