Be brave and find margin

Oh what a week it's been. 

Something is changing and shifting and moving, and whatever it is, it feels so incredibly good. 

Somewhere along the way, I became complacent. Just coasting. Going through the motions when it came it my business. I don't know how it happened. I could blame it on multiple things, but why start the list? We all have things we can point to for excuses. Let's not even go there. 

Let's just go forward...move on. 

I'm thrilled that this new found passion and purpose is sticking around. I was a little worried it would fly out the window after a week of trying harder. But the passion is still here, and I'm still choosing my business this year. 

On a side note, choosing my business allows me the incredible freedom and ability to choose my family and to choose homeschool and to choose so many other things. This is a significant side note. 

I write the side note to tell you that it's easy to get carried away. My to-do lists this week were long. How do you make up for a year of complacency? I'll tell ya, it involves a lot of to dos. 

So if you're on this crazy journey with me, I want to encourage you to create margin. Oh margin, that fleeting, unicorn like time that sounds like a good idea, but that doesn't truly exist. 

So that is true. Margin does not exist unless you make it exist. (And no, you can't make a unicorn exist just by wishing it, but you do have the power to create margin in your life.)

Margin is basically extra space....time. It's time for your family, time for interruptions, time for God to move in your life. Our culture literally has no clue what margin looks like. 

We work ourselves to death. It's so incredibly important that you find that extra space in your day, in your week, in your month for the important things in life to truly live. Choosing your business this year does not mean sacrificing your family and your values. God and your family always have to come 1st. 

So in the midst of the laundry and the toys and the school day and the babies and the errands and your "real job" and everything that comes along with life, you have to choose to be brave. You have to choose to do hard things. 

The only difference between successful people and people living in mediocrity is that successful people decide to start. They decide to be brave and try a little harder to do a littler better. 

I'm reading this awesome book by Jon Acuff called Start. In it, he talks about how brave we have to be to step out of the easy, mundane and routine, and into something greater, and it all begins with starting. Choosing to start. He says: 

You have to be deliberate and intentional and focused. You have to be a Starter. And then you have to be brave enough and prepared enough to react when a surprise presents itself.

Jon talks about how we can't map out the beginning to the end and expect it to turn out exactly the way we planned for it turn out. Honestly, we have to start knowing that the way we get to the end may be nothing like we expect it to be.

When I started my Scentsy journey 6 years ago, I never could have planned it out this way. I had no clue. The best things that have happened in my life and in my business since then are things that I never had on my radar. People I would meet. Friends I would gain. Experiences that would change me.

I'm glad I didn't have the finish in mind when I started. I just knew I needed to start, and that was enough. It made me brave.

So tonight, I'm praying 2 things over you: Margin and Bravery. Know how and where you need space and time, and create it. You'll have to be disciplined about making sure there is margin in your life, but it is possible.

And after you create Margin, be Brave. Do the things that you know you might fail at, just to say that you tried. And try a little harder to be a little better one day at a time.

You can do it. I believe in you.

Choosing my business this year.......

 (Thanks Jaime Pilcher for the reminder that it really is about being braver than we feel. I love you and never saw you coming in my plans. How grateful I am that there were bigger plans than mine in play.)