100% Respsonsibility

So this has been a long time coming. I've been off and on again read "The Success Principles" and I'm back to reading it. Ingrid is also reading it, and chapter by chapter we're going to be blogging about it. Our successes and our failures. Everyone has a failure before a success. Big or small.

To get back on topic, the first chapter is 100% responsibility. It's saying, don't blame others....to get on the path of your success we need to take 100% responsibility of everything in our lives. I did before and changed my friends. I changed everything about my life, stopped drinking completely. It was all or nothing.

Now, the most recent thing that I blamed something or someone else on was an opening for the gallery. It was the November Opening. We do first Saturday openings and I blamed it on 3 events that happened OTHER that our doing. Here is what they were: The election, the Phillies winning, and Halloween and what it actually comes down to is that we, Jonathan and I, didn't do our job to promote the gallery. The gallery's success, or mine personally, doesn't depend on artists bringing their friends, it depends on US to tell Philadelphia and the surrounding areas that we exist, that we are the new gallery in town.

Lately, we've been getting better. Promoting at bars with coasters is our newest adventure. But now, we must give up ALL excuses. I'm sure there are more that I can't think about but all excuses are gone. It is my fault that things don't work out, and you know what that means...I have to do my part to make it work out. Instead I'm going to be proactive rather than reactive. Prevent a bad opening by promoting.

To quote Jack Canfield the author "Everything you think, say, and do need to become intentional, and aligned with your purpose, values, and goals."

So what is my purpose? The gallery is my main focus and of course it is to make a living, but I want to just pay rent with it. I don't need anything more than that. I also want to bring art to people at an affordable price, to enrich their lives.

What are my values? To be an honest business owner, to bring a community together, and to keep grounded.

And my goals? Well...I guess that a little like my purpose now that I think about that. To be successfully happy in what I'm doing. Enrich lives while surviving.

I've changed a lot in the past few years but there's still a lot to change. #1 is to give up blaming.