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The Business of Starting A Business…

Being in Business, News, Personal Development, Single parenting

In February 2010, with two months gardening leave, the emotional recovery of my marriage ending only 9 months earlier still in full swing, two children, a mortgage and my ever so slightly feisty attitude, I walked out of my job. I worked in the Public Sector and the contract was always going to end and the inevitable fight for another job that failed to satisfy would be due to take place soon and I just couldn’t face it anymore.

I left behind a slightly startled Manager, six weeks paid leave, sick pay, mileage allowance and a respectable salary. It wasn’t enough for me on any level and single parenting with a full time job based an hour away, is a comprehensively difficult task for reasons that shouldn’t need detailing.

As I head towards two years of self-employment, I have learnt more than I could ever have imagined. The very process of getting up each and day and having to take responsibility for your earnings, ensuring that the children have food and warmth, is character building to say the least. I regularly meet people who are setting up in business who want as much information as possible as to how you can actually make this happen. So what can I tell you?

  • Get used to having only what you need. When you strip away most of what you spend your money on, much of it only serves to make you feel better about the unsatisfying life you lead. We actually need very little. Strip it right down. Now. And hope that you have lovely friends who pretend to employ you for bits of work that need doing.
  • When you first start in business, days off and work/life balance are luxuries spoken of by employed people or people supported by a partner. If it’s just you, prepare to work all day and all night, managing the basics of sleep, food and conversations with your children (if you have them) that are in the very least, done face to face. I absolutely promise that life will not stay like this. I have at least one day off a week now and I balance my life through the days that I do work by working hours that fit around my family and my social life.
  • Know this, you will become unemployable fairly quickly. The thirst for making a success of your business will be a driving force that most employers don’t really want in their workplace. No longer limited by other people’s needs and expectations, you can reach as high up to the stars as your wish. Also, taking lunch, starting work and finishing work, will all become time frames that you wish for no-one else to ever interfere with again. In short, once you start on this journey, you’re likely to have to stay on this journey!
  • Connect with as many people as you can from which you can then find people to form your support group or your team. These are the people that you will learn from and that you will teach, that you will have coffee with and cry with. These are the people that you will grow with and you will form a Network with whereby you recommend each other businesses forming a thriving business community that then connects with other thriving communities.
  • You are now several departments. You are Marketing, Personnel, Payroll, Health and Safety, Book Keeper, Social Media Strategist, Communications and, of course, you complete the job itself. It is possible that you have not ever learnt so much information before.
  • Being Self-employed is a little like life before children…you really can’t explain it to someone until they’ve done it. It’s hard, it’s amazing, it’s frustrating, it’s fulfilling. Like parenting, it is every emotion and it takes you right through the sleepless nights to that look of love you have on your face as you gaze down at your full diary in a doting fashion and think “I made you”.

So there we are, a very short introduction to my life in Business with more posts to follow. This is my own story and I have learnt that I have quite a high propensity to risk taking behaviour (although I think that has lessened somewhat over the years) and this attitude has helped. Running your business is not about certainty or safety or security, even if these are future goals. But it is definitely about excitement, learning, empowerment, creativity and an overwhelming sense of achievement that I don’t recall feeling since I put myself through my degree while working full time back in the early 1990’s. If I have any regrets, it’s that I didn’t do it sooner!

 

 

Upcoming Project…

Emotional Health, Love, Mental Health, My First Book, Personal Development, Relationships, Single parenting

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Are you ordinarily exceptional?

Or are you exceptionally ordinary?

Have you overcome difficulties that may well have rendered you unable to operate in society but they didn’t?

Do you seek to make a difference? To inspire?

Have you made sense of your experiences and moved on from the pain?

Did you survive and now thrive?

If any of this makes sense, please contact me, Lisa Cherry on bookings@holistic-health.me.uk

This is for an upcoming project and I would love to hear from you….I know you are out there!

xx

Ten Rules For Being Human

Emotional Health, Love, Personal Development, Recovery

I remember being given a sheet of paper, many years ago and long before Google searched your needs out for you. On it were these 10 rules for being human. I cannot remember who gave me this and in what context but I carried it around with me just about everywhere and stuck it to any wall that was close. It felt like the instruction manual that ‘they’ forgot to give me when I arrived here to this thing called life! You may well have seen this before….

