Monday, February 4, 2013

Back to the Beginning...

I’ve heard it said that sometimes you have to go back to the beginning in order to find what you’re looking for….  Well, if that’s true, then I’m exactly where I need to be!
I originally launched this blog almost two and half years ago, and to be honest with you, I was thoroughly enjoying sharing bits and pieces of who I am, what my life is like and more….but then I started asking myself what the point was….I started telling myself that I needed to somehow be making some sort of contribution to the world other than jotting down all my thoughts in some obscure web based place.  So, I took this dream I had been carrying around FOREVER and I decided to make it into something real.  I created the Tell A Girlfriend Network.
I had this magical vision of a place where women would line up to shop and support small business owners….we would have monthly get-togethers where we could celebrate one another, introduce our businesses and design our own version of Utopia.  For a while, it felt like it was really happening!  The network took off at lightning speed, amazing female entrepreneurs were joining and life was really good…..until the day people started telling me that I needed to change my network, I needed to make it different.  “They” said it wasn’t main-stream enough…  WHAT? 
I’m not really sure what mainstream means, but that’s not the word that comes to mind when I am trying to describe myself or the vision I had for my network.  But, as I’m sure you can relate, when people start pointing out things that are wrong, we tend to forget what’s important to US, what OUR dream is, and suddenly we begin to morph what WE want into what the crowd thinks we SHOULD want.
Honestly, that was the beginning of me letting my beloved network start to drift away from me.  The more I became what people told me I should be, the more miserable I was….and so the story goes.
Then one day last November I woke up and realized that I was unhappy not because of my network, but because I had allowed someone who doesn’t even know me tell me who I was supposed to be.  That was the morning I said “screw it, I’m taking my network back to what I have always known it could be…..one part marketing, one part celebration, a pinch of inspiration, a splash of empowerment and a whole lot of fearlessly fabulous female owned businesses as far as the eye can see.
Today I am excited to be re-launching my network, expanding on my original vision and putting my personality back into the process!   It is a big day for me because I finally feel that while this evolution of myself and Tell A Girlfriend is nowhere near complete, at least I will always be able to say I did it my way!
The great lesson here is that we are all surrounded by people who would have us believing what their version of us should be.  They will tell us that OUR dreams are not the RIGHT dreams, or that we are doing IT wrong.  At the end of the day, feedback can be fabulous as long as we don’t allow it to creep in and change who we are. 
Inspiration Pie was always part of MY dream, and maybe you won’t have time to visit every day, but at least you’ll know that when you feel like it, you can pop over and say hello, soak up a little sunshine and take a breath for a moment.
I’ve been running around like a crazy person searching high and low for my bliss and the irony is that it was here under my nose all along! 
You deserve to live your OWN story.  There will always be nay-sayers, but at the end of the day, that little voice in your heart needs to be the one you pay the most attention to, and if you do, then I am certain that you own version of bliss might just be lurking right under your own nose!
Welcome to Inspiration Pie!  Many things have changed for me since I created this blog, but that’s all just part of the journey and I am THRILLED that you will be along for the next chapter!
Wishing you many blessing and your own bliss!!
Heather