Copyright 2006 Melissa Galt
Getting Launched and Letting Go
In the meantime, I was launching my own design practice six months earlier than planned. I had to put some pieces inherited from Mother up for auction to gain some working capital and pay down debt. I like to think of it as she was there to help, but it was tough because they were pieces I had grown up with.
I had never worked with an independent designer, so I was truly winging it. I made a lot of blunders, yet knowing I was pursuing my passion made it all possible. It was scary without a client for three months, so I stayed in catering for a year and a half. My classes were popular and soon I was seeing business growing. Referrals didn’t really kick in until the eighteenth month mark, not unusual, but it seemed forever. In the meantime, I focused on abundance, on prosperity, and fought back any doubts.
The Lesson: It is our doubts that betray us, and since what we think about expands, it is critical to focus exclusively (though not blindly) on positive results and achievements and let go the what ifs.
Time to Think
In 1999 I took five weeks off for a trip to Australia and New Zealand. It was during this trip that I reached some true milestones. I had unknowingly battled long-term depression since my early twenties, unknowingly since it was undiagnosed, and I just assumed that the emotional rollercoaster I was on was part of who I was. It was tough, the high highs, the rock-bottom, black lows and never predictable.
No, I didn’t qualify as bipolar; that would have been too easy. And besides, it was the age when depression was “cool.” Pop a pill everyone said. I wasn’t into medication aside from the occasional aspirin and vitamin C to ward off a hangover (I unsquared after college).
I thought that maybe this disorder ran in the family, knowing that my mother had been a big proponent of counseling and remembering the saying about great-grandfather, that genius is always next to madness. But the Australia trip was solo, and for the first time in my life I felt at home when I stepped off the plane in Sydney. I can only guess it was some unique imprinting from when I was a one-year-old and taken there to live for a year on my parents’ ranch, an indelible impression.
The Lesson: When you find your roots and a real sense of home, you experience a sense of security that is previously unknown. Perhaps you are lucky enough never to have lost it, but if you have, it is still to be found.
Fearless Results
Anyway, it seemed a big adventure and I wanted to do it all. From climbing the Sydney harbor bridge to bungee jumping and tandem hang-gliding in Queenstown, New Zealand. I suddenly realized I had no fear. I wasn’t careless or carefree, but I had been to such dark places emotionally and mentally, that I realized that each and every day is a choice for each of us.
Few like to admit that, and most immediately assume I am talking life or death. Well, I could be, but consider that so many people go through this life only partially alive; I had, and I finally realized it and made the decision to live fully going forward. And since that was the case, I was going to seize it, live it, and experience it to its fullest. Having always been very unathletic and convinced that I couldn’t do anything of that nature, this was a huge step.
Now, whenever I feel even slightly stuck, or my life seems to have stalled, I will do something new whether it is parasailing, sky diving, or attending an event where I know no one (that can be truly frightening, if you let it).
The Lesson: Life is an adventure to be lived, not a problem to be solved.
Success
I returned with new vision, new ideas, and new energy. And by 2000, after six years in my own practice, I had a full assistant on board and two other part-timers. The company was slated to break $1 million in sales and I was opening a retail venture the following year.
But, yikes, I had forgotten one of my previous lessons learned. I hated retail! I hated staying in one place all day long, relying on others to come to me for business rather than going to them. I loved setting up the storefront, the renovation, the design, buying goods for sale, inventorying and all. It was much like the best parts of my first career. But the old day-to-day operations were the same -- mundane, tedious, and not for me. Of course, opening the month of September 2001 definitely put a damper on things as well. I stuck it out for two years, but found it just wasn’t working.
I was the first kid on the block of a restored strip center in what should have been a great location but without like-minded vendors nearby and traffic really stopping, sales were weak at best. I pioneered and that can get very expensive! The good part is that I have acquired two very valuable and wonderful clients from that experience.
The Lesson: Each new experience allows us a new learning opportunity. There is no such thing as failure, just unrealized success or lessons not yet learned and therefore repeated. I learned a lot!
Regrouping
I opted to store my unsold inventory, placing it as projects arose, and return to focus solely on design services and teaching. I had even created a private certification program for decorators at my shop and moved that back to my office location.
