- Being afraid and doing it anyway.

I intended to write a great blog post tonight about what happens once you’ve dealt with financial fear in your life.

Hint:  It makes way for you to deal with a whole host of other issues you haven’t been looking at because the financial fear has been taking up so much of your emotional energy.  But, I have to save that for a future post because it’s going to take a while to write and it’s too late for me to start that one now.

Why is it so late and I’m still sitting at my computer?

Because I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my LIFT Foundation System, which is going to be finally ready next week.  I cannot even tell you how excited I am to share this legacy project with you.

I’ve heard from several business people I’ve watched for years and respect tremendously that they have been waiting for exactly this program.

If you have not yet watched the deep behind the scenes interviews I did as a preview to LIFT with Melanie Benson Strick, Ali Brown and her VA turned biz partner Liz Murphy, and Lisa Sasevich, get them now.

People are RAVING about them.  These are not ordinary “why we are great” interviews - we are looking at the last taboos of business - financial collapse, business drama, and threats of lawsuits.

In the midst of my preparations for the launch of LIFT, I’ve been addressing LIFT issues in my own business.

Anytime your business is at a transition point, you are going to have LIFT issues come up.

They could come in the form of external things like you’ll hear about in the interviews I did with Melanie and Lisa or internal things like drama within your business, like I talked about with Ali and Liz.

But, one way or another, LIFT issues arise at times of transition and growth. How you deal with them, determines what your next level looks like.

Handle them with your eyes wide open and you are on your way to taking your business and life to the next level.  Handle them with your eyes squeezed shut and in the dark and it’s crash and burn time.

I’ve done the eyes squeezed shut thing once already and I refuse to allow it to happen again, so I’m digging back into the business side of my business, seeing what’s really there, accepting the reality of what it is and making decisions with awareness.

It’s bringing up all sorts of emotional stuff for me, that’s for sure.

Making hard decisions.  Looking at things I’ve avoided in the past.  Doing things I wasn’t willing to do in the past (generally around money and support).

But, fortunately, I’ve got a phenomenal LIFT team around me and with their help I’m doing what I need to do.   Establishing boundaries with an open heart.  And structuring my business so it can make an impact forever and not just a few years.

It’s not so easy, but what I’ve realized is that it’s true what they say nothing worth having comes easy.  Easy is the reward for doing what’s difficult.

If you aren’t willing to go through the hard part, you aren’t going to get the easy.

So, I’m learning to love the hard parts.  I took a great bike ride today and cried my eyes out (loudly!) the whole way.

Colorado and it’s big empty space is great for some loud, honkin’ crying.

And after I cried, I thanked God.

Because what I know is that no matter how hard things are to see, as long as I am growing through all of it, allowing every opportunity to guide me to be more of who I am, and continuing to stay present in the truth, it’s all good.  Oh so very good.

What’s hard for you in your business right now? Is there anything you’ve started to become aware of that you’ve been approaching with your eyes closed up until now?  If so, I’d love to hear about it.  The comments are a great place to share.

Somehow, it seems as if we’ve all gotten this idea that if we are not satisfied, we can’t complain.  If we complain, then we are complainers and that is bad.  So, instead, we should hold in our complaints.  Think them, fine.  But, don’t say them.

For the longest time, I apologized for my high standards.  Still do sometimes.

But lately, I’m coming to terms with those standards, accepting and embracing them.  I have high standards.  I am high maintenance.  I value excellence in myself and others.

I appreciate these things about myself. (Well, that’s not entirely true yet, but the more I accept what I feel and communicate it, the more I will appreciate these things.)

And for now on when I enter into a relationship with someone and that relationship does not meet my needs, I will not feel guilty for having my high standards.  I will step into my power.

I will not stay quiet out of fear that I will look bad if I complain.

I will directly and without guilt communicate my dissatisfaction.  I will make this communication without emotion and allow the tension I feel in my shoulders and in my thighs to be as they are.  I will not try to make them go away by ignoring them.  I will feel those feelings in my body and communicate  from my heart.

And when I don’t do these things I say I will do, at least I will be aware of that.  And notice.

I just did this for the first time with someone working with me who is simply not living up to my standards.  In the past, I would hold my tongue and re-do their work after it was done by them.

