All About You FRIDAY – Three Organ Decision (Mornings with Bob)

Diagram of head, heart, and gut connections.

Owning a business is no small feat. Unlike my late husband, who was born an entrepreneur, I went kicking and screaming into business. “You’re just sticking your toe in the water,” he said as I was launching a seminar/consulting business while I still working my full-time PT job with benefits. I was, after all, the perfect employee.

But in August of 2002, I took the plunge. Armed with a large line of credit and fueled by the confidence that I could change the world, I opened my doors in a large 4,300 square foot commercial space and hired four of the best people I knew. “If you build it, they will come,” someone once said. Little did I know it wasn’t yet going to be my field of dreams.

I have lived through a lot of challenging things: losing my parents, raising an autistic son, being widowed at a young age. But nothing has brought me to my knees more times than owning my own business. The weight of the responsibility of carrying a payroll, marketing and treating enough patients to keep the doors open was burying me. I had entered the decision prayerfully, but my struggles left me thinking I’d taken a wrong turn.

“I don’t know what to do!” I wrote in frustration one morning to Bob. My line of credit had been depleted. I’d managed to make payroll, but I had not paid myself a dime for months. I had some big decisions to make.

“Tap into your three organs,” he said. “Check in with your head, your heart and your gut and when all those organs say ‘yes’, then take the leap.”

My head, the thinking, analytical part of me. My heart, the part of me that feels emotion. My gut, my intuition and experience. God gave me those three organs. It’s only right that I use them.

25 years later, I have a business that looks very different from what I had imagined and so much better than I could have ever dreamed. It isn’t the large, bustling orthopedic facility I had originally hoped. Instead, it is a solid practice drawing people who need solutions to tough problems guided by some of the best people in the business, employees who have hunkered down with me for 20 years or more. It is the launching point for my consistent learning and it feeds my soul.

My field of dreams happened after all.

Make decisions with your three organs: head, heart and gut. Your journey may not turn out like you originally planned. It may actually turn out better.

It’s been a long week. Don’t forget to celebrate.

Until next time…