It was a move that ultimately saved my business. I had to cut staff to bare bones and return to a revolving door of free interns every ninety days. Frustrating, but affordable. And while it has taken the last four years, we are back solidly and I am now reinventing myself again.
Once I made the decision in Australia that fear is a choice, I simply don’t choose it. Rejecting fear opened up unlimited potential and achievement for me. Most of us lose our dreams because we lose the possibility of them. I will never lose that again, because I have learned that I can redirect, refocus, and reinvent as much and as often as I need to.
I know that I have all the skills and talent needed to make my dreams a reality; I just have to persist and persevere. I want to give back, and give forward, and give today, and know that the giving I have already done is coming back to me in great abundance.
The Lesson: It is by giving of ourselves that we truly realize our worth and create a legacy for ourselves and for others.
Giving Back
I am now on a mission to share my experiences and my vision with others: to help them realize their dreams, and achieve their goals, and overcome the obstacles along the way. Too many we know stay stuck, complaining and waiting for some outside force to change what has to happen from within. It is truly disheartening to imagine how many achieve so little and wish for so much. Without purpose and passion, life is merely an existence and time filler.
The Lesson: We have this journey but once; make it count and make it yours.
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Jumat, 30 Juli 2010
Kamis, 29 Juli 2010
Creating a Life Worth Living, Part 2
Copyright 2006 Melissa Galt
The Real World
This vision was short lived. I moved home and after two weeks of working a retail, full-time job, I came home and declared I wanted to go to college. I found I wasn’t quite ready for the realities of a real job! Of course, I was paying rent, as the deal Mother made was that, if we moved home after college, it was no free ride. And college was a partial gift of my grandparents; the rest was banquet waitressing. I finished out the year and a half working but did apply to colleges. My heart was set on returning to the West Coast, where I was born and raised.
While I was in boarding school, Mother had remarried and moved to Connecticut. I applied and got into a string of schools from UC Santa Barbara to UC Denver. She suggested Cornell University but I knew I wouldn’t get in. I had only a 3.3 average and didn’t figure that was Ivy League material. She urged and I acquiesced. Then, lo and behold, I got in. Guess I didn’t know it all after all! They thought I was “well adjusted” (I guess a year in the real world had some benefits). That presented a problem; I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to let Mother down.
I knew it was a great educational opportunity, so I followed her dream (she had not been to college) and back-burnered my own. Sometimes it is necessary to examine the big picture and what the benefits will be when the choice doesn’t seem ideal.
The Lesson: Life is about choices, and each of us is the reflection of the choices we have made to date. We can remain as we have chosen or make new choices and change our direction and our reality.
Not the Good Old Days
I can safely say that it was a fairly miserable four years. I wanted to transfer so many times, I lost count. But I stuck it out since neither of my sisters was particularly scholastically inclined, and I didn’t want to disappoint. I wanted to live up to expectation, even if it wasn’t my own expectation. I did get a great education and always get a kick when someone looks at me wide-eyed with genuine surprise to think that I went to an Ivy League school.
I guess I am supposed to be arrogant or grand or some other something that I am clearly not. More often, I am described as down-to-earth and accessible, and willing to tell all.
The Lesson: Where we are from does not determine who we are, or where we are going. That is up to us.
As Expected
Having made it through the four years, I embarked, predictably, into a career in hospitality purchasing. Essentially, if you ate it, drank it, wrote with it, or slept on it, I bought it. For six years, I moved every eight months to a new company, a new property, a new city, and a new state. With little time for socializing, I made few friends, and fewer connections. But in each place I designed my home as if I’d be there forever.
It was my roots and my foundation. It ensured that I had a haven at the end of the day and a place to escape the daily grind. The most creative I was able to get at work was designing the storerooms and freezers. My staff would all groan when I would don a puffy thermal freezer suit and announce it was time to organize! I loved the first three months of every position, cleaning up the place, establishing systems and controls, and then I got bored. Yeah, probably attention deficit disorder. I was a big-picture thinker and found the day-to-day details tedious and boring.
The Lesson: Pay attention to the parts you enjoy and those you don’t. Consider how you can make the parts you enjoy the greater share of what you do. Reinvent yourself as needed.
