Believing in Destin

This week I traveled to beautiful Destin Florida. White sand beaches, bright blue water, and Crystal Bay Senior Living-the site of my project and reason for my trip. Crystal Bay was one of the first projects I worked on when I started my job as an in house Interior Designer for a senior living company. After several revisions and budget cuts, it was finally approved this year.

The project consisted of a small wing of the building reserved for residents with dementia. When I first visited the community I was amazed with the beautiful property and surrounding area. Most of the building was tired looking, but not awful. The Memory Care wing was another story entirely. The furniture was old and tired, the carpet worn and stained, and the entire area was very dark in general. Not somewhere I would want my family members to live. Because of the market level of this project, (it is in a very nice area of Destin), this renovation was on the radars of members of company senior management. I could not screw this one up.

As I sat in the airport on Thursday I started getting a sick stomach. What if I didn't order enough furniture? What if the dining tables didn't fit? What if I forgot some huge component that was going to put a huge black mark on my record? This could be an awful trip.

Then I thought back to my theme this week. I was certainly not believing in myself! I had looked this project over a million times. I double and triple checked my specifications. If anything did go wrong, I was prepared enough to fix it. It was going to be fine!

And I was right. Once everything was moved into its correct spots it looked wonderful! I was still missing a few pieces that would be buttoned up in the coming weeks, so the project wasn't 100% complete when I left. But all my efforts (and the tireless efforts of the contractors and project managers) had created a space that was a complete 180 from what I had seen two years earlier. I had helped make it into a place I was proud of.

Believing that everything was going to be fine helped make the hours in the airport much less stressful(did I mention I traveled during the FFA's computer meltdown?). I wasn't running potential problems through my head, I was relaxing and enjoying my book. Even though I was about three and a half hours late to the site, I wasn't concerned. I knew it would all work out, and it did.

I read somewhere that 90% of the things we worry about never happen. Believing in our capabilities can help take that unecessary stress out of our lives and leave in its place a feeling of comfort.

Live Good

This weekend I did a little shopping with my friend, Mel. After perusing through all of the beautiful patterned papers and clever greeting cards we came upon the shelves full of books for gifting. These were books full of inspirational quotes or journals that encouraged reflection. We flipped through several, but the one that I decided to buy was called "Live Good". Why did this book stand out amongst the shelves and shelves of others? Every page had a title that reminded me of my quest to inspire people to overcome their fears.

I decided to work my way through this book. For every title I will take a related action, as well as post some related material. I challenge you to work your way through with me. Hopefully by the end we will all be living good!

This week's title is Belive In Yourself. A little quote to get you started:

'If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.' ~Vincent Van Gogh

Whatever your 'paint', silence the negative voice and be confident!

Put yourself out there

A few weeks ago, I did something I wouldn't normally do. Fueled by Barbara Stanny's book, "Secrets of Six Figure Women", I decided to Google her name. She has a fantastic website that I started tooling around on. There was a Contact Me button, which listed her email.

Normally, I would have thought it silly to email an established author. She probably gets millions of emails a day telling her how wonderful she is, and mine would just get lost in the mix. However, if it wasn't for her I wouldn't be on this new wave of letting go of all the parts of me that said it was stupid. I sent her an email. I was so nervous writing it, I probably wrote three different drafts. Finally, after much deliberation, I hit send. This rush of relief and excitement washed over me. Off to her inbox it went. I couldn't take it back now.

Three days later I opened my email to see a message from none other than Barbara Stanny. She not only read my email, but read my blog. She loved it! She even thanked me for the email and said that it meant a lot to her. Had I not been at work when I read it, I would have jumped up and down and squealed like a 10 year old girl.

But it didn't end there. Just last week Barbara emailed me again. It was a short message, "Hi Amanda…check out my latest blog…it’s about you: www.barbarastannyblog.com"

She wrote her blog about me and my blog! Once again, I was prompted to jump up and down. She talked about the idea behind my blog and even urged her readers to check it out. I got some encouraging comments from her readers, (if you came back to read my latest-thank you!). It felt nothing short of amazing.

Point of this week's blog: don't be afraid to put yourself out there. One simple email brought about a series of events that made me feel that I had finally done something worth while. My dream of helping people overcome their fears wasn't too far off.

Special thanks to Barbara for her encouragement (and all that she has done for women everywhere). Contact someone you admire this week, and do it with confidence. You never know what could come of it!