If your tree falls in the forest…

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I’ve been doing some updates and tweaks to my website in the last couple of weeks, as I’ve been newly inspired to quit “whispering” about what I REALLY love about my work and start shouting about it.  And what I REALLY love is uncovering the hidden dynamics of relationships – all relationships that impact a practitioner’s success, including those with clients, colleagues and community – to help them better get their message out there, be more successful and most importantly, incredibly happy doing what they love.

So one of the sentences I blurted onto the page was “If your business falls in the forest and no one is around to realize it, does it make a sad, falling apart sound?” and my answer is a resounding NO.  Leaving aside for the moment the question about what your business is doing in the forest (unless your business is forest-related in which case, good on ya!), I wanted to tease out the why of my big, fat NO.

The short of it is – without anyone around to recognize, appreciate, support your business, you don’t have a business in the first place.  Same is true in life:  without your relationships, you may have an existence (though, how would you really know for sure?) but you don’t have a LIFE.  We have to matter to someone.  Someone has to value us.  Not everyone will and that’s okay – that’s appropriate – not everyone is everyone else’s cup of tea.  But someone has to or we cease to matter.

My clients value the work I do, and I know this not only because they say it (they don’t need to), but because I’m still in business.  I in turn value them, but not only them.  From the get-go I recognized that all of my relationships are what keep me in business – clients; friends, colleagues & clients of clients; my own friends & family (who often think I’m a bit nutty for working for myself); those I count on to assist when work piles up; the girls at Dunkin Donuts who know my coffee order…  all of them equally valuable to me.  And when one begins to slip, they all do, because that’s how life works.  Likewise, shoring up one shores up the others.

So here’s to you, me and all of those with whom we’re in relationships, business or otherwise; and here’s to our trees remaining upright as long as we are!