I’m not willing to tolerate that anymore.  And yet there is this part of me that is scared to death.  It says “your standards are too high! no one is ever going to be able to do what you want them to do.  you’ll never be happy Alexis! be happy with what you’ve got.”

Just the other day, a woman inspired by my LIFT Manifesto wrote to me about a coach she paid a high 5-figure coaching fee to who led her completely astray and gave her what I consider some pretty bad advice (he allegedly told her to drop her coaching biz, pursue artistry and stand on a street corner to sell her art). In her letter she described that she was scared to death to ask for her money back from this coach even though she felt as if he damaged her business and her life with his advice.

In fact, she wasn’t only afraid to ask for her money back; she was afraid to tell him she was not satisfied with their coaching relationship.  She was worried about how it would make her look.

You know what? I’ve been there.  More than once, I’m afraid.

But not anymore.  I’m no longer going to be stopped by fear to say what I feel.  I’m going to feel the fear and do it anyway.

What about you?  What do you do when you want to complain?  Do you hold it in?  Face it directly?  Talk about it with your friends?  I’d love to hear.

You’ve heard the saying, right?

If you love something, set it free.  If it comes back to you, it’s yours.

God, I believe in that.  Oh yes, down to the bottom of my toes, I believe in it.

I’ve even experienced it in my own life.  A lot.  5 years ago, I set my husband free (and a whole house full of stuff I loved) and now 5 years later, it’s all back.

In case you are new here, I moved to Colorado at the beginning of January and my ex-husband moved with me.  He’s living with me and the kids.  And that meant all his stuff came too.  And his stuff was my stuff that I left behind when I moved out 5 years ago.  Seeing it again was trippy and fun.

So I KNOW it’s true.  I’ve experienced it.

And yet, it still comes up for me.  I want to hold on to what I love.  Grasp it tight.  Squeeze it to me and never let go.  And definitely never share it with anyone else.

Fortunately these days, I can recognize it.  Become aware of it.  And not emotionally react to it.

Once I see the pattern I can make a choice of how to be.

Like right now it’s coming up for me about a gal I absolutely adore.  Chelsea Moser.  I love her. She’s my protegee (two things about that: 1) I feel totally and completely pretentious saying that and yet it is how I feel and I hope she is not weirded out by that and 2) the dictionary said that you spell the woman version of protege with two “e”s, thus the two “e”s).

And suddenly Chelsea’s working with all these other women in the online world.  Andrea Lee.  Tina Forsyth. Ciara Daykin. And then I heard she was talking with Sarah Robinson the other day; so she could be next.

Let me say this before I say anything else - each of these women is a woman I adore, support, honor, respect, trust, work with, and believe in to the depths of my soul.

And yet, I want to hoard Chelsea.  Seeing her work with all these other amazing women makes me scared.  Maybe if she sees how amazing they are, she won’t want to work with me anymore.  Maybe she’ll stop having time for my projects.

But, I won’t let those patterned fear thoughts run my life.  Instead, I will recognize the pattern and break it by:

1. Talking about it here (even though this is really, really, really, REALLY hard for me to do)

and

2. Trusting that Chelsea will work with me if that serves her life and if it doesn’t, she won’t. Trust that everything is always unfolding exactly as it should for my highest good and the evolution of my soul.  And trust that I will always have everything I need (not necessarily everything I want) and I never need to hoard or hold on to anything too tightly.

Yes, when I remember that, I can breathe and relax and be.  It feels good.

In my experience, the saying should go a little differently … it’s not about what comes back to you.

If you love something, someone, some …, set it free.
And then you will be free too.

In the end, it’s about your own freedom really.

Sometimes it really can be that simple.  One minute you don’t see and then the next you do.

My friend and fellow burner Cameron Herold (who is one of the guys I consider “real business dudes who are amazingly cool too”) is writing a book.  He asked me to take a look at a couple of chapters.

Honestly, before I started reading, I was kind of thinking ho-hum, there’s nothing new out there.  I was sort of expecting to be bored.

Two pages in and my awareness was shifted completely.

One minute I’m all “I already know that” (4  most dangerous words in the human language) and the next I can see exactly how my inability to see up until this moment has made leadership so difficult for me.

And that it really doesn’t have to be as hard as I’ve been making it.  For years, I’ve taught that creating life on your terms all starts with knowing what you want and painting the picture of it. Many teachers teach this - think vision boarding and the Secret.

