Wednesday Wisdom: Not in a Million Years

Wednesday Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, and Small Businesses

As a Barry Manilow song serenaded my way to a special event, memories of hearing my cousin playing it on the piano flooded my mind. Unlike his older brothers, my cousin wasn’t moved by pick-up basketball, playing softball games, or doing construction. He was inspired by music, painting, and the arts like his older sister. I loved all my cousins but Tommy held a special place in my heart.

Unlike his father and brothers, he did not go to medical school to follow in the paternal profession of the males in his family but rather received a finance degree to help run his family’s real estate businesses, but his art bug wouldn’t leave him alone. Finally following his own heart, he ended up with a Master of Arts from a college in Savannah, Georgia, and began painting. His dream was to be known as a breathtaking painter of the sky.

Loving his photographs, I knew he would make it as a painter one day, but he didn’t believe in himself until this week when he was inducted into the Rome Arts Hall of Fame. He started by saying, “Never in a million years could I imagine getting this honor.” Words and thoughts most of us have when we are dreaming and chasing our own success. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way,” he said. An additional sentiment we can each claim in our own life story.

After the event was over, he showed me a beautiful yellow-hued painting someone purchased from his collection, he told me the buyer looked at his creation and said, “It speaks to me of hope so I must have it.” Isn’t it amazing that our work in most cases provides hope to others? It isn’t the reason we get into business or create what we offer, but if you think of most professions, they do offer hope of some kind.

So, today’s Wednesday Wisdom is meant to steady your course if you are wavering on whether what you do matters or if you will ever achieve your loftiest dream, just wait, be patient, keep up with your own form of “art”, and before you know it you will be saying the same thing my cousin said to me decades after he picked up a paintbrush, “I would have never guessed in a million years, I would be standing here being recognized for my work.”