Finding the Passion
I finally hit a wall, about five years after my mother passed away. She had left a huge hole in my life, dying suddenly when I was 24. I realized at age 30 that while I was making good money and one of the few women in my career path, I was miserable every day. I dreaded going in to work and couldn’t leave fast enough.
It was time for a change. I knew that my mother and great-grandfather and even my godmother had all lived their passions, and that life was too short not to go in the direction of my dreams. So I quit. I’d never quit a job before, and it was an amazing relief. I took three months off to think about my next step, and I decided to return to school for interior design in Birmingham, Alabama where I had worked previously. I already had a four-year degree and wanted the shortest, most direct route to my new career. I knew Birmingham had a low cost of living that would enable me to focus on school for six months before needing to combine that with a full-time job. I did it, and it worked!
The Lesson: Life is about risk, both known (calculated) and unknown. If we knew it all, we would have no opportunities for growth and surprise. Change your definition of risk to opportunity.
Finding the Place
So after cramming a three-year program into two years, I discovered that with all the travel Mother had shared with us and the museums we had been dragged to (kicking and screaming), I was light-years ahead of most of my peers and even a few instructors.
Being different was finally paying off. And I was ahead in that I had managed to secure a plum position with a local architecture and design firm that launched me in design. I followed that with a stint managing a local textile warehouse and then was ready for a change in scenery. I wanted to pursue life in the Windy City; I wanted to get out of the South and experience architectural history and mastery, the Art Institute, and much more.
While I landed two opportunities on a commission basis, I lacked the essential confidence to take either, and the position I most desired never materialized. So I reset my sights closer to home and explored Atlanta.
The Lesson: Be flexible in the details; the big picture is never set in stone.
The Wild Blue Yonder, Without a Net
Atlanta proved to be a fortuitous decision in 1992. I started off working with a major furniture retailer in its design department. Eighteen months later I found myself going head-to-head with my manager over vacation pay. She said I didn’t have it coming, and I claimed I did. I walked. The check showed up two weeks later. I was right, but I was also unemployed without a client in the world. I had managed to rack up some $70K in credit card debt since my mother had passed, foolishly trying to fill the gaping hole I felt with her absence. I had rent and a car payment to boot.
Panic seemed a good option, but there was just no time. I immediately started work with a catering company, supervising their kitchen event operations on weekends. Often it meant running the hot and steamy dish machine, but it was money. I also pitched Evening at Emory and Oglethorpe University about creating and teaching classes on interior decorating for their adult education program. They both picked me up and I taught as many as five different classes during a decade. Easy it wasn’t, but it was worth it.
The Lesson: Do what you have to do, to get to doing what you want to do.
The Real World
This vision was short lived. I moved home and after two weeks of working a retail, full-time job, I came home and declared I wanted to go to college. I found I wasn’t quite ready for the realities of a real job! Of course, I was paying rent, as the deal Mother made was that, if we moved home after college, it was no free ride. And college was a partial gift of my grandparents; the rest was banquet waitressing. I finished out the year and a half working but did apply to colleges. My heart was set on returning to the West Coast, where I was born and raised.
While I was in boarding school, Mother had remarried and moved to Connecticut. I applied and got into a string of schools from UC Santa Barbara to UC Denver. She suggested Cornell University but I knew I wouldn’t get in. I had only a 3.3 average and didn’t figure that was Ivy League material. She urged and I acquiesced. Then, lo and behold, I got in. Guess I didn’t know it all after all! They thought I was “well adjusted” (I guess a year in the real world had some benefits). That presented a problem; I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to let Mother down.
I knew it was a great educational opportunity, so I followed her dream (she had not been to college) and back-burnered my own. Sometimes it is necessary to examine the big picture and what the benefits will be when the choice doesn’t seem ideal.
The Lesson: Life is about choices, and each of us is the reflection of the choices we have made to date. We can remain as we have chosen or make new choices and change our direction and our reality.
Not the Good Old Days
I can safely say that it was a fairly miserable four years. I wanted to transfer so many times, I lost count. But I stuck it out since neither of my sisters was particularly scholastically inclined, and I didn’t want to disappoint. I wanted to live up to expectation, even if it wasn’t my own expectation. I did get a great education and always get a kick when someone looks at me wide-eyed with genuine surprise to think that I went to an Ivy League school.