But Cameron has added a whole nother level of practicality for actually doing that based on principles of leadership and real business that blows the lid off completely.

I’ll let you know as soon as Cameron’s ready to share the book so I can tell you more about it.  It’s really good.

Before I get started with this post, can I just say - HI!  Ah, it feels so good to be back here.

I really love when I can write 2-3 times a week.  But, with the money map launch (which we sold out with 100 attendees, so happy!) and finalizing LIFT (so, so, so close to launching), it just hasn’t been possible to do everything.

So, writing on the blog is what doesn’t get done.  And believe me, my kids are really happy about that because it means I didn’t choose my blog over them.

But, it truly is a conundrum for me.  I want to be a blogger.  A real blogger.  In fact, as soon as I saw ProBlogger’s list of bloggers to watch in 2010, I knew I would aim to be on that list for 2011.

And yet, I haven’t yet figured out the magical recipe of running my businesses, raising my kids AND regularly blogging on the bloggity blog.

My intent is to figure it out by the time I re-launch this blog with it’s new name and design in the next few weeks.  (Oh, and by the way, the name is changing from the Intrepid Mompreneur to Life, Business and the Pursuit of Truth - the tagline of being afraid and doing it anyway will remain the same.)

In the meantime, life is good.

Today is my ex-husband’s birthday and he let me give him a hug and now he’s letting me take him out to breakfast with the kids.  Such progress from just a couple of years ago when he wouldn’t even look at me.  Just this week, we had one of the best conversations we’ve had in the 16 years we’ve known each other.

In case you didn’t know, he lives with me and the kids in our house in Colorado.  But, he’ll be going back and forth to Los Angeles each month to take care of some business he has going on there.  And, he has agreed to be here with the kids so I can do all the travel I need to (and want to) do for my businesses.

I’m going to run now so I can take the ex to that breakfast I mentioned before he thinks I’m not giving him my attention, which is what led to our divorce in the first place.

I’ll be back with a new post about transforming from a small business owner into an inspired business leader as soon as I get a few more minutes to write.

I was going for a subject line far more enticing than what I gave ya up there, but that’s just about all I’ve got left for ya today.  I’m lucky I’m getting this post written before I drag myself up to put the kids to bed!

I’m exhaustipated. Happily.

If you’ve given birth, you know the feeling. The baby is born, the labor pains are over and all you feel is sweet relief and love for your baby.

Yep, that’s a bit how I’m feeling now.  Fulfilled, tired and happy.

Before I tell you about today’s launch of the Money Map to Freedom Implementation Program, let me tell you about the more better stuff because it’s really good.

More better stuff #1:  In the midst of the launch, my daughter’s new school principal called.  When my kids were at their last school, I got calls telling me one of them was falling behind in some way.  Well, you can imagine my joy then at this call.  The principal was calling to tell me how delightful my kids are and that we may want to consider advanced math for my daughter.  Talk about a WOOHOO moment! Further confirmation that we moved to just the right place for us.

More better stuff #2:  After the launch, I had a couple phone calls scheduled with amazing entrepreneurs who I am going to be able to support quite significantly in the coming year and vice versa.  I LOVE what I am learning about building joint ventures with collaborators who  would look like competitors on the surface.  Remember this:  Your biggest competitor is PROBABLY your greatest collaborative partner if you can see through the competition.

I’ll be sharing some strategies I’ve been using to really get beyond competition and into major collaboration over the coming weeks.  So stay tuned!  All of this joint venturing has brought up some VERY interesting stuff for me.

More better stuff #3: I got to see the initial designs for my blog re-design and I’m so excited to share them with you.  It’ll take another couple of weeks to get things just right, but we are SO heading in the right direction.  Thank you Naomi!

Okay, now for the launch recap:

Launch started a bit earlier today than we expected because our VIP access email went out two hours early.

I got all excited when I saw it go out and I tweeted about it not realizing we weren’t REALLY open yet.

That meant our page wasn’t live.  D’oh!   Lots of emails and tweets ensued letting me know about 404 errors and other problems.

Fortunately, all of our VIPeeps on the list for early registration know us, love us and were patient with us.   VIPeeps who persisted, you WILL be rewarded!

