The Importance of Adaptability as a Business Owner

Last month I mentioned I’m turning 74… At this age, I have a LOT of experiences to look back on. And I see that if I were making decisions about those events today, I would probably do things differently. Not because I regret what I did, because every step taught me something. But because I see things more clearly now, from a perspective that I couldn’t have in my 20s, 30s, and up through the years. I’ve learned how important it is to change my perspective as often as I can and encourage my skills in adaptability.

I think the most important clarity I have today is how to debunk most of the myths I was caught up in from early childhood. Amazing how fairy tales and social belief systems affect us, so much so that they color our behavior without us seeing it.

Here are some debunked myths and their repercussions:

• I looked up to my father. So I looked up to men! I didn’t have brothers, so I didn’t grow up watching them be silly and do stupid things. I thought most boys and men deserved some level of appreciation just for being men.
•  From that myth came my unconscious acceptance of men as authority figures, who were supposed to know more and therefore could make good decisions and be leaders.
• From those myths came my feelings of shame and remorse when I “stepped out of line” somehow and didn’t behave in a way that pleased men.
• And because I wasn’t good at “staying in line” I carried a secret fear that I might not ever “measure up” to societal standards.
• That fear kept me from standing up for myself (and sometimes others) when I might have in certain situations, especially when I felt an imbalance of power.

And that circles back to adaptability because the blessing of those myths are that I learned to be adaptable, work around those obstacles and get where I wanted to go.

This is one of the many reasons why I started the Great Girls Network. In my last third of life, I fervently hope to help women NOT be caught up in myths, get past their fears and stand up for themselves and be who they want to be, doing what they want to do.

Part of the reason we make up these myths is that our society tells us to. The patriarchal, white supremacist view we grew up in can be debilitating for anyone who isn’t a white man. To move forward, we must have gratitude for the challenges and how we learned to be adaptable in spite of them. But being grateful doesn’t mean we stop living and doing what it takes to keep breaking those myths and accelerating our growth.

And the sooner we break the myths, we can use that adaptability to manage our ever-changing world and create the lives we want to live.

No, we don’t control the pandemic, wars, weather, or the government. But we DO control what we think and how we manage things.

So ask yourself: what myths are you still caught up in? And start breaking them.

• The most powerful thing we can do is believe in ourselves.
• When we catch ourselves reacting, we can look inside and figure out what we’re afraid of — and change that fear into determination.
•  Determination comes from deciding that we matter, that we CAN make a difference and that we CAN have what we want!
•  That helps us be role models for each other and encourage us to be strong for ourselves and from that inner strength, live in a way that serves others as well.

Remember, LIFE is an inside job! Always you can always harness your adaptability to break yourself free from anything holding you back.

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