I guess I am supposed to be arrogant or grand or some other something that I am clearly not. More often, I am described as down-to-earth and accessible, and willing to tell all.
The Lesson: Where we are from does not determine who we are, or where we are going. That is up to us.
As Expected
Having made it through the four years, I embarked, predictably, into a career in hospitality purchasing. Essentially, if you ate it, drank it, wrote with it, or slept on it, I bought it. For six years, I moved every eight months to a new company, a new property, a new city, and a new state. With little time for socializing, I made few friends, and fewer connections. But in each place I designed my home as if I’d be there forever.
It was my roots and my foundation. It ensured that I had a haven at the end of the day and a place to escape the daily grind. The most creative I was able to get at work was designing the storerooms and freezers. My staff would all groan when I would don a puffy thermal freezer suit and announce it was time to organize! I loved the first three months of every position, cleaning up the place, establishing systems and controls, and then I got bored. Yeah, probably attention deficit disorder. I was a big-picture thinker and found the day-to-day details tedious and boring.
The Lesson: Pay attention to the parts you enjoy and those you don’t. Consider how you can make the parts you enjoy the greater share of what you do. Reinvent yourself as needed.
Finding the Passion
I finally hit a wall, about five years after my mother passed away. She had left a huge hole in my life, dying suddenly when I was 24. I realized at age 30 that while I was making good money and one of the few women in my career path, I was miserable every day. I dreaded going in to work and couldn’t leave fast enough.
It was time for a change. I knew that my mother and great-grandfather and even my godmother had all lived their passions, and that life was too short not to go in the direction of my dreams. So I quit. I’d never quit a job before, and it was an amazing relief. I took three months off to think about my next step, and I decided to return to school for interior design in Birmingham, Alabama where I had worked previously. I already had a four-year degree and wanted the shortest, most direct route to my new career. I knew Birmingham had a low cost of living that would enable me to focus on school for six months before needing to combine that with a full-time job. I did it, and it worked!
The Lesson: Life is about risk, both known (calculated) and unknown. If we knew it all, we would have no opportunities for growth and surprise. Change your definition of risk to opportunity.
Finding the Place
So after cramming a three-year program into two years, I discovered that with all the travel Mother had shared with us and the museums we had been dragged to (kicking and screaming), I was light-years ahead of most of my peers and even a few instructors.
Being different was finally paying off. And I was ahead in that I had managed to secure a plum position with a local architecture and design firm that launched me in design. I followed that with a stint managing a local textile warehouse and then was ready for a change in scenery. I wanted to pursue life in the Windy City; I wanted to get out of the South and experience architectural history and mastery, the Art Institute, and much more.
While I landed two opportunities on a commission basis, I lacked the essential confidence to take either, and the position I most desired never materialized. So I reset my sights closer to home and explored Atlanta.
The Lesson: Be flexible in the details; the big picture is never set in stone.
The Wild Blue Yonder, Without a Net
Atlanta proved to be a fortuitous decision in 1992. I started off working with a major furniture retailer in its design department. Eighteen months later I found myself going head-to-head with my manager over vacation pay. She said I didn’t have it coming, and I claimed I did. I walked. The check showed up two weeks later. I was right, but I was also unemployed without a client in the world. I had managed to rack up some $70K in credit card debt since my mother had passed, foolishly trying to fill the gaping hole I felt with her absence. I had rent and a car payment to boot.
Panic seemed a good option, but there was just no time. I immediately started work with a catering company, supervising their kitchen event operations on weekends. Often it meant running the hot and steamy dish machine, but it was money. I also pitched Evening at Emory and Oglethorpe University about creating and teaching classes on interior decorating for their adult education program. They both picked me up and I taught as many as five different classes during a decade. Easy it wasn’t, but it was worth it.
The Lesson: Do what you have to do, to get to doing what you want to do.
Rabu, 28 Juli 2010
Creating a Life Worth Living, Part 1
Copyright 2006 Melissa Galt
It should have been easy. Shoulda, woulda, coulda -- those words had been the essence of my life and so many other people’s lives, too. Now I’ve learned that life really isn’t about those words at all, and it isn’t about easy. Instead, each of our lives is about will and won’t and do and don’t, and the rewards that come from taking charge of our lives.
