Finding Peace Amidst Life's Blessings

Have you ever looked back on your life and wondered how you ended up where you are? I wonder sometimes why I ended up as an accountant. I didn’t even consider changing majors like a lot of my friends. I just started and kept going. In hindsight, I suppose it was meant to be and it turned out to be a real blessing in a lot of ways.

As I got married and became a working mom, my priorities became Elyse and Brian, my two wonderful children! I was fortunate that in the accounting and tax profession, I had the ability to work a reduced work schedule so I worked part-time for many years. Now that I understand more about the Law of Attraction – what you focus on expands, I see that I really attracted exactly what I envisioned my life would be while raising my children – time to enjoy them growing up, a way to contribute and adult contact that the work force provided, time with my husband, Lee, and time for me! I wanted life/work balance and that is exactly what I got!

BUT, I started to get frustrated. I had this underlying belief that we as women (many of whom were juggling motherhood) could be so much more successful outside the bureaucratic structure of corporate life since women function much better in collaborative environments. I also knew I wasn’t really doing what I wanted to do professionally and that to be truly happy or financially successful, you needed to be following your passion and your bliss. I needed to start following my passions.

At this same time, 1998, my husband was diagnosed with a rare liver disease called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC). There was no cure other than a liver transplant which he had successfully in December, 2004. We were devastated at the time of the diagnosis and I was also faced with the fact that I might be the primary source of income for our family. If that was the case, I wanted to be doing what I loved. My intuition told me that something was coming my way.

So. . . it was no surprise to me when I received a call from a neighbor who asked me if I knew anyone who was interested in starting a business part-time. I SAID ME!!!! I started my virtual franchise business with Market America in 2002 and thank God every day for it. Even as a CPA and financial planner, it wasn’t until I started my business that I began to understand that to create true financial wealth, you needed to leverage your time, in addition to your money, and find a way to generate a residual income stream. I understood about leveraging your assets by investing but not how to leverage your time. I figured that if I hadn’t been taught these principles, who had? Market America was everything I was looking for – much more people oriented than accounting (I realized later in my career that my strength was dealing with people and not numbers), a way to help people and give back, and a way to create a time and money which would allow me to pursue many other dreams.

I became an avid student of the unsurpassed training system provided by our company which followed a franchising model. It centered not only on the specific steps to build the business but also on all the general success principles including attitude, goal setting and affirmations, persistence, the law of attraction and the law of association. I was already a self-improvement junkie, remember, so now I was learning great concepts on how to create wealth and my dream life but also how to help others do the same. I was in hog heaven! I have become passionate about spreading the word of what it takes to create wealth, in all ways – financially, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

I have always been a very spiritual person and I seem to be pulled to focus on that right now in my life. I can’t get enough books, tapes and courses on this stuff. I am learning to live more in the now, as Eckhart Tolle teaches us in his great book, “The Power of Now.” I am learning more to be a “human being” and not a “human doing.” I have learned that by becoming truly happy and grateful, everything else that you desire and need seems to fall into place much faster and easier and you become a guiding light to others. I’ve learned that by meditating and creating a higher level of consciousness, amazing things start to happen. I am also a “reverse paranoid” as they say. I expect things to work out for my benefit and that everything that occurs in my life is for my spiritual growth. So any time a challenge came, I would think, “What am I supposed to learn here?” I learned this from one of my mentors, Wayne Dyer. Wayne and I have never met but he is a “first name” celeb in our house. “What are you reading Mom? More Wayne?” Yes, honey, more “Wayne!” Wayne also taught me that everything in life is a blessing even though we may not understand why at the time.

I know that I am definitely still on my journey, that is for sure. I follow it now with much more ease and contentment than ever before in my life. I like where I am and excited about the future. I now see why people in their 50’s and beyond are happier than in their earlier years. It takes getting here to appreciate it!!!!