As you may have noticed, the themes of my last few articles have been a bit scattered. Pondering my sanity, dealing with overwhelm and the like. You may be asking yourself, “Mary, why do you over-share all the crazy stuff you think about? Don’t you want to be seen as some kind of stable, sane expert?”
Before you start questioning your own sanity for actually reading my crazy articles, I thought it best to let you know why I intentionally choose to be blissfully transparent.
Many years ago, I started my own business, and found that entrepreneurship required personal growth. As I started down the road of self-improvement, I took note of all of the incredibly successful teachers, and I made some very destructive assumptions.
I assumed they were all constantly happy, health-nut, marathon-running millionaires. In short, I assumed that they never had a bad day.
Why was this assumption so destructive?
Because if I ever had a bad day, or ate a doughnut, or experienced failure, or – God forbid – was simply lazy for a day, I thought that it meant that I would never succeed. It sounds totally crazy, I know.
Then one day, I listened to a lecture given by a wildly successful man, Brian Buffini. While recounting a story, he casually mentioned that a few weeks ago he had had a really bad day.
WHAT?! It was like a light went on for me – “You mean you can have bad days and still be successful?”
I wish I could say that I was more sophisticated when I started my own business, but the fact is that until that moment, I hadn’t even realized that I’d made those assumptions. But they affected me subconsciously every single day.
I am so thankful to Brian Buffini for his transparence. And my hope is that my own style of blissful transparence – about both my successes and my crazy days – will help others have the critical “a-ha” moment they need.
Mary, I love the sharing!
Good for you for being real and showing the way.
It’s up to those of us who run businesses authentically to really step up and model how it’s done.
AND, since business success is determined by the quality of relationships created, what better way to start and build lasting relationships than by being REAL.
Good for you!
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Therese!
Mary,
Being “for real” means you never have to keep track of some fake persona you created, and that you don’t have to expend valuable energy needed serve your clients on trying to be who you think they want you to be.
Exactly – reduces stress!
I completely support, appreciate, and concur with your transparency approach. One of the basic tenets of our humanity is to teach by example. Thank you ~*
My pleasure, Deborah.
I think the ‘real’ factor is exactly what attracts and then keeps my clients. If something goes wrong I am honest about it, then do what it takes to fix it.
Yep, transparency in business is nearly always appreciated.
Now that explains the Over Sharing. Transparancy is good! What about those that are blissfully happy all the time, successful or not. Are they hiding or did they hear that the mind follows the face? Meaning if you smile a lot, even when you don’t feel like it, the mind thinks everything is OK! Or what if they fake it till they make it?
I may be a cynic, but I have a hard time taking seriously those folks who have a perma-smile on their faces. Ok, that’s harsh, because I know plenty of happy people who decide to deal with their bad days in private, and that’s just another way to approach life. I get what you’re saying, though. I wrote an article a month or so back about a similar topic and it spurred some interesting discussions: http://marycravets.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/act-as-if-or-delusion/.
I also completely agree that transparency in business is one of the MAIN keys to long term success. I’ve been asked quite a few times about things I’ve posted either on my personal sites or my business ones, and I always stand behind them. Sometimes I’ve put what some people perceive to be majorly negative, but it was simply me expressing my “current” frustration for a situation.
What I’ve found is that when I am facing a particular problem and getting more and more aggravated, sometimes the perfect release is a quick Facebook update or Twitter post or whatever medium suits my “release”. Once I make that post (and I always strive to keep the “innocent” anonymous so unless you are directly involved in the current situation you won’t know exactly who or what I may be referring to) but once making that post, my mind is free to release the stress related to it and move forward.
I like to consider that my posts are “publicly anonymous” (-:
Greg
Greg – I agree that venting is great, and yet keeping it anonymous is a challenge. I’ve actually vented before about “someone” doing “something” I didn’t like, and a half dozen people asked “are you talking about me?” So even being publicly anonymous is sometimes tricky.