“Everyone wants to be a lion until it comes time to do what lions have to do.” -Pat McAfee
It was a beautiful bluebird day, the birds were chirping, the sun was out, the hills were green and alive with a plethora of wildflowers. I was surrounded by my hubby, kiddos, and best friend and her family. We had a cute condo overlooking the dramatic Mt. Crested Butte, the wildflower capital of the world. I had spent money, time, energy on this trip and dreamed about it for months. And we were finally here!! And I was sitting at my computer sending emails for hours. Honestly, it sucked.
Yet if you watched my Instagram stories for that day, you’d have no ideas the frustrations or “downs” I’d had that day. You would have seen epic mountain ridges, and summits with 360* views. You would have seen my kiddos biking around the bike park and getting ice cream in town. You would have seen fun, adventure, and perhaps felt jealous of the day I was living.
So, for this month’s Elevate Livin’ Life e-newsletter I wanted to chat about a few thoughts that I think are important and worth sharing.
- Many things in life are full of great highs, but also many lows. Don’t focus just on people’s highlight reels.
- To achieve those highs, you are going to have to go through similar lows, so the question to ask yourself, is it worth it to you? Do you want to be the lion and do what lions must do to become that lion?
Being a lion can suck:
My “lion” moment this summer was having five weeks of back-to-back trips, where I adventured hard, worked hard, and lived it to the fullest. It was great and awful all at the same time. To the outsider, they probably thought it was all sunshine and rainbows. I even had myself convinced before the trips that it would be hard but mostly amazing. But here were some of the sucky parts of our whirlwind trips:
1. Flight delays and car rental issues that caused us to arrive at 5 AM instead of 8 PM.
2. Tourist Attractions gone wrong costing us hours of limited time in NYC.
3. Getting sick and having to drive six hours AND do hours of work while feeling like crap (photo above)
4. Supposed to be playing and adventuring in the prettiest place ever and instead stuck on the computer working.
5. Altitude sickness kicking my ass.
6. Stanley overrun with people that we couldn’t get a spot at Redfish Lake, then finding a spot in Lower Stanley and when we arrived at 10 PM , someone had come in and removed our reservation tag and stolen it.
7. Bench Lakes Fire causing issues with disrupting our plans, adding smoke to the weekend, and hoards of people flocking to the same lake.
8. The bugs. The bugs. The bugs. Eaten alive by no-see-ums at camp.
9. Sitting in a hot parking lot at Stanley Lake with Starlink on the roof to send some work emails.
I’m sharing this not to complain, but to really shine a light on the difficulties that happen in life, since we’re all flooded with picture perfect images on social media (myself guilty of this as well).
Do you feel some of this pain in your life? Whether you’re a business owner, a parent, an employee, or anything, what “sucks” in your life?
People don’t see the downs of being a business owner, or heck, even just the lows of normal life because it’s not what is posted and shared. I know this, I know this is my fault too. And sometimes, after the fact, I wish I would have shared more of those to help people realize it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. The main reason I don’t, well,
- I rarely take photos in those moments because I’m either too busy working and/or not thinking about photos.
- It’s not what lights my fire and thus I don’t care to share it. I want to share the moments in my life that light my soul on fire, or would help inspire others to live a full life.
But it’s important to be aware of this because if you find yourself on social media or even in normal life hearing about people’s adventures and you find yourself having a lot of FOMO, remember, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows and you have to ask yourself if you’d be willing to go through the bad parts of someone’s day to relive their highlights? Success is not just the “holding the trophy moment on top of the podium”. Success encompasses everything to get there, the highs and the lows. Doing everything it takes to be the lion.
So, do you really want to be a lion?
Okay, go grab our beloved dream book we always talk about and sit down for a few minutes. Think about some things you dream of being or doing. Some examples might be:
- having a successful business
- having a happy and well connected family
- running a marathon
- traveling to exotic locations
- remodeling your house
- anything else you dream of someday doing or being
Now, I want you to really think about what is making you strive after these things? Write it down in your dream book! Don’t think, just brain dump the feelings you’re having while you think about achieving these dreams you have in your mind.
Great! You’ve created a list of your “whys” for your dreams.
Now, let’s make a list of the sucky parts of that dream. Because for everything that is a great experience, there is typically some unpleasant parts too. Using the examples above here are some ideas of what those are:
- having a successful business
- see my ranting above about how annoying business life can be
- having a happy and well connected family
- kids are messy and loud and demanding
- it takes TIME to be well connected with your family members
- running a marathon
- the aches and pains
- the time it takes to train
- traveling to exotic locations
- bags lost
- flight delays
- getting sick
- remodeling your house
- your house is a construction zone and messy
- delays
This list isn’t to get you to focus on it, but to make you aware of what it takes to achieve what you want. It’s not to stop you from doing it, but to remind you what it will take, so when you’re in the midst of the sucky parts, you won’t be so surprised. Also, it might help you to not have so much FOMO when watching other people’s highlight reels, because you can remind yourself there was a lot of unpleasantness they had to go through to get there. And heck, maybe it will stop you from doing it, maybe you’ll realize you don’t have what it takes right now (or ever) to achieve that goal, and that’s okay too! Hopefully, by analyzing all of these lows you’ll then feel better when you see people’s high and won’t feel so upset that you aren’t doing that yourself because you know what it took for them to get there and realized, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
But, if you do see the greener grass and you want to go for it, you want to become that lion, then know, you can do it!