  1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
  2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
  3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
  4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
  5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
  6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
  7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
  8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
  9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
  10. You will forget all this.

by Cherie Carter-Scott




			

	
			  
		
		


	
	
					
					
	

	
	    
	    
	    

	    
		    	    
			
	
				
After A While…

				Emotional Health, Love, Personal Development
			

	
			

			
I came across this piece of writing, writen by the then 19 year old Veronica A. Shoffstall and was taken by it’s beauty, observation and eloquence, particularly for one so young. I hope it resonates with you too….




“After a while you learn

the subtle difference between

holding a hand and chaining a soul

and you learn

that love doesn’t mean leaning

and company doesn’t always mean security.

And you begin to learn

that kisses aren’t contracts

and presents aren’t promises

and you begin to accept your defeats

with your head up and your eyes ahead

with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child

and you learn

to build all your roads on today

because tomorrow’s ground is

too uncertain for plans

and futures have a way of falling down

in mid-flight.

After a while you learn

that even sunshine burns

if you get too much

so you plant your own garden

and decorate your own soul

instead of waiting for someone

to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure

you really are strong

you really do have worth

and you learn

and you learn

with every goodbye, you learn…”


© 1971 Veronica A. Shoffstall

			

	
			  
		
		


	
	
					
					
	

	
	    
	    
	    

	    
		    	    
			
	
				
Sabotage…do you recognise this?

				Love, Mental Health, Personal Development, Recovery, Relationships
			

	
			

			
Inspired by a repeated pattern of behaviour that I have observed of myself all of my adult life, I feel compelled to write about ‘sabotage’. Those of you who have done some work on yourself will be familiar with this terminology in relation to self-destructive behaviour, but for those of you who may be yet to explore it, allow me to offer my understanding of this.


Sabotage is born out of fear and operates so as to prevent having to deal with questions such as ‘I’m not enough’, ‘I won’t be loved’, I don’t deserve it’ or ‘what’s the point – I’ll be rejected/abandoned/fired sooner or later’.


In recovery terms, recovery from drug addiction or alcoholism, it might be that a person sabotages their recovery by continuing to go to places where they are at risk of using and then blaming the places, people or things that ‘made’ them use, rather than facing their role in that outcome.


Sabotage is not about taking responsibility. It seeks to blame other people for an outcome. For example, pushing someone away continually until they have no choice other than to actually go away and then they can be blamed as the person who was the abandoner…. In a kind of ‘see, I told you they would leave/reject me/abandon me’.


As a person who is aware of sabotaging, in particular, potential intimate relationships, I am knowledgeable and aware of this behaviour, a behaviour that I was made aware of a very long time ago. But what happens when it becomes more subtle? When knowledge does not equal power? Or worse, when you can actually see yourself in the behaviour but feel powerless to stop it?


We:


    

  • Forgive ourselves…first and foremost
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  • With that comes compassion
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  • We then take responsibility
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  • With that comes repairing any damage
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  • And when all is said and done, sit safely and quietly in the knowledge that we have just learned a little more about ourselves that will then make the lesson next time shorter until it has been learnt and does not come again!
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Self-awareness is an amazing, frustrating, liberating state of mind, body and spirit. The lessons may take longer than we would like and they may get harder and more difficult to manage than we would like. But essentially what choice do we have if we are to become the best that we can be? The personal goal in life has to be that we can become the very best that we can possibly be, so learn, grow and love yourself in the process, as you are and as you can be.



			

	
			  
		
		


	
	
					
					
	

	
	    
	    
	    

	    
		    	    
			
	
				
Walk With The Dreamers

				Emotional Health, Love, Personal Development, Recovery
			

	
			

			
I came across this fantastic poster which I periodically paste up all over the place and I love it, primarily because it forces us to think outside our little boxes, moves us to the edge of our comfort zones and reminds us that life is to be lived, felt, experienced and filled with longing….




