Bring Success into Clear Focus

Brenda Stone - June 24, 2006 - Texas-Signing-Agent.com

Just like we left the "real" jobs for become a professional notary, and to be our own boss, we must be ready to leave full-time signings and develop strategies when low-ball competition causes the fee structuring to go completely haywire. 

It's doubtful to me that any of us woke up one morning in junior high and decided "I will become a notary signing agent."  Our dreams led us to this field for many reasons, but aspiring to becoming notaries was not one of them. 

If we are honest with ourselves, our jobs as signing agents became a stop in our career path  in order to possess one or more of the following.

• More time for family

• More time for self

• More income.

• Less stress

• Sense of control over life

Rather than fret over a business which is dwindling, we must recognize that success is an over all picture.

When our signing business wanes due to circumstances beyond our control, we must find other ways to get back one of the above-referenced five motivating factors.  We need to restore happiness, serenity and promise into our lives.

Remember that success is not just about a chosen business we run. 

It is an overall picture which will bring us wealth, prosperity and happiness in the entire collection of the stuff of life. A successful loan closing does not a successful business make. A successful business or favorable income does not a successful life make.
 

Do not depend wholly on your best clients, or your business for completing the circle of happiness you find yourself in when business is good.

Accept and realize that outside influences will insist you continue to think and prepare for the future.  Do not fall victim to circumstances which threaten your future. Consider what is really important to you. It's not just your signing business, it is all the things you love which you must pursue to find inner peace. 

You are limited only by your approach to life and to what YOU are willing to do, understand, learn and invest your time into.

Sit down with a pen and paper (or a keyboard and computer) and write out what you wish to achieve with your life and your money. Those lines of promise on paper of what you CAN achieve will keep you focused on the destination you aim for.   It may even save your life.  I feel this kind of doodling on my future's notepad saved mine and guided me through some roughly traveled times.

Our concept of success must be tweaked as changes occur in our lives.  We are often sent down paths we travel to find that they become dirt roads through dark places we did not know want to cross through  in order to get to the place we wanted to be. I have been on dark roads throughout my life and they were necessary detours for me to become who I am now, and for who I will become tomorrow.

I have always had secret and very personal goals of writing, self-employment, and encouraging others to follow their full potential. I am living part of my dreams. However, this dream would not be possible if I did not have a good feeling about the way I raised my boys. I had to accomplish my family responsibilities well when there was a family to raise.  There was a time in my life when my children's happiness had to take precedence over my own. When they were young, they took priority. Yet, while packing lunches and putting my funds into designer blue jeans I had a destination in mind.  Once my destination was clear to my my life's choices naturally chose to travel the road leading to where I wanted to go. 

There will be critical, if not crippling, set backs along the way.  Prepare for this with a clear vision of where you are going. You must accept that you will approach washed out bridges and dead ends.  You must adopt an attitude of positive thinking to get past them.  You must become a master at working around the rough spots.

Your desired destination, your can-do strategy, your dreams and your hopes will motivate you to work your way back to the main road to resume your journey.

My dreams for my life did not anticipate my husband's suicide and a plunge into years of dark depression complicated by other toxic influences which had to be dealt with at the same time.

It was, however, during this time that I began to seriously write and "talk to the paper" because I was afraid to talk to people around me for fear of rejection of my thoughts about how events and situations made me see things.

There were no people around me I felt comfortable dumping so much on. My children did not need to know I was so depressed. My mother was rightfully enjoying a new love in her life and did not need it. My sister would have been distraught to know how "icky" I was seeing things in my life.

Rather than giving up and becoming bitter, I turned to writing.  I learned to write with full passion and emotion about things that made me angry or sad, and the injustices that I knew existed.   I wrote voluminously and began unleash toxic things I felt and the writing let it go and let me get out from under what had made me so sad.

It was during the darkest hours and the most hopeless days I became in touch with who I really am.  I learned to recognize that I was at the bottom, yet still healthy, well, and alive and totally in charge of my destiny.

During those times my perspective on success became the simple job of fighting my way through a day without becoming suicidal myself. I heard a little voice tell me "okay, you want to write, so start practicing." My dreams were there to guide me to a needed therapeutic release.

I do honestly believe that finding a path to my signing agent business was one of the ways which my life detoured nicely to create an inroad to achieve my dreams.  It made the difference between a satisfying  life where I got out and met people in the new town I found myself in as opposed to being afraid to leave the house for fear panic would overtake me.

I hope one day to write a story about this, but the truth of it all is that I feel my little business saved my life.  Part of that are the readers who lift my credibility in my own eyes as a writer of things which help people.  I am so very truly grateful for every notary across the USA who has read my words. You were essential to my progress.  You have been my good friend, though you are many, you are a collective body of one I look forward to communicating with.

Though you did not know it, each of you is very important to me.  You made life worth living again in so many ways while I buttoned on a happy face to fool my family.  You brightened my days tremendously when I had nothing to live for once my chicks were gone, my husband dead and my world was black.   God blessed me with you.

I am even grateful to the anons who plague me on notary forums!

Thank you all for making me care about something again. I will never be able to completely leave this business behind because of every single one of you reading this. It will always be my original readers--the notaries--who have made my life personally rewarding, who made me brave enough to write for others, who gave me such personal satisfaction that I rebuilt my life.  You often made life worth getting out of bed for. Though I am not as clearly spoken, or as polished as I'd like to be due to time constraints and just getting my newsletters out of the door, I know you read what I write and that is so encouraging to me.

If I had received letters from other notaries as a bother, rather than an honor to be considered worthy of having enough smarts to help another, this would have back fired.  I am not bragging on me for that, it was an attitude which was cultivated out of a need to be happy.

How you receive your world will have a large affect on how your world receives you.

Our success is what we make it.  Our success will depend on how we perceive the uncomfortable and often dark roads we are forced to detour into.

More than ever, each day I realize that it is what  builds my character and makes me a better person. 

The unplanned and uncharted territory I cover on my journey is often the most revealing.

So many times people say things like "you give so much to notaries."  I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to say, "but the notaries have given so much to me."  And, I truly mean it.

May God deeply and richly bless each and every person who reads this.

That you are in my life is a miracle to me. I am so eternally grateful I found you.

Until next time, I remain, with a grateful heart to all of you,
Brenda Stone,
Your Humble Correspondent and Happy Texas Notary Pubisher

To send feedback on this article, go here