Secrets of Six Figure Women

Here's an interesting list of characteristics, taken from the book Secrets of Six Figure Women, by Barbara Stanny, which I heartily recommend. She says you should try to whittle the list down to five values you couldn't live without. I managed to get it down to about 11, but had a hard time after that.

Go ahead, you try it.

Achievement
Adventure
Beauty
Being free
Being generous
Brother/Sisterhood
Charity
Comfort
Community
Creativity
Dignity
Discovery
Family
God
Growth
Happiness
Health
Honesty
Honor
Humility
Independence
Individuality
Influence
Integrity
Intimacy
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Leaving a legacy
Leisure
Life partner
Love
Making a difference
Parenting
Patriotism
Peace
Physical activity
Power
Retirement
Security
Seeing the world
Self-discipline
Self-esteem
Service
Simplicity
Spirituality
Strength
Success
Time alone
Truth
Using my talents

If you show me yours, I'll show you mine...

lesson learned

I have a theory:

Everything happens for a reason. And the key to making the most out of life is focusing on learning the right lesson from your mishaps. [although that word, "mishap," is one of those words that distracts me. Shouldn't it be pronounced "Mis-shap?"]

So, earlier this summer I was repeatedly getting cancelled on at the last minute, and it was starting to drive me out of my mind. "Don't you have the consideration," I would shout to my empty shower (in lieu of said cancellers), "to think ahead and make a plan you can stick to?!?!" And I would roil and stomp and do all those things we do when we think nobody else is looking.

I thought (naively) "what lesson could there POSSIBLY be in this crap?!?" and then tabled the discussion with myself, and just kept on trucking.

And then I got stood up. I didn't think much about why that happened, I just thought, "oh poo, a Friday night ruined" and "eh, he sucks" and I went home. Well, last night I got stood up AGAIN, by someone else entirely, under completely different circumstances. (He, too, was a douchebag about it, though, TEXTING me a weak apology and asking me to hang out later if my previous plans fell through. I should have made a plan with him and then stood HIM up! Drats! Next time!) And that conversation I was going to have with myself jumped right up off that table and came waltzing into my brain.

I learned two things:

1. I would much rather be cancelled on at the last minute than stood up; and
2. It is far better to have risked and flopped than not to have risked at all.