Are There Walls In Your Life?

Have you ever assumed that certain people in your life don’t really care what you did?  That may be putting it bluntly, but I know people who truly believe that the people closest to them don’t really care what they do.  Don’t you think that is a sad place to be?  Yet many people in this world operate out of that place.  Many people work their jobs 9-5 to pay the bills and pass the time.  Some genuinely love their jobs, others find their jobs bearable, but some feel a void inside.  They may feel that the people closest to them do not even know them – and they have trouble being close to them.  There’s a wall.

If that wall doesn’t come down, at least in part, then you’ll never know how sweet and awesome God designed intimate relationships to be.  There was a time that a wall existed between my husband and me concerning my business.  I didn’t think he cared what I did.  But I made a mistake – he does care.  I just didn’t let him care because I assumed he didn’t care.  When I finally realized that, I let go and allowed him to see my heart and soul for business.  I opened up.  I shared more with him what I really want to accomplish through my business, and that is to intentionally impact people to live a meaningful life – physically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually.  I wanna see people get healed and set free from walls they put up around themselves.  Walls they do not yet see – or if they see it, walls that are too high and intimidating to tear down by themselves.  My business is a vehicle for me to reach out and touch lives everyday, so that people can experience an overflowing of true love, joy, hope and peace.  There will be challenges, don’t get me wrong.  Life is not gonna be easy.  But, is life worth it for you?  And do you have a loving community of people to share it with?

When I made the decision to share my heart in business with my spouse, guess what happened?  A wall came down.  Prior to that, I did not realize how much his opinion about my business means to me.  My spouse’s opinion not only matters to me, it affects me profoundly at the core of who I am.  That is because we share the same core values in life.  What is important to me is important to him – what is important to him is important to me.  When that hit home for me, I felt my whole foundation in business shifted right on over to more solid and fertile ground.  A profound shift.  And our mindset changed.  Now it is our business.

The next wall was with my parents.  I never knew that they believed in me about anything.  It wasn’t anything they did or didn’t do, it is the Chinese culture of their generation.  As a general practice, parents didn’t tell their children anything positive about themselves – even if they’re proud of them.  In fact, it is not uncommon for those parents to say the opposite of how they feel – kinda like the reverse psychology way of motivating their children to be better.  It is also not uncommon for Asian children to hear that they are worthless, useless, and good for nothing.  That is why you’ll find many Chinese kids very confused about who they are and more often than not nursing deep wounds from their past.  Some are silent sufferers because they do not want to make it public and risk disrupting the family honor.

God is using our business to bring healing to the relationships closest to me.  I do a lot of networking, and I had always networked with business people in the community.  But I dared not network with my own family and friends for this very reason I just shared with you – the walls of fear and pain from the past.  After I opened up to my spouse, then I shared more with my parents.  I was scared!  But God helped me, and guess what happened?  They joined us in one aspect of our business!  I didn’t ask them to join us, they saw the value of the product and said, “We’ll help get word out about this.”  I’m tearing up as I write this…there is NOTHING more that they can do at that point to communicate to me the most loving, most healing thing they’ve done for me in my own love language in YEARS.  That spoke volumes to me.  I’ve NEVER heard them say, “Daughter, I believe in you.”  But when they got behind me 110%, even if they didn’t say it verbally, I heard it through their actions, “Daughter, we believe in you.”  I can’t tell you what that did to me, but my heart knows.  And my heart soared.

Tags: Appreciation, Art of Listening, Mindset