Stop. drop and be reasonable. Before you leave that scathing review about how your server didn’t bring your ketchup timely, or rush to get your child their fourth Coke, please employee reason before you tear down and damage someone’s hard-earned business with intolerance and unreasonable expectations.

I am not a reviewer. Why? Probably because I have no desire to be the authority on everything, but more importantly, I am a business owner, and I understand and respect the incredible amount of dedication and hard work that goes into making a company run.

“The lesson is don’t confuse living out “loud”, with just being ‘loud,’”
— Elizabeth Skenes Millen —

I believe those who live the “loudest” are not “loud” at all; the most impactful people are those who are kind, humble, loving, giving and understanding, even when others are not kind, humble, loving, giving or understanding to them. Do you get how mentally strong and secure one has to be to do this? Especially in this pitiful day and age when throwing the middle finger up, or yelling obscenities, is the norm.

People have great expectations, except maybe when it comes to their children helping with the dishes. However, when it comes to answering a text message or a phone call, people expect urgency, immediacy…right now!

And, many get angry if they are not responded to within seconds.
Texting is out of control. People text at all hours with no regard to family time, business hours (and non-business hours), sleep or even school. Yes, many parents text their children throughout the school day. At what point did it become acceptable for moms to text their children during class? What is so important it can’t wait until after school?

What lesson is this teaching children? Why do people—
parents, students, teachers and school administrators—think this is OK?

“The creative adult is the child who survived.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin —

I counted 99 self-help books as I categorized the sections on the bookshelf in my bedroom. That number, 99, does not include any self-help books I have at the office, in one of my various business totes, in the car, on Audible, or that I have passed on to others. Does that make me a self-help junkie? Well, I don’t think so since I don’t feel the need to read self-help every day, nor do I have a problem working fiction into my reading mix.

I like to read and I enjoy learning. As I scan through the titles and topics of the nearly 100 books, I see help on things such as losing weight, breaking up with sugar, good leadership, self-discipline, financial peace, becoming a bad ass, living my best possible life, being successful, daring greatly, untethering my soul and having no excuses. In all of that guidance, not one of this genre on my shelf is about creativity—being creative, finding creativity or maximizing creativity.

Are you guilty of labeling yourself? I am. Any time adventure or travel or camping comes up in a conversation, I immediately label myself: “I’m not very adventurous!” “I’ve never really been a traveler.” “Camping? I’m not what you would call outdoorsy.”

It was a Sunday afternoon in May that I spent time on Lake Murray, the beautiful, 50,000-acre man-made lake right outside of Columbia, SC, where I grew up. I was lying across the back of a friend’s pontoon, staring at the water and thinking about all the days I had spent on this lake. My family had a lake house my whole life until a year before my father died in 2008. As thoughts of lake days gone by meandered through my head, I had an epiphany: I am an adventurer, and I’m outdoorsy, too!