Everyone in the program receives a private strategy session with either me or Dave (this bonus is worth more than a few times the investment of the program) and we’ll schedule those based on when you joined the program.  (So, if you are considering joining, you may want to jump off the fence and get closer to the front of the line for your private strategy session.)

Okay, let’s see what else happened …

Oh yes, the internet went out at my house, which meant I had to “borrow” my neighbors’ internet.  And then our printer ran out of ink, so we had to print our call outline for our call on the 30 point Lifestyle Clarification process from the Money Map on a friend’s printer.

Fortunately, the phones didn’t have any trouble though and we did a rockin’ call going through each of the 30 categories.

If you missed today’s call (or the call we did on New Year’s laying out the money map), you can get the recordings here.

At the end of the day, despite the snafus, we are 50% sold-out, which means we’ve only got 50 spaces left! And, it also means we are donating $2,500 to relief efforts in Haiti.  YAY!

That feels really good.

The Money Map to Freedom Implementation program closes at the earlier of 100 members or January 20.

I’d love to see you there.  It really will make a huge difference in your business this year.  At the very least, check out our page because I really love the way it looks and you’ll love the video Dave and I made.

Okay, recap over and time for me to get the kids to bed.

I’d love to hear about launch day experiences you’ve had.  And I’d also love to hear what questions you have about launching a new program or product.  And of course, let me know here if you have any questions about the Money Map program itself.

Did I happen to mention that everything in my life is in the midst of transition?

As you very likely know, I just moved my entire family from Hermosa Beach, CA to Longmont, CO (just outside of Boulder).  And if you didn’t know, now you do.

In fact, if you follow me on Twitter, you can go back and read the Tweets chronicling the whole trip.  With photos!  They start around here.

I was so super scared before the move.  Really getting some serious cold feet.  Everyone told me that moving is called the most stressful of all activities and that I should allow myself the time to process.

It turns out, I am absolutely, positively, totally thrilled to have made the move.  I could not have possibly imagined how great it would be to be here.

The community is all that I hoped for.  My house is beyond what I hoped it would be.  And it’s not even a week after we are here and we are pretty much all moved in.

I’ve already had people over for dinner three nights, a breakfast meeting with the Boulder Gang of light girls and my kids have been skiing.  And tomorrow, I get to take the kids skiing again.  It turns out that with the right clothing, the snow is awesome!

This is truly the life.  YAY.

I’m the type of gal who when she decides she wants change, changes everything!

And that means not only did my physical home move, but my online home is moving too.

This site will look very different a month from now.  It will no longer be called the Intrepid Mompreneur.  Instead, it will be Life, Business & The Pursuit of Happyness.  And I am going through the site design process now.

Naomi Niles is my designer and she has a really cool process for design, which I’m loving.  The layout has been laid out.  And now we are talking about style.

The focus of the style will be transparency.

In the interest of transparency, I’ll tell you that Naomi is going to have a hard time not making my site look just like Jonathan Fields‘ since I love his so much and every time she asks me something I feel like just telling her - look at Jonathan’s.  Make it like his.  But, I resist and try to be creative.

A few others that I’ve taken into account in my monkey-see/monkey-doo ways are IttyBiz, Penelope Trunk, and Pam Slim.  I’ve even been checking out Pioneer Woman.

It turns out, I like white.  Lots of white.  Like the snow I see out my window everyday now.

Are there any blogsites that use a lot of white that you love and I should look at?  If so, leave me a comment and let me know.

It’s the eve of moving day.

Tomorrow, we will pull out of Hermosa Beach and head toward the Rockies with two U-Hauls, 5 adults (including my ex-husband and my boyfriend), 2 kids, a dog, 3 cats, a snake and a turtle.

Thank God I’ve got two years of Burning Man under my belt as practice.

I’m quite surprised about how shaken up I am by this whole move.  Although everyone I talk to says it’s totally normal and I know it is, I’m still surprised.

The move is bringing me the opportunity to confront all the  pieces of myself that I don’t love and adore.  And most importantly, to see them.

There’s so much that we hide from ourselves.  And it all comes up during any period of transition and transformation.

What’s coming up for me now is the awareness that I am deeply motivated by the desire to have a certain community of people around me.

I moved to a Hermosa Beach walkstreet because I wanted to raise my kids in community.  I wanted to live somewhere in which the kids could run back and forth to their friends’ houses without constant adult supervision.  An open door policy in which my neighbor’s kids would become as comfortable with me as my own kids and my kids would look to the neighbors as second parents.

