Getting Hit in the Face Can Be a Good Thing – Guest Post

This guest post is from my friend, Michelle Wolverton.

You’ve freed yourself. You’ve built the platform, generated the fuel, checked and rechecked the systems and taken off into space. You’re discovering what you want and chasing after it with gusto. You’re feeling the good vibes of and working hard to attain a sense of accomplishment.

Here’s the thing. Escape velocity is a wonderful achievement. However, depending on how you handle the headiness of achievement, you need some ground support to make sure you keep your head on your shoulders.

Find a way to stay grounded. If you’ve just started on your own journey or even if you’ve been on your path for a while, you can probably think of people in your life or things that that keep you centered, give you a moment of peace or light up your world. Mine include martial arts, meditation, boxing and talking to my family and friends. And sometimes even a little World of Warcraft goes a long way.

Additionally, you need people willing to get in your face and tell you when you’re stepping over the line into something that’s unhealthy or if you start walking down the wrong path, paying attention to the wrong things. Family and close, trusted friends are good candidates. Not a gatekeeper but certainly someone who is willing to stand up to you when you’re absolutely wrong. Ideally that person is also someone who will see your point of view and give a little when they should. Someone you give permission to hit you in the face as hard as they can if necessary. When the shininess overtakes common sense, the last thing you want to do is get lost in space where the paths aren’t clear.

Sometimes we stray a little bit, we pick up bad habits, or we just make choices that aren’t good for us. If we have someone in our lives that is willing to put a foot down and say, this is a very bad idea and here’s why, we’re more likely to stay on a path that gives us the rewards we’re looking for eventually but at costs that are not too high to pay.

Michelle Wolverton describes herself as a “Geeky personal assistant learning to become more ninja warrior. Ms. Magepants, indie music lover, lead organizer of PodCamp Boston.” You can read more about Chel here.