The Mondayest Monday ever and it's only 8am...

Oh friends, it is. It's most definitely a Monday.
I'm not usually one to shy away from a Monday. I actually like them quite a bit. I love new beginnings, new chances to get done what I couldn't last week. I get the house back in order on Mondays, catch up on my role as a leader on Mondays.. it's always a fresh start.
But not today.
Today, it is the Mondayest Monday ever and it's only 8 am.

In our house, we prep for the next day, the night before. Since yesterday was a Sunday, I encouraged my girls early in the afternoon to get their clothes set out, gym bags together & asked (again) if homework was done. 30 minutes before bedtime, I double checked just to be sure everything was done. Assurance is what I got in return. Everything was ready for Monday.

Except it wasn't.

One daughter, K, who did have her things together, had (what I like to call) "dragon hiney" today. Slow as molasses & kept waiting for others to be out of her way before she did the next thing she needed to take care of. For instance, sister was in the bathroom, she needed to use it, so she waited on her bed...instead of using the second bathroom or putting her bags in the car etc. She could have been getting further ahead if she had just done something else while waiting instead of sitting stagnant.

My second daughter, A, put on her clothes in a timely manner (although she is wearing leggings and winter boots on possibly the hottest day of August, but whatever), but then as we were minutes from walking out the door, told me she needed help with her homework.

Ya'll. I can't even.
But, in an effort to keep things moving, I calmly try and help her figure it out (quickly). I heard the words, "I don't know!" 500 times in that 3 minutes and a bonus "I shouldn't even be in 5th grade! I don't even know how to spell biscuits right!" Things were beginning to go downhill. My patience about to snowball with it.
I calmly helper her finish her paper, got it in her bag, ushered her to the car and reminded K that we needed to leave NOW.

Head to the garage where A starts losing her ever loving marbles because she can't find her gym bag.
Friends I can't even find the appropriate emoji to cleverly place here. K has to be to the ball field in 3 minutes, she's not even in the car and now we have a missing gym bag??? That should have been prepped YESTERDAY! I. can't. even.

I send A back inside with her dad to find her bag while I take K to the field (who was 3 minutes late), come back to get A (who never found her bag) and get her to school. On the way, A lamented about how she would get in trouble for not having her bag for PE as tears dripped down her face. What I've left out here is how I totally lost my cool, yelled & reiterated my HUGE disappointment in how this supposedly "prepared morning" was going.

Again, Mondayest Monday.

So what does this have to do with business? Your business? My business?

It has everything to do with it.

How could all of this been avoided? How SHOULD this Monday have started? Smoothly. It should have started quietly, simply and easily. The girls should have prepped for today yesterday like they knew they should have. Checking bags, laying out clothes, & making sure homework was done. That was their job. A little preparation to make sure they were ready to handle their responsibilities. See where I'm going here?

Sometimes friends, we are the one putting those obstacles in our own way. We don't take the time to prepare for the day, for our business, for our dreams. We decide to wing it and then get frustrated when nothing goes as unplanned.
Or, we sit and wait for people or things to get out of our way instead of doing other things that will get us closer to where we want to be in the meantime. All of it is our choice. We can blame circumstances or other people all we want, but our dreams aren't their responsibility. They're ours.

The truth is you cannot have a successful business or a successful life without preparation, focus and willingness to change things up when one way of doing things gets blocked. I've never heard of anyone "accidentally" getting a degree, paying off debt, or earning a promotion.
 It is all done by knowing what you need to get you where you want to go.

So while our Monday has started off in disorder and crazy, the good news is, it doesn't have to stay that way. In our house, we have "restarts". At any time in the day, we can restart, forgive what's happened before and move on like it was never a hot mess of madness. On the car ride to the field, K and I talked about how to do things better & A and I forgave each other's impatience & I sent them to school with restarts in their pockets.
The same applies for where you are right now.
If things haven't been going right today, this weekend or this month- call a restart. You have a new week to grab hold of, to prep for, to conquer.
Don't wing it. Don't wait for other people to get out of your way. Go take care of yourself, your business and your future. Own it. Step up. Know what you need to get to where you are going and for goodness sakes, please make sure your homework is done. 😉
-Amanda