When I first moved to Hermosa, I lived on 17th street, one of the walkstreets where community is facilitated by no cars driving on the street in front of the houses.

There were two families on the street that had been there for more than 50 years.  The adults living there now had all grown up as kids on the street (and in the houses) where they were now raising their own kids.

Over the years, those friends had turned into each other’s  family.

It’s always been what I wanted.  A family by choice.  An extended group of people who become family, are  committed to supporting each other and working together for the benefit of the whole.  Each person contributing his and her highest gifts to the community and relaxing into the awareness that her or she is part of a greater village working toward a common vision.

Raising kids, cooking meals, relaxing, and growing together.  People who share my values.  That I want my kids to be guided by and learning from.

When I really look at why I am moving to Colorado, I’m heading off in search of that village.

My mind begins to wonder why I didn’t create it here and what will be different there.

There are three families on my street, all of whom have kids Kaia and Noah’s age, all of whom go to the private school Kaia and Noah used to go to.

On the surface, the village I’m looking for is right here.

But, we don’t seem to fit with these families.

They are nice enough, but I don’t see them ever feeling like real I’ve got your back no matter what family.  They aren’t people I could practice Radical Honesty with or talk about evolution of the spirit and truth and awareness with.  They seem to like living behind the veil. Or at least, it’s all they know and they seem happy enough to keep it on.

I’m ready to pull off the veil.  And so I’m leaving.

My mind says I’m crazy.  I should make it work here.  If I can’t make it work here, I won’t make it work anywhere.  It’s the same everywhere.  Wherever you go, there you are.  Stick it out.  Push through.

But, then I remember back to being at the big law firm.

I had many of these same thoughts then.  You are crazy to think about leaving.  People would kill for that job. Are you insane?  Make it work.  If you can’t make it work here, you won’t make it work anywhere.  This is just what life is like.  Wherever you go, there you are.  Stick it out.  Push through.

The exact same thoughts.  A pattern.  Conditioning.  Had I listened to them, I’d still be there, unhappy, wondering what’s wrong with me.  But, hanging in.

As soon as I left the big law firm, I found a freedom unlike anything I had ever experienced before.  I didn’t run out of money.  I didn’t die.  Instead, I was free.

That freedom led to where I am today.  I can pick up and move to a completely different State.  I don’t have to worry about finding a new job. I don’t have to worry about taking vacation time to pack and move.  I don’t have to worry that I won’t be able to make a living where I am going.

The only restriction on me today is my mind.  It sometimes still wants to hold me back, keep me safe, convince me that if only I changed, I would find out that what I’m looking for has been here all along.

But, here’s what I know.  Something is pulling me to Colorado.

It’s something as big as the freedom that came through when I left my paycheck and started my own business.  It’s something as big as the freedom that showed up when I left my husband and re-discovered the freedom of being a woman again.

I have a feeling it’s that I will finally find the community I’ve been looking for.  The community that becomes family.  The community that sees me exactly as I am, recognizes me and says yes, you are one of ours.   We’ve been waiting for you.

Image courtesy of Flickr

A few days ago, I posted about my own financial fear and how it has impacted my business and life over the past several years.

As I’ve confronted this issue within myself over the past several months, I’ve built a framework to go around it that I’ve been working through for myself so that I can stop making decisions based on fear and begin to feel really empowered about my relationship with money.

If you receive my emails or follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve heard about it already - it’s called the money map and I’m hosting a free call about it on the last day of this year.

Since you are a loyal reader here, I’m giving you a little more information than I’ve given others about this money map framework, how it came to be and what it means for you.

First, let me say this - I believe this may be the most important work I have ever done up until now.

You see, I’ve been teaching business owners for a few years now and what I’ve come to see is I can give you a complete business system (or even in the case of the guy I sold my business to a complete already set up business!), but if you are operating from financial fear, you will find it very, very difficult (maybe impossible) to do what you need to do to be successful.

Financial fear can be the most insidious disease that keeps us from our dreams, if we allow it to be.   When I am operating from financial fear, I make bad decisions.  Do you resonate with that?

I built my law firm to a million bucks without a money map.   The five years I ran the firm were some of the most painful of my life because of my nearly constant overwhelming financial fear.

