Do you know what happens when your heart and your head no longer mesh with what you’re doing in life?

You get to decide right then and there it’s time to make a change.

Nowhere does it say in our storybook that the one thing we decide to do is the only thing we will do for the rest of our lives.

If that were true, how boring would that be?

You have this incredible opportunity to PIVOT when something no longer feels like it’s you. Try something completely new. Reinvent yourself. Go the extreme.

 

As the “queen of pivots,” there’s always a great story behind this lesson.

In 2008, I became a new mom to Caleb Ashton Pelletier, in the worst economy. I planned to have children after marrying Sean in 2004, yet obviously I did not time the market right for having a baby and a marketing company. I lost clients. I lost confidence. I lost sleep and I somehow lost my identity along with it. I was no longer only an entrepreneur kicking butt and growing an empire, I added “mom” to the title and I had no clue what the heck I was even doing. A tanking economy didn’t help much either.

Fast-forward a few months, I attended networking events trying to get into my groove again and quickly learned that no networking event suited who I was anymore, so I did the next best thing – I created a group specifically for mom entrepreneurs I named The Mom-e Club to be around my kind.

I lead this group nationally from 2009 to 2015 creating and hosting all sorts of events and then in 2016, I had an epiphany. I reformatted the group and renamed it the Gals’ Inspiration Hub. The difference? I no longer had chapters and presidents across the country. Instead, it was an intimate membership group in the PHX area for women entrepreneurs (not only moms), to come together for real relationships and a meeting of the minds. The only problem with this? I was expending a lot of my time and energy into leading it. I had a great group of gals who became my soul sisters, yet the group wasn’t growing. Why? The gals loved the intimacy of it and it stayed “the best-kept secret.”

Good for a tightknit group of gals, not so good for marketing purposes and scaling this to be my only business where my passion became my paycheck.

I had a very hard decision to make.

My head and heart were no longer meshing and after my husband asked me how much time I invest in this group each month, I knew I had my answer. Always so analytical like that. Good person to have when you’re in too deep to see the bigger picture.

I had led a group for women and mom entrepreneurs for nine years of my life coming up with content, scheduling meetings, finding venues and I truly did LOVE it.

I was contemplating whether or not to move on from hosting my Gals’ meetings until a story on the news solidified my answer.

I was in New Mexico with my mom on a road trip the summer of 2018 and I caught the news in our hotel room, which I never watch. That universe! Always has a way of sneaking in when it’s supposed to.

A conductor with a young adults’ symphony in Arizona had made it to the big time and was taking his group to Australia to perform. He was asked by the reporter, “Now that you’ve made it this far and achieved all your goals, what’s next on the horizon?”

His answer was very unexpected. I thought for sure he’d say continue leading the symphony, but he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “I’ve done what I set out to do and it’s time for me to get back to what I really enjoy, singing and being a participant again.”

Just like that. He passed the torch and let this mega responsibility go and moved on with something else in life.

And so did I.

Do I have regrets? Nope. I had so many wonderful experiences meeting and connecting women around the country and even here in my own backyard that I consider lifelong friends. I created a platform for us all to come together, talk about our struggles and successes and encourage each other through life.

It’s exactly what I still do in a more creative and lucrative context after I realized it was the absolute right time to pivot and use my time more wisely.

There is no deadline on when you’re supposed to do something and for how long. It’s all within you and when it’s time to let go and move on, you’ll absolutely know.

 

Rule of Life Lesson #98: