Hello love,
Did I ever tell you that I majored in English-speaking literature? It wasn't a surprise really. Since I was a kid, I would spend hours writing at my desk, diligently pressing on the keys of a loud but beautiful typing machine, pretending I was an author.
My favourite author was by far Virginia Woolf, and when the movie The Hours came out, it immediately ranked as best movie ever. (If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it).
Little did I know that many great authors would follow and take a seat in my heart.
One of them is Elizabeth Gilbert with her masterpiece The Signature of All Things.
I read it in the summer of 2022.
That summer, I had taken an impromptu break that ended up revealing the truth I had been avoiding: I was indeed in burnout, and there was no way I could get back to work.
In a way, the book played a big part in that.
Not to cause the burnout, but in the eye-opening process. And today, looking back, I'd love to share 4 major lessons that this beautiful fiction has for us, women in business.
1.Life goes by fast, and what truly matters has nothing to do with what you leave behind. Leaving a mark on our world has historically been a huge deal. For most of us, it's as if we had somehow to justify being alive by being exceptional, and contributing to the human species. We remember the famous authors, the scientists who cured or discovered something, the athletes that pushed the limits, and we call that the measure of success. But nobody asked them whether they were happy, or loved. And what about the billion others who did not accomplish anything at all? Wasn't their life meaningful too, maybe even more so? In reality, we need to remember that no matter how invested you are in the mission of your business, the real measure of a successful life is how much you were able to enjoy the simple, ordinary days.
2. Perfection is self-sabotaging. In the book, Alma Whittaker, the main character, devotes her life to a scientific theory that she's researching and presenting in a book. She shares her drafts with some of her peers, who all tell her it's groundbreaking and she should publish it. But she doesn't. She sees it's flawed. There is a missing piece in her theory, something that doesn't quite add up. So she waits, and waits and waits. Then waits some more. Until one day, a fellow scientist called Darwin publishes the exact same theory before her (without ever having met her, mind you).
And that missing piece that was so problematic to Alma? Did he solve it? No. He just avoided addressing it altogether. Conclusion: done is better than perfect. You can always improve it later. Someone else might even improve it later. But you get to share your imperfect ideas with the world.
3. You have no idea what goes on in people's lives and in their souls. In The Signature of All Things, Alma's adoptive sister is always so cold and distant and you might easily think that she's closed off, judgmental, distant... Yet, in the end, she shows she's in fact the most generous of them all and Alma regrets not having built a relationship with her earlier. With judgment and bias comes missed opportunities. What would happen if we opened our perspective a little bit? If we remembered our shared humanity before condemning anyone?
4. Your real legacy is love, as an active verb. Alma's dad devoted his life to his work and made a ton of money The kind of money that could only be done in the era of imperialism off of questioning practices. He left his daughter a huge financial legacy. And after he passes, she gives it all away to her adoptive sister, as an ultimate act of love. Nothing ever replace your presence for your family. Not what you build for them, not what you give them. Only love, as a active verb.
Looking back, I can only smile with compassion.
At how driven I used to be. At how attached I was to success because I was in fact terrified of failure. At how I had tied my worth, my right to be alive, to how much I would help other people.
This book became my wake-up call. My realisation that I was missing out on my life. That I was missing the point.
I hope this email gives you either the perspective or the permission slip you need to keep creating a business that serves your life, not just "one day when I get there", but on the way, every day.
Power and light ๐ธ
Jessica