Simple Lesson learned…My “aha” moment…

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I am a mentor. Did I ever tell you that? Every week I go to my son’s school and meet my little girl. I was told she needed some extra help with math.

I started mentoring this little girl in February and in all this time we have not dipped into math at all. My mentee (is that even a word?) never seems to remember to bring her math book with her and so every week we just sit and talk while she eats lunch. We spend about 30 minutes just talking about what she has done that week at school, how things are at home, what I've been up to, my family and other bits of this and that.

So today as I was busy working on my new website, & finishing up an order I was doing some mental fussing about not wanting to go meet my mentee today. I just had so much I wanted to get done. I even thought about just not showing up thinking I really wouldn’t be missed. “We never practice math anyway”, I thought.

However, I showed up and learned a valuable lesson!

My little girl had a big smile waiting for me when I appeared. She didn’t have her math book as usual yet this time I didn’t care. She grabbed her lunch, came outside to meet me and explained how she looks for me every week. We found our usual bench and began our weekly catching up session. She told me about a new book she had and so we took turns reading to each other.

My “aha moment”…it wasn’t about the math!! Duh!

Here I was feeling badly every week because I felt like I wasn’t doing my job. I was suppose to be helping her with math, wasn’t I? Yet, I was helping her. For those 30 minutes I was connecting with her. I was listening thoughtfully, sharing and just being with her.

It made me think about life in general and this journey I’ve taken of living more simply, and embracing the “real” simple moments in life. I write about living Simply, living Lovely. I strive to create handmade products that embody that sentiment.  I really do make a conscious effort to bring simplicity into my life as much as possible. But, I am human.

It took this nine year old, sweet little girl to remind me of what is really important. It isn’t always about the “doing” but about the “just SIMPLY being” and connecting. So I think for the remainder of the day, I will put the orders away, shut down the computer and just connect to what really matters. The rest can wait til tomorrow.

Had any “aha” moments lately? How do you reconnect to what is truly important? How do you embrace simplicity in your life?

Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you will take time to be kind to yourself.

As always, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below or feel free to email me at tania@shopindobayinc.com.

~live SIMPLY, live LOVELY~

 

Simply Thought{FULL}…

Sending out the positive today with much love!

~live SIMPLY, live LOVELY~

{image from a thousand words tumblr}

What’s New Wednesday…A Call for Your Help

Hi there! Hope your day is going along smoothly. I on the other hand experienced some technical difficulties this morning called “my car won’t start!” a.k.a.—a VERY DEAD  battery. Luckily all I needed was a quick dose of AAA and a car mechanic…problem solved!

So speaking of technical…part of my 2011 goal of growing my biz included designing and creating a brand spanking new website.

Ya see, the site I have now is really just a blogger blog that I’ve kind of rigged into a “make shift” website. However,  I realized if I am serious about growing the business I needed my website to reflect this growth and function like a “real, grown-up” site.

So with all that being said, I have been working quite diligently and obsessively to get my site functioning the way I would like. If I haven’t already mentioned it, I decided to ATTEMPT  to create my website without hiring a web designer, but with the assistance of web designer Tara Gentile and her webdesign course. This has been an absolute crazy ride full of anxiety, frustration, “aha moments”, pride, defeat, and triumph. I can say without a doubt that this has been a challenge that I have embraced fully and that I’ve developed a love/hate relationship for. My Mr. keeps telling me to go ahead and hire a web designer but I scoff at the idea! He should know me better than that…I will meet this challenge head on as I usually do.

So, as much as I would like to do this on my own, I realized I am not building this site for me. I am building it for YOU. Therefore, I would like to ask for your help.

I want my site to be pretty and reflect me and my brand. More importantly I want it to function so that all the information that you as a visitor would want and need is right there for you to peruse and share easily.

If you have a few moments, I would love your feedback about what functions you would like to see on the new indobay inc. site.

When you  visit a website, what are the things that frustrate you as well as make visiting someone’s site a pleasure. I know for me, if I don’t see an easy way to contact the person, I usually won’t take the time to find out how.

Whatever information you think would help me in my endeavour will be highly valuable. If you see a website that you love, please feel free to share the link with me and let me know what it is about this site that you love and that makes you want to go back to it.

Feel free to leave me a comment below or if you’d prefer, you can e-mail me at tania@shopindobayinc.com.

If all goes well, I am hoping to launch the new site at the end of this month. Wish me luck and thank you so much for your feedback. I really do appreciate it.

live SIMPLY, live LOVELY

{click photo for source}