Our lives are up to us, as individuals. We are the ones in charge, whether we take that responsibility or not. So the question is, are we going to live a life by accident, a life by default, or will we have a plan, a path, a purpose? Will we end up where we want to be by intent or nowhere by accident? Will we blame others and external forces for the place we are in, or will we take charge and define by choice who we are, where we are going, and what we are doing? The choice belongs to each of us.
While my life interiors have often been a mishmash of uncoordinated elements, I have finally found my style and created a life of comfort and achievement. So let me tell you how it all began and how you can find your own passion and purpose.
The Lesson: If you aren’t living your dreams, then you are impersonating someone else’s!
Getting There
Overall, it wasn’t a bad upbringing. I’m not complaining. It had tough moments, Mom was gone a lot, and Dad wasn’t around much at all. They divorced when I was about six years old. But we didn’t lack for caregivers. I acquired an early sense of independence and eagerly took on responsibility.
My sister and I, as is typical of many close siblings, fought often. In fact, Mother nicknamed us Poke and Pinch, particularly for those long car rides when she was up front and we were in back acting up. But what I didn’t know and what I didn’t understand was that most of what I was becoming was up to me. I assumed, as so many of us do, that it was up to my parents, or up to my teachers, or up to someone, anyone else. I didn’t realize how much of it was actually in my control.
Therefore, for a long time I thought my life was about external forces and didn’t realize it was instead about my internal dynamics. I was at the “life’s not fair” stage and so nothing was my fault, I wasn’t in charge. What a bunch of baloney!
The Lesson: Life is about going confidently in the direction of your dreams, not anyone else’s. This is not a vicarious experience, but a visceral one.
The Legacy
What is funny about that belief is that all the while I knew that my mother had made her career decision early on. At age seven, if you believe her telling of the story, she had already made up her mind on a career, and then at age eleven she asked her parents to allow her to go to acting school. They agreed as long as she kept her grades up. Her grades soared because she was suddenly on purpose, on fire, and following her passion. Few of us know that early what we want or what will set us on fire.
She was a terrific actress, no less an achiever than my great-grandfather on the same side of the family who was a world-renowned architect. He also knew at a very early age that he would pursue architecture. It was about following their dream, their vision, their talents and their creativity.
The Lesson: It was about giving of themselves to the world and sharing their unique vision.
Temporary Detours
They both endured many obstacles, challenges, and crises but persevered and few knew of those setbacks. They quietly took them in stride. They didn’t complain or moan or lose sight of their goals; they just considered the setbacks temporary detours, another chance for a new experience, as it were. How many of us would weather the storms of life and career crisis better if we reframed them as temporary detours? I remember after I got into college, my mother sharing with me that she had been on welfare at one point and we never knew it. She had been without work for over a year and unemployment had run out, and welfare was next. We never knew it. She was doing everything in her power to find work; she was busy. She never let on, and we were in public school at the time and walked to school, so beyond belt-tightening on meals and no summer camp our lives were protected.
The Lesson: It is in our perception and our processing what our reality is. When we change these, we change our world.
Culture Shock Without Leaving the Country
Being a very academic adolescent, bent on making straight A’s and not in the “in” crowd, college seemed a time-wasting choice to me. I looked at it as four years of partying, and I wasn’t a partier. I was a super square. So it made sense to me to pursue the best high school education I could get, and that choice meant boarding school. Being away from home didn’t concern me at all; I was largely independent anyway. What I didn’t bank on was the cultural shock of going from the West Coast to the East Coast. You would have thought I was in a foreign country. I didn’t wear the same clothes, speak the same language, or even understand the teen lifestyle West to East. I didn’t fit in; I didn’t come close.
Needless to say, it was a very painful experience, made more so by being labeled “someone’s daughter” instead of being allowed to be myself. I got through it, even made it with honors, and, ironically, was the only one in the class not interested in college (this was a college prep school). I had my sites set on working immediately and getting my life off the ground.
The Lesson: Timing is everything, and when we are ready opportunities will appear, sometimes we have to allow the time to be ready.
