Sometimes Women Need to Commit to the Rain

Inspiration for women entrepreneurs, women, female athletes

I must admit, when I was younger I was a fair weathered gal. I liked sunny days so I could swim in the lake or enjoy a winter ski day schussing down the snow covered slopes. Sunshine had a way of boosting my spirits no matter what I was doing. Most people are conditioned to stay inside when it’s raining or if the sun isn’t shining brightly. I never paid attention to being someone who avoided rain until recently.

In 2017 when I was training for the Boston Marathon I had to run 9 miles one rainy day to stay on my training regimen. It was one of those cold, bitter rains when the temperature hovered around 35 degrees. I remember being the only one running at a popular lake trail because the conditions were pretty bad. With rain hitting me in the face, I was determined to get in my miles and not let the conditions or loneliness of the run stop me because I had a larger goal – a goal to be ready to run 26.2 miles in whatever conditions I faced that day. I was proud of my numb self when I finally finished slapping my hands together in the air saying “Good job!”

This summer at our sibling reunion it started to rain. Everyone moaned because we wanted a ‘perfect’ sunny day of love, family and memories. The rain was dampening our spirits. I was sitting next to my twenty nine year old nephew, when he said to me, “Aunt Tracy, if you commit to the rain and getting wet, it doesn’t matter, it changes your attitude.” You know what he was right! Our family kept on laughing, cooking, and talking about memories of our joint parents, who were gone, ignoring the weather conditions. All that mattered was that we were together. We committed to being in the rain to be together, just like runners commit to the rain to keep training.

As women entrepreneurs we face ‘rain’ as we run or sit within our business dreams. No one, and I mean no one, makes it through a constant sunny business cycle forever. There are days when the rain comes in the form of a bad financial cycle, the loss of customers or trusted partners, long time employees leaving and a tiredness of just living the grind every day. Rain comes.

My rain has been in the form of losing all my hair. A once dark brown, fully headed hair woman entrepreneur producing and speaking at forty events a year around the state, has stepped out of the spotlight to take care of her health and reverse the condition. It was working. Hair was growing. Now it is back out and I’m bald – honestly bald. So I’m back to the beginning and the rain is here again. So what am I going to do….well to be honest with you after I’m done sending this out to my followers, I’m going to run in the rain, pump up my endomorphins and create a new plan of action. For today, I’m committing to the rain in more ways than one.

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom might inspire you to think of a time in your entrepreneurial life when the rain was coming down in buckets and you didn’t think it would ever stop. Did it eventually stop? Did conditions improve? Have you moved on to sunnier days? Is business better than ever or just different than before but still better? Let’s acknowledge today the rain is going to fall and we can’t stop it all the time so the best way to handle it is to ‘commit to the rain’ and run through it.

In fact, I’m committing to zip lining on Monday at our first Women TIES event since my medical sabbatical, with as many women entrepreneurs who want to join me in the sun or rain, to let go of stagnation and turn it into positive flowing energy. Are you with me?