 


 


I don’t want to leave my time on this planet having not pushed myself to my limits, having not explored every possible part of who I am or who I could be. Within that process, the aim for me has to be trying to leave the world a better place than when I arrived here….making a difference is what makes a difference to how I feel about everything I do. Will you walk with me too?

			

	
			  
		
		


	
	
					
					
	

	
	    
	    
	    

	    
		    	    
			
	
				
The Gift Of Life…

				Emotional Health, Love, Personal Development, Recovery
			

	
			

			
Why oh why does the whole world, the part of the world that does not have to be consumed each moment with searching out the basic needs of food and shelter of course,  not understand that Life is a gift? A gift given for just a short time for us to fully appreciate and enjoy all that is on offer?


Soap Operas and hateful jobs and meaningless relationships are not what we are meant to be doing. What would be the point in that? Sometimes I feel like I want to run up to people and say Wow! You have life! Now what will you do with it?




I have lived a life and I shall continue to live my life exploring all that I can be, because a life worth living is a life that has been lived, and I have lived…thank goodness, and I continue to expand every aspect of my being.


So go and look into the eyes of life and fall in love because my friends, life is very short. It is very short indeed…

			

	
			  
		
		


	
	
					
					
	

	
	    
	    
	    

	    
		    	    
			
	
				
And Life Is….

				Emotional Health, Love, Personal Development, Relationships, Spiritual Health
			

	
			

			
It seems to me that there is a distinct flaw in the human condition that somehow allows us to forget the point. The point of our relationships, the point of the work we have chosen to do, the point of our friendships that we have chosen to have, indeed the point of life.


We all do it. We all get bogged down in the minutiae of life’s noise on what she said, or he said, or that person or that place or that thing said or did or didn’t do, all of which we can’t quite deal with. We’re upset. We’re hurt. We feel alone in our pain.


It is in these moments particularly, that we must remember that we can change the way we respond to life, we can change the way we understand life and most of all we change the view of life that doesn’t acknowledge that life is a gift. We are a ‘we’ in this context. We have all been given the gift of life…


All the Philosophical and Spiritual teachers have sought to teach us as to what the purpose of it all is. From these teachings, I take it that the purpose of being here is to make a difference. I also take it to believe that the purpose of life of to be happy.


I found a lovely little Video being shared across cyberspace called Life is Coffee, which as a coffee lover (read coffee snob), I thought was a perfect analogy for me so I hope you like it and that you will share this message.


In line with my Just For Today Vlog from this week, I would like to add a little thought for the day, for my day, one that we can all use in our lives in whatever way works for us. For me, Just For Today I have everything I need and I am loved….

			

	
			  
		
		


	
	
					
					
	

	
	    
	    
	    

	    
		    	    
			
	
				
What is Wellness?

				Emotional Health, Love, Personal Development, Physical Health, Recovery, Relationships, Spiritual Health
			

	
			

			
In a recent blog, I explored Holistic Health and what I mean when I use that term; the way I understand it and the way I believe it is understood. A natural progression on from that seemed to me to be an exploration of what wellness is and how we understand it.


What I do know is that we all have the power within us to have a feeling of wellness. A feeling of happiness, of enthusiasm for life and a sense of energy is something that we can all work towards and experience. How?


    

