I am NOT a Professional…

That’s probably not something you should admit on your business website, but it is definitely how this week has left me feeling. I had one of “THOSE weeks”… you know the ones that feel like it’s just one long Monday that spreads over 168 hours!! When my confidence was SUPER high I had over-committed, then life happened and I was left feeling completely inadequate. All week when trying to juggle it all and I’ll admit I was very pessimistic, telling myself things like “why did you sign up to be team mom of the soccer team?! You aren't adult enough to handle that too” and “what could you possibly write in a blog, you aren’t a professional.” So in true Kelley fashion, I am going to try to turn my weakness around and just own the fact that I am not a professional.

If you have ever sat through one of my Sunday school lessons you would know, whenever I go to learn about something I start with the facts. (I could go on for days on my beliefs on the importance of knowing what words mean, the power of words, using them correctly and if you give yourself at “title” you need to know what that means!) The definition of professional is (1):

ADJECTIVE 1 Relating to or belonging to a profession.

1.1 Worthy of or appropriate to a professional person; competent, skillful, or assured.

2 Engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as an amateur.

2.1 derogatory, informal habitually making a feature of a particular activity or attribute.

NOUN 3 A person engaged or qualified in a profession.

3.1 A person engaged in a specified activity, especially a sport, as a main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.

3.2 A person competent or skilled in a particular activity.

Knowing this didn’t help me at all! You start throwing words out like “worthy, qualified, and competent” out and I automatically feel inept! It could be low self-esteem, but I choose to believe it is more that I am a perfectionist and I always a see what I could have done better. No matter how much experience I have in an area of my life, I have this constant feeling I can do it better. I mean, I’ve been a parent for almost 14 years and I don’t feel like a professional!!

Now knowing professional isn’t the title I will wear, I needed to find what would describe me in this business venture. I started by looking at synonyms of professional. A few examples I found were: skilled, experienced, skillful, crackerjack, expert, sharp, there, practiced (2). I am practiced and there and a crackerjack sounded cool to me, none of these felt described me. This made me feel even less of a professional. So I walked away from writing the blog, so of course, that means I played on my phone. What I found hit me hard. I had a message from a friend telling me how proud they were of me for taking this step and wishing me luck and success. My daughter's friend had gone and liked every picture I have posted, like my blog from last week and even shared my website on Facebook and said super sweet things. I also had a friend that had thought of business for an event her mops group is having wanted to see if I wanted to donate some items because she thinks the ladies in her group would love my work and even give me a little advertisement. I was so overwhelmed! It was such a great reminder of why I took this leap to begin with! I may not be a professional but, what I lack as in the expert I make up with heart! I am inspired by the people around me that take the time to encourage me. I am loved by a group of people that see how much of myself I am pouring into everything I do! I am passionate to make beautiful things for the world around me. I’ll take all this over feeling like a professional any day!

1*Definition of professional was copied from: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/professional

2 *Examples of synonyms of profession were found from: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/professional