This morning I sat down with a woman I very much admire. She has had her own practice for a few years, but wants to grow and establish a name and a brand of herself within the 'Eastern medicine meets Western' life arena. 

This woman is AMAZING. She single handedly has changed my life, and I have sent many a friend and colleague in her direction, and we collectively sing her praises! She also happens to be exceedingly beautiful, elegant and have this extremely present, ethereal grace about her. She has a kindness and knowing intensity where there are days I feel like she can see right inside my mind and knows exactly what my naughty soul is up to. Then she’ll surprise you with an anecdote of ridiculous behavior and a mischievous cackle along with it. She’s an angel, but by no means a saint! 

Everyone I have sent to her is a little smitten. She is just that person. 

Anyway. She’s expanding, writing a book, starting a blog and needing to build her brand and digital presence - which puts her uncomfortably in the no-man’s space of “square one”. We had gotten talking about her overwhelm at the task a few weeks before, and I offered to meet up with her and just show her a few tricks and tips and resources that will really help her in this phase. By the time we met today she had met with another friend who does exactly that, and employed her for a branding package which entails curating a logo, establishing an overall visual mode of operation, as well as setting up the website, instagram and mail chimp. I was really delighted that she had taken this plunge (and it is a plunge as those types of services are costly) and will have this initial part of set up accelerated, and by someone so thorough and experienced. But as I was skimming over the outlined execution plan, I was at first relieved that it both tallied with much of the advice and suggestions I had made, but as I said “Oh great, she also agrees squarespace is right for you, thats good because the back end in that is so easy and you will always be able to go in and adjust and add content yourself”, I looked at her and saw this rabbit-in-the-headlamps look of bewildered suspension, and I realized it was a look I knew all too well, all too personally, from a time not so long ago…

The rest of our conversation carried on much the same, and I was forced to recognized that everything I was saying had been said to me a few years back, and might as well have been spoken in Mandarin. Truly. And yet there I was, preaching in Mandarin. 

"And yet there I was, preaching in Mandarin." 

Not for the first time (but lets face it, it often takes me several times) I was aware of all that I have learned, overcome, and accomplished in the last two years. 

I had a website professionally built, and was so crippled by not being able to navigate the back end, that I built an entire other one by myself. I am about to refresh it all over again. I then added a few pages to a friends website, pulled in video content and made the pages private for a select audience. Not hard at all if you know how, but absolutely foreign if you don’t. I then built a website for another friend as a Christmas gift, and surprised myself. Who am I? 

I am passing on tips and giving demos on things that were absolutely foreign to me only a year ago… 

I’m bragging, I know, I am totally aware, but what I am really trying to communicate is that honestly, if I can do it, absolutely anyone can. My driving factor? I didn't have thousands spare to pay someone to do it all for me. I HAD to learn it. In part I might wish I had…. but in reality, in six weeks time all of this is going to be handed over to my amazing friend to take over, and she is going to feel completely overwhelmed and under-equipped, because she is going to feel like someone superior and all knowing created it, and she is ‘untrained’. But that’s just it, we are all untrained until life shoves us in to camp, as she is about to be!

"But that’s just it, we are all untrained until life shoves us in to camp, as she is about to be!"

There is endless and beautiful potential in these areas where you don’t get a leg up, or don’t have the resources to outsource (YET), and it is that in this space, you will approach, educate, hustle and plough though things you never thought you could, nor had any interest in. You will absorb so much from being on your knees in the mud, that by the time you crawl out the other side, you will be that very person you sat and heard speak a year or two ago, not having a clue what they were saying, and you will look back and acknowledge that sure it was hard…. but not that hard. And you are now in a place to reach out to others and say “can I help”, and that my loves, is a freakin badge of honor!! 

Today I just graduated in something I didn’t even know I was in school for! 

As ALWAYS I would love to hear you stories where you overcame something you never thought you would, simply because you had to! Please share! I love to hear from you who are on the ground “just doing it” every day!! 

- Jayne Moore xx