I was making plenty of money and had plenty of free time, but I was constantly living on the edge of massive amounts of fear.

Yes, I learned how to feel the fear and do it anyway.  But, I was white knuckling it every step of the way.  As a result, I eventually sabotaged the firm because I simply could not handle the intense fear.

That’s what happens when you don’t deal with the fear – you will eventually sabotage yourself in a myriad of ways.

In my case, I sold my million dollar business to a guy who stopped paying the bills (including the money he owed me) within 6 months of taking over.  I’m now carrying $250,000 of debt as a result.  Yes, my financial fear turned millions of dollars into a massive debt.

Now, the good news about this is that the experience totally broke through my financial fear and I have hardly any of it now.  The worst happened.

You’ve heard the saying “what you resist persists”, right?  Well, I resisted myself right to 6-figures worth of debt.

And sure, that’s one path. But that is not the path I want for you.  For you, I offer the gift of my mistakes so you don’t have to experience the worst to break through your fears.

With hindsight, I can look at the decisions I made that led me to sell my firm to someone who would not (and could not) be successful with it and see that I made those decisions because I was scared to be running a 7-figure business and because I didn’t know how to handle my fear, I sabotaged it.

I sabotaged it by saying yes to the first person who said he’d buy despite the fact that he didn’t have the business knowledge or self awareness himself to step into a 7-figure business.

So, what happened?

The minute he stepped in, he became absolutely paralyzed by his own fear and could not make any decisions.  And the decisions he did make were horrendous.

I watched it happen and while the lessons were amazing, I would have preferred not to have had them.

The reason we don’t have 7 or 8-figure businesses dropped into our laps is because we need to ease into the financial expansion necessary to stay out of financial fear enough to take right action on an ongoing basis.

Let me give you a concrete example so you can see what I mean:

To grow your business, you need to invest in your business.  It’s just the nature of the thing.  So, when I turned the business over to the guy who bought the firm, he was going to have to keep making investments.  Payroll and  marketing were the two biggest investments he’d have to make.

Well, each time he was presented with a marketing plan by the awesome marketing director I had hired for him and he was asked for a check to pay for the marketing campaign that needed to be run he hemmed, he hawed, and ultimately wouldn’t authorize the expenditures.

Within months he was asking me why there were no clients coming in. Well, friend, if you don’t do the marketing, the phone doesn’t ring.

Let’s look at this in my own case.

When I started my second business, I was back at the 1mm-1.5mm mark within one year. Once you expand to a certain level, getting back to that level is fairly easy.   But, now it’s been a couple of years and I’ve spent the past several months looking at what is holding me back from moving beyond.   And now I can see, it’s my unresolved financial fears holding me back.

I have expanded my comfort zone to support a 1m-1.5mm business, but not beyond that.  Going to the next level is scary and too big to white knuckle my way through.

And thus was born the money map.  A framework for making decisions about spending money so I wouldn’t be making them based in fear, but instead based in what I really want from life and business.

Here’s what I know …. when you are worried about money, you cannot be focused on your bigger impact on the world.  You are in survival mode.

What I’ve discovered through the process of creating my money map technology is that the most difficult part can be looking at what you really want because if you see it, acknowledge it and don’t get it, you will die.  At least that’s what it feels like to me.

But, I’ve also become aware that being willing to really look (even when it’s hard) is the key to EVERYTHING.  At least for me.  Maybe it will be for you too.

So I created a way to look that makes it less difficult.  I’m not going to tell you that it’s totally easy.  It’s not.  It’s still a little hard.  But, I’ve found that most things are a little hard.  Having a baby is a lot hard.  In both cases, the outcome is amazingly worth it.

What’s super cool about it is that it dovetails very nicely with LIFT (which was totally not planned but is one of those signs from the Universe that says to me - keep going Alexis, you are on the right path!).

So, no matter whether you are at 5-figures trying to get to 6 or 6-figures trying to get to 7 (or just starting out and are scared to death), the money map clears the fog and unparalyzes you so you can feel great about the decisions you are making and move forward.  I cannot wait to share it with you!!

A couple years ago, I got caught up in this idea of fame and for a little while, it sort of took over my life.  I told myself it was about making a difference and having an impact in the world, but then I read this article that says fame is really about the need to fit in and belong and I could clearly see my real motivation.

