Last week, I shared how to survive if you fall the the ice (or face any major crisis). My post generated a few emails from concerned friends. I am so thankful for this circle of support. 2018 in general has been a year of many significant ups and downs. It would be so easy to say, “I’ll be thankful when this year is over and I can move on.” But the reality is that each difficulty has revealed a multitude of blessings. I would not give those up just to not experience that pain that came, too.

I wanted to share my journey and experience because our personal lives are not separate from our work lives. We just have ‘life’. When I am focused on all that is not going well, I miss the lessons and the blessings. I find that working and thinking to be impossible. To put it bluntly, my productivity diminishes.

So last night, I purchased a pack of thank you note cards with the intent to thank each of the challenges I have experienced recently. One of the major challenges was in acquiring a service dog for my son.  

Here is the note I wrote to this challenge:

Thank you so much for the tremendous blessing you have given us. Two weeks ago we sent you a payment, you accepted that payment and sent us a notice on that same day to let us know that your facility would be closing. A week later we received notice of your bankruptcy. I couldn’t have imagined in that moment the blessings that would come from your actions. Actions that seemed negligent and extremely hurtful, even criminal.
Two weeks later though, the gifts are coming in more quickly than the pain and shock of that email. 

In two short weeks, this is what we have received that is even better than what we could have imagined:
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1. We have met and bonded with other families that are in the same experience as us. Having a special needs child (or two in our case) can be isolating. But in these last two weeks we met and connected with other families just like ours. There is so much strength in knowing that you are not alone. 
   
   
2. Receiving and outpouring of love and support from people we know and others we didn’t (yet) know. In a time when it would have been easy to allow fear to step in, we openly rejected fear and accepted the help of complete strangers to help our dog and us. It is a difficult thing to accept help but even harder to do so when there is little way to reciprocate. The only option is to pay it forward. We are excited to do so and to be the light and hope for others in their time of need.
   
   
3. Having our dog trained by a loving family in their home close to our home so that we can have a much better outcome for our family. In the twenty four hours since Ben has been with the new trainer we have received 8 photos (we had 3 over two months prior) AND we can see him being loved on in just the way we would love on him. It is so wonderful to know that someone else cares about him as much as we do.
   
   
4. Being able to meet Ben and snuggle him. He is just the sweetest dog and we are excited to be his family.
   
   
5. Meeting Dave at Show Me Your Dog. Our interactions have been so wonderful. He is knowledgeable and supportive and honest with us. We would have never met him, had it not been for you!
   
   
6. Learning more about service dog training and becoming more connected into this community. Service dogs we a complete black hole for us when we started in August. But now we know so much more and understand the process much better than we did. I love to learn and this has been a learning experience. 
   
   
7. Your timing was perfect. I may have been inclined to think that I could have taken on another project if this had happened at another time when I wasn’t so completely overwhelmed. To be honest, that would have been terrible all around. Ben would not have received the training he needed, Josh would not have received a service dog, I would have taken off more than I could handle. But because of the timing, the only option I had was to find someone else to train our pup. It is truly the best possible situation.
   
   

Thank you so much for this and I am sure, other blessings that are on the way.

From just one challenge, we received no less than seven major blessings. What challenges are you facing today, that are blessings in disguise? I encourage you to thank each one of them.

Share in the comments how this exercise affected you.

Are you over complicating this? Are you making this harder than it needs to be? If you’re anything like me and I’m guessing you are, there are times when you get stuck in your own head and need a way around. I want to share with you an experience that I had recently.

I often will sign up for new programs. I would so much rather rely on the expertise of people who have gone before than to reinvent the wheel. If somebody has and offering and it sounds like it can solve my problem, I am 100 percent willing to invest in that program to make the path easier for myself. But, I experienced a conundrum. I was excited about the beginning of the program, all that I was learning, the mindset shifts I was experiencing when, at the three-week mark, I hit a wall.

The Kolbe Assessment, an evaluation I took in 2016 came to mind. One of the levels it evaluates is Quick Start. People who are high on Quick Start are fast to take action with new ideas. They may not necessarily get around to implementing everything, but they do start a lot of different stuff. I am higher than the median on Quick Start. I do finish a good amount of the projects that I start but I also have a lot of ideas. What if, I was stuck in Quick Start mode but would never finish??

I began a new program and I wanted the results that others had. I knew there was a path from A to B, right? That’s why I brought the program, to explain how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. I knew that it was possible, but everything was feeling complicated. The enthusiasm and energy from the beginning of the program had started to wear off, it just seemed confusing. Like everything was kind of jumbled up in my mind. Has this happened to you? I would love for you to write to me and let me know. Have you gotten to the point where you could not see the path forward?

The demons appeared

• Maybe I am not good enough to walk this path.
• ​Maybe I will be stuck here and never move forward.
• It’s the “Week Three Wall”… again.
  
  

Something in my mind went off to say, “you are over complicating this.”

I decided to take the next step on the path outlined by the instructor, trusting they would not lead me astray. And everything began to open up. I had to push the demons aside and just move forward in faith.

Why I got stuck

I lost track of myself and what I was already great at in trying to implement just like the instructor. You can use others’ information as a framework but it should never replace your specific magic.

I confused something uncomfortable for failing. Because I couldn’t see each next step I worried that the path would disappear, but it didn’t. The right path is always available.

The 4-Step Process for Moving Forward

1 — Remember Your Strengths
2 — List Your Successes (things that were once hard but are now easy)
3 — Recall Your Vision
4 — Take the Next Small Step.

When I did this four-step process, the noise and nonsense fell away and my desired outcome became clear again. In this case, what became clear was that I had six pages of notes of exactly what my ideal clients needed from me to improve their situation. And as luck would have it, I was able to whittle this down to 52 specific questions. I am thrilled to be able to answer these questions on my podcast anchor.fm/momentumaccountability and here.

You will only ever know the next few steps ahead. Trust yourself, your strengths and your past successes to know that you will figure out the next best step to take. And when you become frazzled, follow the four-step process to come back to clarity.

Scrap it and Start Over

There are times when you may need to scrap it and start over. If you are working and working at something and not making progress, start with a fresh page and try again. Apply all that you have learned in the first round that was not successful. You will make progress faster and in better alignment with your vision.
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I’d love to hear from you. Where are you overcomplicating things?