  • Understand yourself holistically as a whole person with many areas of your life that need to be balanced.  You are not ‘stress’ or ‘lethargy’ or ‘a bad back’, you are a person operating in society in a relationships at work and at home. You have your spiritual, physical, emotional and mental aspects of yourself to keep in check. See where the imbalance may be and that will give you a lot of information to help you work through whatever is presenting as the problem.
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  • Self-esteem and self-love is everything or as Louise Hay taught me, the cornerstone to everything. Without it, there is nothing because there is no connection with yourself. If this aspect of yourself is poor, work on it and work on it hard. The use of daily affirmations, positive loving relationships, eating wholesome food and allowing yourself some time to reflect in solitude so as to improve your relationship with yourself and connect spiritually, are all a good start.
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  • Take personal responsibility. When you are wrong, say sorry, learn and move on. Don’t say yes when you mean no.  Don’t relive scenarios over and over again punishing yourself for the past and concerning yourself with the future. Keep your side of the street clean so that you can look at yourself in the mirror every day. Forgive yourself….often. Perfectionism is just another form of self-loathing.
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  • Live consciously! Value the food you eat, the trees you pass, the people you smile at. Photography is a great way of living in the moment and seeing something from a different angle. It’s a conscious activity. Care for your environment. Care for the people around you. Turn off the TV and sing or dance or bake a cake. Come alive and stop getting lost in the misery of soap operas…..created I believe to quieten the masses.
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  • Enjoy yourself. Enjoy your sense of connectedness to yourself, the Universe and all people. Have fun. We are here for such a short time. Make your goal that of making a difference to the world, to the people around you.
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Your wellness is your responsibility. No-one is going to bring it to you, fix what’s broken, give you a magic pill to ‘make it all better’. The power to do that is within you and no-one else. You can choose this right now. You can choose to take a continuing series of short steps one day at a time and give yourself the life you deserve, being the very best that you can be.

			

	
			  
		
		


	
	
					
					
	

	
	    
	    
	    

	    
		    	    
			
	
				
My Recovery…

				Emotional Health, Love, Mental Health, Personal Development, Recovery, Spiritual Health
			

	
			

			
I have recently found myself in the position whereby I felt the need to evaluate and crystallise what it means for me to say that I am Recovering Alcoholic. It can be a pretty emotive statement for some and I sometimes find a defensiveness about it as people almost run to look at their own behaviour and go about the business of either defending it or shirking away from talking about it for fear of ‘catching’ this god awful dis-ease. Usually there is a lack of understanding about what it means and there is definitely confusion around what is in fact a heavy drinker as opposed to an alcoholic.


If you read my blog regularly, you’ll know that I walked into my first AA meeting at the grand old age of 20 after an incredibly distressing seven year period. It was at 10pm in the basement of a hall on a road just off the Kings Road in Chelsea and I still stank of the booze from the night before. It was 1990 and there was a very lively pub on the corner that had to be negotiated before the meeting was reached. I felt grey, I felt alone, I felt misunderstood and I felt like I didn’t deserve the gift of life. A 10pm AA meeting is a pretty hard core meeting, even for a one in Chelsea. It was not for the fainthearted but, one day at a time, I haven’t had a drink since that first meeting and I will be grateful beyond measure for that, for every minute of every day.


I lived in meetings for about 2 years, sometimes three a day, substituting drinking with tobacco and coffee until I learnt that it didn’t actually matter what your substance of choice is, at some point you’re going to have to feel the pain. You’re going to have to confront what is left. You’re going to have to stare long and hard at yourself and get real, and there is nothing real about being in an AA meeting three times a day, in coffee shops with other meeting goers, drinking coffee until 1am in the morning, smoking endlessly!


When I talk about ‘recovery’, it is this process of being real, every 24 hour period, that I mean. It’s the daily process of reflection, self-comprehension and a self-honesty that most people would avoid at any cost. It is taking responsibility for my actions and being true to myself. It is a daily acknowledgment of what I have in my wonderful life – self-pity and gratitude cannot live side by side. It is impossible.


There is a saying in AA that goes, if you keeping going to the Barbers shop, you’re going to get a haircut. If I hang around dis-ease, heavy drinking, endless smoking and a disconnect from all that is beautiful, I am at risk of having a haircut. I don’t metaphorically go to the barbers very much at all, as these are not the circles I hang around in, but a difficult situation has presented itself to me and I have swiftly removed myself.


For me, my recovery is everything, because it is my life, literally. I am not here to judge other people and the choices that they make. I only know, with all my heart, however uncomfortable that might make you feel, that I cannot put myself at risk because I am worth sobriety. I am worth being well. I am worthy and that is why self-love and my spiritual connection, will always, always be, the cornerstone to absolutely everything.