Becoming a Lion:
Once you take the time to analyze what you want to do, then why you want to do it, then the sucky parts of achieving it, and if you still find yourself saying, “hell yeah, let’s do this” then hooray!!! So, now what?? If it’s something new to you then you might have no idea how to achieve these dreams. I suggest starting with these simple steps:
- Start researching how to do it
- If you want to be fit/healthy, reach out to the people you see on social living this life, or go join a gym to learn from them.
- Heck, go use ChatGPT and just type in whatever it is you want to do and ask for a plan.
- OR just jump in!
- I recently listened to a podcast that talked about how we are all in this inspired state of life and not in an action state. We scroll social media, we save articles or pin recipes but we do nothing with it. I’m guilty of this!!! So TODAY, take action. Screw my recommendation above of researching. If you want to be fit, put your shoes on and go for a hike. Just start taking action now. You’ll stumble your way through this.
- Lastly, I will say though, set up a time-blocked amount every day to ensure you get the new activities in. Start making little (and big) changes today to get you to where you want to be.
There are so many more steps I could write here about how to go achieve becoming that lion, but the main thing is I just want you to think about what you want to be different in your life (if anything) and that you have the power and abilities to be that, but it will take work to get you there.
Lions Have Help:
- We know lions don’t hunt alone, they have a pack of lions to help them. So when you’re wanting to become the lion, remember to call in your pack. Some ideas of this:
- Leverage in business
- If you’re a business owner and you want to achieve more OR have more time to yourself then hire out some help. I will say this, hiring is challenging, time consuming, and a lot of frustration but if you hire the right person then it’s seriously like magic. (Thanks Danielle for making my life feel magical by being an amazing teammate).
- Sometimes though, you don’t have to go through the pains of hiring, you could pull in help from an independent contractor. Realtors can hire us, Elevate TC Services, to help them with their transactions and listings. Overnight they can be leveraged to have help with the paperwork, coordinating, and so much more.
- There are companies you can hire to come in for a brief period to overhaul your systems, from cleaning up your CRMS, to implementing operating procedures, and so much more.
- So what can you quickly leverage in your business to help you get through the “suck”?
- Leverage at home
- If you find yourself running around like crazy during summer and not able to keep up on the household chores, consider hiring someone to clean, cook, do yard work… even if it’s just part time.
- My sister has this amazing lady that goes grocery shopping for her every Monday and then cooks up all these premade delicious and healthy meals that last the entire week for her family of 4. Amazing!
- If you find yourself running around like crazy during summer and not able to keep up on the household chores, consider hiring someone to clean, cook, do yard work… even if it’s just part time.
- Leverage in business
- People Have Grace:
- I was wandering through the Natural History Museum in New York and got a call from one of my agents asking me to do an addendum. I carried my laptop around with me so if this happened I could do this but before I said yes, she said to me, “where are you, it’s loud.” I explained where I was but that I could still do the addendum and she nicely yelled at me and said to not be ridiculous, she could do it no problem and I should go focus on my family and my trip. I seriously almost cried. One simple statement from her helped change my perspective and realize people have grace and it’s okay to let people know what I need or when I’m struggling. We’re a team and we can help each other out. We can be a lion pack together.
- Let’s Shift the Mindset:
- Slowly I see schools going to Monday through Thursday schedules and it intrigues me. I’ve recently had conversations with people about the European culture and mindsets of long vacations in the summer and not being so “grind long hours” mindset. I’m curious if there is room in the American world to shift to similar mindsets? Would it be better for our mental health?
- I don’t have the answers, but I’m curious to know your opinions?
- Slowly I see schools going to Monday through Thursday schedules and it intrigues me. I’ve recently had conversations with people about the European culture and mindsets of long vacations in the summer and not being so “grind long hours” mindset. I’m curious if there is room in the American world to shift to similar mindsets? Would it be better for our mental health?
So, as you scroll social media, or hear about people’s summer fun, know that there were a lot of highs, but also quite a few lows. Which, that’s life, right? You get the highs, you get the lows, and you just try to roll with it and keep trucking towards more of those highs, and deal gracefully with the lows when they do come. In the end, I find myself still stoked and glad I suffered through any of those lows to enjoy the highlights of my life. I hope you are finding your own highlights too and that this newsletter is helping you figure out what some of those highlights could be and how to achieve them.
Thanks for reading along,
Kelli
**Favorite Livin’ Life Activity This Month: The Highs & Some of the Lows of these Whirlwind Trips**
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