My daughter is a spunky, sassy, full-on preference-having threenager. She has entered the age where she is very convicted in what she puts on each morning.
This all started last summer when we were at Swiss Days, a festival here in UT that celebrates the state's Swiss pioneer heritage. It features artisan markets, traditional Swiss food and a pretty epic parade.
While perusing the market, I came across a cute tent that sold little girls’ dresses themed for the holidays. I decided to get the girls matching Christmas dresses for the following year, when Meadow could walk.
Silly me trying to plan that far ahead, Ellie wanted to put hers on as soon as we got home. Being that I sized up for the following year, it was pretty much too big all over. The dress slipped off her shoulder, and it went all the way down to her ankles when it was designed for mid-shin.
To her, it was perfect.
It was long, elegant and best of all it twirled like no dress she ever owned. She affectionately named it her “heavy dress”. From that day on, it was all she wanted to wear.
Being that it was August, and this dress was covered in reindeers, I decided to buy her a couple more for the fall. One had pumpkins and another was “fall themed” unicorns. At least we could slip two more dresses into the rotation. I figured, surely this will phase out in a couple weeks. Boy was I WRONG.
Here we are, nearly a year and 6 “heavy dresses” later, and she still prefers to wake up each morning and adorn herself in a heavy dress, ruffle socks and a pair of (toddler) high heels.
When I got past the fact that this child has three grandmas who shower her in high-end designer and boutique clothing, giving her arguably the most stacked closet of anyone I know, and she still reaches, every single morning, for a LuLaRoe (IYKYK) adjacent holiday twirly dress, I found myself genuinely impressed.
Because she knows exactly who she is. She has a fully stacked wardrobe of "better" options by every external standard, and she could not care less. She knows what she wants, and she won't settle for anything else, not for anyone, not for any reason.
That kind of conviction is rare. And she came into this world with it fully intact.
She is so young, yet completely certain of what lights her up and what doesn't. That's a direct line to her soul and she follows it without a second thought.
When I considered this for myself — where in my life I was abandoning my own preferences simply because of what I'd been taught — I realized I needed to bring this same conviction to my business.
Since going full time as a solopreneur at the start of the year, I realized there were things that I was doing that I really didn’t care for, and in some cases flat out dreaded. So why was I doing them?
Was it the expensive business coaching that told me I had to do certain things every week, or risk failing. Or the masterminds and courses that drilled specific metrics of success into my head. Or was it the 16 years in corporate America that buried certain beliefs so deep I couldn’t see them - until now.
I was pumped full of so many shoulds about what success looks like. But at the end of the day, half of what I was doing existed only because someone along the way told me to, not because it was actually mine.
And my soul, it turns out, is the best expert on what's right for my path.
My daughter was really onto something. The minute I adopted her model of, “I’m going to do what feels true to me, full stop”, it almost felt like my business bloomed overnight. I saw new growth and had by far my best month to date.
The untangling from my old identity is certainly a work in progress. I’m still finding small pockets of old belief systems that exist. But I’m also aware that this is an ongoing journey and growing process.
I know I sound like a broken record when I say this, but I seem to learn this lesson in new ways time and again. Our children are our greatest spiritual teachers. So pure, and wise in ways that cannot be explained. I’m grateful to have two little wise sages running around my house, continuing to teach me how I can live more authentically and in deeper alignment.
And I'll be honest — I don't do this work alone. Two of my go-to tools to support me in softening the mental edges are my energy work and my microdosing practice. Both continue to help me in identifying where in my business (and life in general) I can let things fall away to free up space for more expansive creativity.