On The Ledge...

Last week, I found myself in Miami...now before you get green with envy, let me make this clear, I was NOT sitting on the beach with the sand between my toes and a cool drink in my hand...INSTEAD, I was sitting in a conference room, learning how to maximize revenue...(sure the conference room happened to be located in a luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel, but I digress...)

During the conference's "welcome", this quote was read:

"You will either step forward into GROWTH or you will step back into SAFETY."

Time for me to confess, I had flown into Miami the night before and had finally made it to my hotel room at 2:45AM so as the conference got underway at 8:30AM I was still very much holding onto my coffee cup for dear life and slowly waking up....

But those words got my attention and I felt my heart rate increase for I all of sudden felt as though I was alone in that conference room and the words were being read to me "Attention! Lori...we have an important message for you. Are you listening?!?"

Yes, I was listening...and my wheels were turning...

My wheels were turning about all that I could do as an employee to help my company take the necessary risks to grow their revenue stream, BUT...

More importantly, I was also thinking how this quotation could be applied to so many areas of my personal life -

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  To grow my marriage, I need to be willing to have the open, honest, transparent communication that is not always easy. This means I need to say the things that may be hard to say, but perhaps even more importantly, I need to listen to the things that may be hard to hear. To know that they are coming from a place of love.



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  To grow my friendships, I need to be the friend that will encourage my friends, push them, and similarly to my relationship with Dave, I need to engage in open, honest communication with my friends. I am lucky in that my closest group of friends have been a part of my life for 20 years and with that time comes familiarity and while that is good, while that is comforting, it can also be a hindrance for we sometimes don't allow ourselves to see that we are changing or that our friend is changing. Change doesn't mean that the friendship needs to end, it just means that it needs to adapt and we need to allow it to happen.



• To grow as a person, I need to be honest with myself about my feelings, my goals, my desires.

Throughout the day, I kept turning this quotation around in my head...I loved the idea of it "without risk, there is no reward", but I have to be honest...risk scares me...risk involves faith, risk involves uncertainty...

I...I like the known, I like a plan, I like statistics pertaining to a possible outcome...that's how I process whether a decision is a good one or a not so good one...

I also think often of the fact that the impact of my decisions are not limited to me - for they affect Dave, they affect Kate, Drew, and countless others in my life. To feel as though I may make a decision that could change the course of another's life, that's daunting, that's paralyzing...

BUT...I cannot let the fear paralyze me, the fear of the unknown, the fear of disappointing others...

I must step out onto that ledge and take the step FORWARD...believing first in myself and then in the others that surround me, that love me...

And as further affirmation that I needed to apply this principle to my life, as I caught up with old friends at my reunion several of them spoke of changes that they had made in their lives recently. They spoke of the risks they took, they spoke of the importance of being first honest with themselves, before they could be honest with anyone else, they spoke of the resulting growth in their relationships. From the risk, came JOY...JOY that radiated across their faces....

We each deserve to find that JOY...to GROW...

Let's step out onto that ledge TOGETHER...