DanyelleLittle.com

Digital Debutante

My Word for 2016: Expansion

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Danyelle-LittleSince moving forward as a displaced career woman turned Mompreneur and Digital Debutante, I have selected a word of vision as I move into a new year. For 2016, the stakes are higher, and so are my goals. Because of this journey and the steps taken to get here, I am living a life I never knew I could. But not one for complacency or comfortability, I want to up the ante once and again and challenge myself to embark on new soil. So after a lot of thought and careful self-reflecting, I’ve chosen expansion as my word for 2016.

Why expansion?

Merriam Webster defines expansion as the act of becoming bigger or making something bigger. I want to super size my ambition, and in doing that, create more opportunities that I can spread my wings creatively and professionally. I want to add more titles to my name. I want to truly gamble on something that could be a game changer. But most of all, I want to help other working parents thrive, grow, and succeed.

So what does expansion look like to me, you may ask.

Here are a few examples of just some of the plans I have for the upcoming year (I am listing these not out of ego, but for accountability):

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Cut My Mic Off Please.

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The Cubicle Chick Hawaii Ko'Lina

I’ve come to realize that now that I am 40, even though I am a huge people person with a strong and vibrant outgoing personality, I am very much a loner.

I enjoy truly spending time by myself (I think it’s the only child in me). Some people think this is because I am standoffish or stuck up, self-centered, or just insensitive, but I like my space. I like having time to myself.  I spend so much time “on” with my blog and online business endeavors, that when I get an opportunity to unplug for real, it’s cut my mic off please time.

We’ve got to remember this as we go about our daily lives running our empires. In our quest to be the hottest thing on the web, we can forget that it’s okay to go somewhere and be quiet for awhile. Everyone will be there when you get back, and you will have a chance to make much needed logged-off moments. If someone really needs you, they will reach out to you. And if you miss something, you can totally catch up when you log back in.

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Ego.

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ego: the opinion that you have about yourself.

An ego can be a tricky thing. It can have you feeling yourself even when it isn’t warranted. It can have you believing that you are the bomb dot org, net, com, info, tv, etc.—which can be a good thing, because if you don’t believe it, who will? But the ego can also have you wrapped up in mistruths about yourself that you go on believing for years only to find out that in reality, it’s not true.

The ego can be a gift and a curse.

When you do what I do, you’ve got to have a strong ego. You are constantly selling yourself. Come to my website, read my content, come to hear me speak, download my book, follow me online, recommend me to others, listen to my podcast—all of this requires that you have a positive opinion about who you are. And it is that very feeling that can get you caught up into believing your own hype and playing into our delusions on grandeur.

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A hard head makes a soft …

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A hard head makes a soft (a… shut your mouth).

My dad used to say this to me upon certain occasions as I was growing up. I didn’t fully understand what he meant until recently. I mean, I got the point he was trying to make with his crass and sometimes foul mouth and tone, but I didn’t comprehend the actuality that he was doing his best to express when I was younger. Now that I have been doing a lot of reflecting and soul-searching as of late (I think it’s because I am approaching 40 and stuff and this is the type of behavior that you indulge in as you step closer to middle age), I’ve found myself thinking about this old school saying and wondering to myself, why? What does this all mean?

We’ve all heard the saying, supposedly spoken by Albert Einstein (Benjamin Franklin and Unknown has been attributed to this quote as well): “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Of course, insanity in its medical definition is hardly that easy to describe. But I do get the meaning behind the madness. If you keep repeating behaviors that don’t get you anywhere (or least, don’t get you where you want to be), why repeat them? Why not try something new? Why not charge it to the game and move on to hopefully greener and more fruitful pastures?

Because, as humans, I think we like pain. I think we like the whole whoa is me scenario when it benefits us. And when it doesn’t, why many of us just cry foul.

I am one of those many people.

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A Life Or Death Situation…

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We were on our way to the Social Fabric Conference being held in Rogers, Arkansas near the home of Walmart. The weather was less than stellar, as we had been driving on the road for over two hours in constant rain. The new decked out Kia Soul we were loaned was full of technological advances, so we are listening to tunes on Spotify via iPhone being sent through the car’s speakers with a techy wire. Everything seemed great; two close friends taking a road trip together to get some learning and networking done. Then all of a sudden, things took a turn…

We hit a slick spot on the road while going about 55 miles per hour during a steady rain. The car begins to spin as you feel like you are losing control of the vehicle. We are spinning and spinning—you don’t hear anything. It’s pitch black—no lights, no nothing, just darkness. There’s no noise other than the music coming from the speakers. My friend was mostly silent with an occasional grunt or moan. No screams, no yells of help. The road is black and desolate. And we are spinning and spinning  and spinning out of control. It seems like an eternity and you just want the car to make impact if it’s going to. We both are bracing for it because, at any second, we going to hit something. Or a car coming our way is going to hit us.

More spinning. You try not to panic but you know it’s not looking good. You can’t think straight because this may be the end of your life.

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