It should have been easy. Shoulda, woulda, coulda -- those words had been the essence of my life and so many other people’s lives, too. Now I’ve learned that life really isn’t about those words at all, and it isn’t about easy. Instead, each of our lives is about will and won’t and do and don’t, and the rewards that come from taking charge of our lives.
Our lives are up to us, as individuals. We are the ones in charge, whether we take that responsibility or not. So the question is, are we going to live a life by accident, a life by default, or will we have a plan, a path, a purpose? Will we end up where we want to be by intent or nowhere by accident? Will we blame others and external forces for the place we are in, or will we take charge and define by choice who we are, where we are going, and what we are doing? The choice belongs to each of us.
While my life interiors have often been a mishmash of uncoordinated elements, I have finally found my style and created a life of comfort and achievement. So let me tell you how it all began and how you can find your own passion and purpose.
The Lesson: If you aren’t living your dreams, then you are impersonating someone else’s!
Getting There
Overall, it wasn’t a bad upbringing. I’m not complaining. It had tough moments, Mom was gone a lot, and Dad wasn’t around much at all. They divorced when I was about six years old. But we didn’t lack for caregivers. I acquired an early sense of independence and eagerly took on responsibility.
My sister and I, as is typical of many close siblings, fought often. In fact, Mother nicknamed us Poke and Pinch, particularly for those long car rides when she was up front and we were in back acting up. But what I didn’t know and what I didn’t understand was that most of what I was becoming was up to me. I assumed, as so many of us do, that it was up to my parents, or up to my teachers, or up to someone, anyone else. I didn’t realize how much of it was actually in my control.
Therefore, for a long time I thought my life was about external forces and didn’t realize it was instead about my internal dynamics. I was at the “life’s not fair” stage and so nothing was my fault, I wasn’t in charge. What a bunch of baloney!
The Lesson: Life is about going confidently in the direction of your dreams, not anyone else’s. This is not a vicarious experience, but a visceral one.
The Legacy
What is funny about that belief is that all the while I knew that my mother had made her career decision early on. At age seven, if you believe her telling of the story, she had already made up her mind on a career, and then at age eleven she asked her parents to allow her to go to acting school. They agreed as long as she kept her grades up. Her grades soared because she was suddenly on purpose, on fire, and following her passion. Few of us know that early what we want or what will set us on fire.
She was a terrific actress, no less an achiever than my great-grandfather on the same side of the family who was a world-renowned architect. He also knew at a very early age that he would pursue architecture. It was about following their dream, their vision, their talents and their creativity.
The Lesson: It was about giving of themselves to the world and sharing their unique vision.
Temporary Detours
They both endured many obstacles, challenges, and crises but persevered and few knew of those setbacks. They quietly took them in stride. They didn’t complain or moan or lose sight of their goals; they just considered the setbacks temporary detours, another chance for a new experience, as it were. How many of us would weather the storms of life and career crisis better if we reframed them as temporary detours? I remember after I got into college, my mother sharing with me that she had been on welfare at one point and we never knew it. She had been without work for over a year and unemployment had run out, and welfare was next. We never knew it. She was doing everything in her power to find work; she was busy. She never let on, and we were in public school at the time and walked to school, so beyond belt-tightening on meals and no summer camp our lives were protected.
The Lesson: It is in our perception and our processing what our reality is. When we change these, we change our world.
Culture Shock Without Leaving the Country
Being a very academic adolescent, bent on making straight A’s and not in the “in” crowd, college seemed a time-wasting choice to me. I looked at it as four years of partying, and I wasn’t a partier. I was a super square. So it made sense to me to pursue the best high school education I could get, and that choice meant boarding school. Being away from home didn’t concern me at all; I was largely independent anyway. What I didn’t bank on was the cultural shock of going from the West Coast to the East Coast. You would have thought I was in a foreign country. I didn’t wear the same clothes, speak the same language, or even understand the teen lifestyle West to East. I didn’t fit in; I didn’t come close.
Needless to say, it was a very painful experience, made more so by being labeled “someone’s daughter” instead of being allowed to be myself. I got through it, even made it with honors, and, ironically, was the only one in the class not interested in college (this was a college prep school). I had my sites set on working immediately and getting my life off the ground.
The Lesson: Timing is everything, and when we are ready opportunities will appear, sometimes we have to allow the time to be ready.
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