Recently, I spent a week in beautiful Maui. I flew through a rainbow, swam in a waterfall and hiked in bare feet through a bamboo forest. I ate fresh fish on the beach, had some of the most hilarious yet moving conversations with my girls and had an astrology reading that cracked my skeptical heart wide open.
Maui changed me.
During that week my dreams got bigger and my vision for the future of Rodgers Collective refined.
After a fun afternoon shopping and eating with my bestie in the super cute, hippy town of Paia, I arrived at the airport and was quickly brought back down to Earth.
Magic = gone.
Little did I know that a 2-hour flight delay would turn my 12-hour journey home into a 24-hour hell ride. Arriving in San Francisco at 1am (instead of 11pm) meant that the last red eye had gone and there was no chance of me getting home that morning. After a trek through the airport and an hour-long customer service shit show, I took a cab to The World’s Shittiest Hotel at 2am. Note: This is the hotel that United actually sent me too;
Boy, did the inspirational, luxurious experience in Maui create quite the contrast with The World’s Shittiest Hotel. I found it scary to enter. Even the lobby looked like garbage (and you know it’s bad when they don’t even try to fool you into thinking the rooms are nice with a semi-decent lobby). I refused to lay in the bed at first, because I was concerned about bed bugs and general overall hygiene. After washing my knickers in the sink (did I mention my luggage had gone on to Newark Airport without me?) and placing them on a towel in front of the heater to dry, my exhaustion won and I got in bed.
When I woke up two and a half hours later, I had a whole new perspective.
I was incredibly grateful for my shit show journey home that led me to The World’s Shittiest Hotel because it made it crystal clear to me just how good I have it. How blessed I am to have a business I love to run, that supports me and my family and enables us to stay in WAY nicer hotels whenever we travel. I have a lovely home and am in the process of buying a bigger and nicer home. I have a team I love and friends I love, and, don’t forget a closet full of beautiful clothes I love.
Who the fuck am I to complain about a 5 hour stay in a shitty hotel?
There was a time in my life that hotels like that were all I could afford, if I was even so lucky as to travel in the first place. I have spent most of my life rather broke. And not just in a “I don’t have money for luxury travel and pretty shoes” broke. I’m talking “I am not sure if I can afford to eat because I just took everything I had to catch up on my late rent” broke. I’m talking “I can’t afford a metrocard how the hell am I going to get to my new job?” broke. I’m talking “public assistance, the struggle is real” broke.
This lousy travel experience brought me back to reality and I flew home with a big ‘ol smile on my face because life is good. Reality check … complete.
In a great little book called The Obstacle is The Way, Ryan Holiday suggests that when life offers you a shit sandwich you eat it up with joy. You should be thrilled, like literally throw-your-head-back-with-wild-laughter thrilled, when a huge obstacle stands in your way because that obstacle is the pathway to everything you want in life.
Your biggest struggle is actually HOW you are going to reach your goals.
Your biggest struggles will give you the mindset, the knowledge, the creativity and the motivation that you currently are missing — it’s the stuff you need to actually make your dreams happen.
Let me give you another example: one of my biggest obstacles as an entrepreneur has always been being the sole breadwinner for myself and my ever-growing, never-planned-growth family. There was never a safety net and that is scary as hell.
However, the obstacle is the way. Because the well-being of my family completely and utterly depends on the success of my business, I have always been highly motivated to make it happen. By any means necessary is the protocol, and guess what, when you have to make it happen, you will get creative AF and find a way to make it happen.
So my question to you is: what obstacle is currently in your way? What lesson might you need to learn from it in order to accomplish your big goals? How can you embrace the scary, crazy obstacle and use it to your advantage? Want my help, turning your lemons into lemonade? Come to the Big Apple for two days of business planning, prepping and pampering. It's called HANDLED. Get all the deets here.
