Isn’t it fascinating to have “a ha” moments when you weren’t even looking?
So over the weekend I had the pleasure to speak on a panel, discussing entrepreneurship, at the YES Conference at Barnard College in New York City. The organization focuses on the empowerment of girls who are entrepreneurs or are aspiring entrepreneurs.
Our panel was a unique component of the conference where myself and other accomplished women discussed the “ins and outs” of entrepreneurship with the parents of the hopeful entrepreneurs. I absolutely loved hearing all the words of wisdom shared and the excitement of the parents.
After the panel was over, a parent of one of the girls comes up to me asking for advice in a particular area; of course I agreed to share as much information as I could. What happened next surprised me.
She proceeds to say something along the lines of, “I see all of you accomplished women on the panel and how you guys have it all together and I wish I could be like that.” Immediately, I told her not to believe the hype. We are all on our own journey and NO ONE is perfect. I couldn’t speak for the other panelists, but I told her that I was not where I ultimately want to be either, however, I understand that I am on my journey and so is she.
This got me to thinking.
How many of us look at other accomplished women and wish that we had what they have? How many of us look at all the women doing fantastic things on social media, hoping that we simply had a taste of their success?
I wanted to hug that woman at the conference and let her know of all the challenges I have overcome, prayed over and am still battling daily. We are often mislead to believe that no one else has it as hard as we do, or that someone else’s life is more desirable, or that someone else has it all together.
LIES!
Behind every accomplished woman that you see is one heck of a story. You do not know what she has had to triumph over to get where she is today and you also NEVER know what challenges someone is currently dealing with. In addition, you may be comparing your chapter 3 to someone else’s chapter 25.
We have to learn to accept our journey as our own and embrace all of it – the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. I am convinced that every last experience we go through and every challenge we face is placed in our lives to challenge, provoke, grow and perfect us into becoming who we need to be in order to do what we have been called to do.
Each one of us is dealt a hand but you have the power living on the inside of you to play the hand you were dealt so that you can win. Stop looking at other people’s hands and focus on the hand you were dealt.
I am here to tell you that you NEVER know what someone is really going through and if you did you may be glad that you do not have their life. I can admit that I have been that person and still have those moments where I am tempted to compare so it’s an ongoing process to change the way we think.
There are several women whom I have admired from afar and when I finally met these “empowered” women, I realized that many of them were wearing all sorts of masks and putting on a façade of empowerment – in actuality some of them were not as empowered as I thought.
This was a huge eye opener for me.
So I leave you with this: embrace your individual journey, stop comparing your beginning to someone else’s middle, you never know what someone else has had to go through or is still going through to get where they are, and what you may think is “successful” may be an intricately crafted pretense.
Take the time to live and embrace your legacy 🙂
XOXO,
Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy