Summer had ended and everything in the flower garden was dying back. I could feel the slight change in the air that told me fall was coming.
Little did I know what else was coming…the loss of my job after two and a half years. I had hoped if I continued to supplement my dwindling hours with my PTO hours I could survive until things were ‘normal‘ again. But that wasn’t going to be the case. The non-profit I was working for decided to close down the two offices I worked for because of covid. Via email, each of us found out we would soon be out of a job, and I would yet again be boxing up and closing another office.
Like so many other days, months, and years since the ‘great recession’, I was once again staring out my kitchen window wondering if I would still be here in my home this time next year. The thought of looking for another j-o-b at 73 years old was sickening to me! As many times as I reinvented myself, working in six different industries since the great recession, it was still happening. Though I didn’t have much, I thought my 401K funds would allow me to work a little less in my retirement years, but, it wasn’t meant to be. I needed to withdraw the money to live off of during those dark recession days and months as our country tried to recover. I am so grateful I had those funds! I was able to keep my home and my head above water, unlike so many others.
Long gone are the days of having a ‘secure’ job with good pay, great benefits, with vacation pay and retirement. The world is changing, things are moving faster and faster, and industries aren’t keeping up. As I stood in front of that kitchen window like so many times before, looking out at my dying flower garden, I couldn't help but think about how my life and how the world of work has changed over the past 58 years I've been working and reality hit! What will I do now?
I knew in my heart I was searching for something else, I just didn’t know what. Hopefully, something I could do from home. I looked into several types of businesses but nothing felt right, they were all one size fits all. That just doesn’t work for me. I’ve always been a kind of unicorn…maybe because I’m a lefty…a thinking out of the box type of gal with a voracious, unquenchable appetite for learning. Though I have bookcases filled with business related books, I have just as many on brain science and human performance, a topic I just love!
If people just knew the power of their brain, and believed they had greatness within them, what a different world it would be! I guess that’s why I did a few local access TV shows, I wanted to educate and inspire viewers! I called the shows Extreme Empowerment with the Queen of Extreme Surgeon…opening hearts and minds to new possibilities! To make it fun, I wore a white lab coat with that name embroidered on it, and had a hot pink stethoscope around my neck. Perhaps those shows were a sign of what was to come.
I’m not sure how it happened, though I have my own theory, that it was God that put something in my feed about someone named Marisa Murgatroyd whom I’d never heard of before, but what she was teaching sounded intriguing so I signed up to learn more. The more I heard about EPM the more I felt it was for me. I could learn at my own pace, do something that interested me and would allow me to use my creativity and strengths to make a difference in the lives of others, while doing it from home!
Even though I was out of a job, thank God I did have good credit which allowed me to finance the program in a way that I wouldn’t be charged interest and could spread the payments over 12 months. And as they say, “The rest is history”.
Though I haven’t gotten to mission accomplished, I LEARNED SO MUCH and have no regrets! I will continue chatterboxing, and I’m trying some old school methods to get people to fill out my survey and give me feedback so I can give them what they want. I do believe it will be easier when we have covid behind us and we can once again talk to people face to face. I am NOT giving up and BELIEVE I WILL FIND MY TRIBE, and when I do I WILL BE UNSTOPPABLE and make the difference I want to make…all because I found EMP so thank you for everything!