When You Fall

Helping Professionals To Use Story to Transform Communities

When You Fall

What happens when you’re out in front and you fall?

Over the past few years, I’ve watched the media, really anyone with access to an audience, pick apart people in the public eye. We can no longer tell the difference between holding someone accountable to a standard, and criticizing with a malicious intention.

It’s easy to see why leaders hide their mistakes, and hide their bad days.

That philosophy doesn’t work for me.

I make mistakes regularly, and I won’t hide them. Here’s why: the work I do must be effective in order for it to be beneficial. I’ll try things, and they might work, or not. I might think I’m being helpful, and I’m not. Every mistake has a lesson in it.

But more than that, great work can’t be done alone. And although true healing is done in the silence of your soul, it is affirmed when you are in the midst of others.

For the last year, I’ve been pushing to get a passion project started with teen girls and film. Girls Call The Shots launched with a media lab in Broward Library, won two grants, and caught the eye of the media.

As the light began shining for the girls we reached, it was not shining in the other places that matter to me. My health has not been the best and I’m not spending the time I want with the people I love. That all came to a head yesterday and, frankly, I had enough.

Is this it? Is this social entrepreneurship?

Helping others and failing myself?

Bollocks.

I began researching resources about work-life balance, and to my utter dismay, all of them talk about doing something to mitigate the stress of an out-of-balance lifestyle. Because, well that’s just what is.

I thought, it can’t be what is because that isn’t sustainable.

And that was it, folks. That decision opened things up for me.

I believe you don’t have to suck at your personal life in order to be an social entrepreneur. Here’s the thing: there isn’t a cut-and-paste template for the life I want to lead. So this belief is based on my faith, not on what I’ve witnessed. I’m now finding the resources to help me puzzle together the life I know I should be living. Bottom-line: great work can’t be sustained if good people can’t fall and figure things out.  As I figure things out, I’ll share the wisdom (and the resources) with you.

First one: Dre Baldwin’s Podcast episode 229 – I made the decision that my life was going to work in all areas. He talks about the mindset that supports my move forward.