Resourcefulness
“Having the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.”
Do what you can, with what you have.
It would have been easy to tell myself that I didn’t have a good enough camera to take the right pictures for a blog. It would have been easy to believe that my life wasn’t interesting enough to blog about. It would have been easy to believe that I didn’t have enough time to start a blog.
These are the lies that circled in my head in 2011 before I started my blog.
I don’t think it matters what path you decide to start walking down, there will always be difficulties, it’s part of life. How we react to those difficulties is what showcases and develops our character.
Becoming a mother really sharpened my resourcefulness in many aspects. Luke was always a very good napper and sleeper and from a pretty young age he was on a regular sleep schedule. When he went to sleep, I knew how much time I had to accomplish whatever was on my to do list that day. My to do list changed and evolved from day to day, and top priority items would change sometimes hour by hour. But knowing I only had two hours to complete what I could, or to simply have a nap, developed my abilities to prioritize and stay focused.
In the middle of overcoming difficulties and utilizing our resourceful abilities, we often unleash strengths we didn’t realize we possessed.
Being forced into something and figuring a way out, is how I have grown.
Last summer I experienced my first encounter with online harassment. At first the words and accusations took me to my knees. My world started spinning and I wondered what was true and what was false. Over the next few weeks I moved into this space of quietness, solitude, confusion and anxiety. I was mad because I couldn’t talk about it as I sorted out my thoughts and that someone had anonymously made me feel so small and meek.
After so much time in prayer, searching for truth in the Bible, God guided me to fight back like Jesus, with love. With love that is reckless and knows no boundaries. Love for even those who hurt us.
And so, a deep desire was now inside me to spread love in a really big powerful way. So I emailed The Birds Papaya, I told her what had happened to me and that I wanted to shine light in the darkness, with the help of her beautiful light. She agreed to come to Sarnia to be the key note speaker of the first HAL SOCIALS. My business and social media community poured out with enthusiasm to help make the event a success and we sold out the event in one day. And today, I am planning our next two events and working to make HAL SOCIALS a growing event series in Southwestern Ontario.
I think as entrepreneurs, we have natural resourceful abilities. I know myself, I don’t plan every detail before I start acting and working. When I booked The Birds Papaya and signed the contract to hire her, I didn’t even have a space to host the event yet but I trusted that I would figure it out. And, together with many amazing women working alongside me, we figured it out and it was a joyful experience and through that overcoming of difficulties and unknowns we discovered this amazing energy that can happen at events like this. We learned that our community is super hungry for this kind of human connection.
I have big dreams for HAL SOCIALS and everything I am working on at HEATHER AUDREY LAPIER INDUSTRIES. And I can look at one of the hardest faith seasons I have walked through and be grateful that it happened to me, because it forced me to realize my abilities and some gifts I didn’t even know I possessed.
Resourcefulness is simply choosing to not give up, to keep moving forward no matter what. Choosing to change directions if there is a road block, or changing vehicles maybe to to fly if the road disappears but we keep going.
xoxo
Audrey