I’ve never fit in.

I can remember all the way back to Kindergarten wondering why the other little girls didn’t like me?  Why I couldn’t seem to get along with the other kids.

I wanted to.  I just couldn’t seem to figure out the right things to say at the right times.

This awareness that I wasn’t like everyone else followed me throughout my life.  In high school, it was a big problem.  A painful problem.  One I dealt with by turning to the kids who I thought would accept me no matter what - the ones on the corner smoking cigarettes before and after school.   My parents loved that, let me tell you.

In college, it seemed to abate for a while and I even joined a sorority (something I said I would never, ever, ever in a million years do), but of course it was the sorority for the girls who didn’t fit in.  I actually had the chance to join the popular pretty girl sorority, but made the choice to go where I’d feel more comfortable.

In law school, I dealt with not fitting in by studying constantly. That was good because it resulted in me graduating first in my class, which opened up every possible door for me for the rest of my life.  And then I went to the big law firm, where once again I didn’t fit in.

I was a 26-year old wife and mom.  It was one of the loneliest times of my life.  I remember sitting on the beach with my baby looking longingly at the other moms with their babies hanging out together.  I didn’t have any friends with babies. I couldn’t figure out how to make friends with the other moms.

Eventually, I figured it out.  I’m different than most people.  I’ve finally stopped asking why and accepted it.  I stopped only wanting to be friends with people who don’t want to be friends with me (the “in” crowd) and started appreciating the people who seem to be attracted to me (”misfits”).

And once I figured that all out, I began to have this desire for fame on a big level.  Because I wanted to make a difference (or so I thought).

So I began to make myself into someone who could appear on TV.  It turns out, I’m one of those people who actually looks better on TV than in real life, so this was not so difficult for me to do.

I did quite a bit of television in a relatively short period of time.  Then, I started to pitch television shows to the networks and got really close to having one picked up by the new Oprah Winfrey Network.  That was really exciting.  Until it didn’t happen.

Then I began thinking about a reality show.  (And let me tell you, it would have been a good one with all the craziness that has happened here at my house over the last 18 months.)

Fortunately, before I could ruin my life by letting cameras follow me around all the time, I became aware that the whole pursuit of fame was feeding something not particularly healthy in me.  I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but I knew it didn’t feel good.

It started to become clear when I did all of the Michael Jackson coverage.  I began to see I wasn’t really making a difference in the world and helping people with the media I was doing.  I was spreading rumors and gossip.  Sure, it was public and not behind anyone’s back, but was it really any less insidious?

I put it out of my mind because I liked getting all dressed up and putting on makeup and getting picked up by a car service and feeling special.  So I kept doing it.

A couple of weeks ago though, I was on Nancy Grace talking about Tiger Woods and it was the last straw.  I cannot do it anymore.

I took 2.5 hours out of my day to get my hair done, get driven down to CNN on Sunset and get my makeup done and then sit in a chair for an hour watching Nancy run the same clip of one of Tiger’s girlfriends saying she was sorry if she hurt anyone over and over and over again at each break.   I was on for less than 2 minutes with half of that time Nancy asking me inane questions I  like “When did he [Tiger Woods] have time to be with all those women with two children?”

How was this a good use of my time?

I searched for anything I could hang my hat on that would indicate my appearance on the show made a shred of positive impact in the world.  No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find anything.  And I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t really there to make a difference in the world, I was there to be noticed, recognized, and fit in.  Just like the article said.

I refuse to allow my life to be run by that anymore.

So I’m taking a stand.  For now on, I will not do any television unless I’m totally clear that I’m doing it because it will help to lift viewers to a new level of awareness.  I will not contribute to the inane dialogue, gossip and drama that is being perpetuated with most of today’s television programming.

Part of the reason I think I’m moving to Colorado is so I won’t be tempted.  Because believe me, every fiber of my being is screaming out that I’m making a mistake, that I’m meant to be on TV.

I do believe I’ve been given a gift of looking great on camera, being able to convey a message quickly, and think on my feet.  And I do not want to waste or deny that gift.  But, it will need to be utilized in some way that does not make me feel dirty afterward and that is driven by my highest level desires to make a real difference in the world and raise people to a new level of awareness.

So bye-bye Nancy Grace.  Please don’t call again.  I’m not available.

Photo courtesy of AP