Fearless Fabulous Females Ezine
Ideas, resources, and tools to help you can gain greater clarity and commitment to create a life filled with fun and fulfillment.
- Issue: Vol. 1, No. 16
- Date: September 13, 2007
In this Issue
> Feature Article:
Waitress Dreams
> Teleconferences and Programs:
Fearless, Fabulous Life Launch Tele-Boot Camp
>Andrea’s Bookshelf:
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
> Fearless Recommendation:
The Power of Attitude
Andrea Williams, Publisher Andrea@FearlessFabulousLife.com
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Published Weekly
ISSN 1937-5026
A Note from Andrea
I’ve been quiet for a few weeks, as I’ve prepared to offer the next round of my 90-day group coaching program—Fearless, Fabulous Life Launch. Getting the word out takes lots of energy and creativity. Fun but hard work, and it takes putting myself on the line.
This past year has been filled with learning lots of new things, particularly about how to run a business. I chose to conduct most of my business using the Internet, since a lot of coaching can happen over the phone. So, I had to plan for websites, learn how to set up eCommerce, tackle the vagaries of marketing in a new realm, all the while being sure to provide good service to my clients.
Early next year, I’ll take my coaching on the road in the form of workshops and seminars and also working with corporate managers and executives. So I’m embarking on a new round of learning, as I enhance my skills set and gain knowledge about how to use even more new tools.
I love to challenge myself with new things. But I’m just like you. With each new hurdle or challenge, I experience new fears and uncertainty. Will I be able to learn this? Will I get good at it? Will people think I’m crazy?
I exercise my risk “muscle” regularly. My natural curiosity and energy propel me past most doubts pretty quickly. But for anyone, simple recognition that you are entering a new phase—and seeking sufficient time to learn, space to grow, and support to cheer you—is sometimes all it takes to get centered and eager for what comes next.
Teleconferences, Workshops, and Programs
Fearless, Fabulous Life Launch Tele-Boot Camp
Begins October 2
Two 30-Minute Preview Calls
The next Fearless, Fabulous Life Launch 90-Day Tele-Boot Camp starts Tuesday, October 2. Position yourself for great things in 2008! Call in one of two times next week to hear an overview of what we’ll be up to during each week of the program and the benefits you’ll enjoy from your participation. Early bird pricing ends September 21!
Date: Tuesday, September 18 at 7 PM EST
Phone-Number to Dial: 218-486-3694
Use Conference ID: 6471050#
Date: Wednesday, September 19 at 5 PM EST
Phone-Number to Dial: 218-486-3694
Use Conference ID: 6471050#
Feature
Waitress Dreams
During college and through my mid-twenties, I waitressed to pay for courses and my first apartment and then the usual stuff of life: lodging, transportation, food and fun!
I worked at Newick’s Lobster House in Dover, New Hampshire. It was a casual restaurant set up with picnic tables covered in red and white check plastic tablecloths, serving mostly fried fish—one-, two- or three-way combos, and fisherman’s platters—and lobsters and steamers. Cold beer, mixed drinks, a few baked fish and landlubber items and the popular “lobster stew” rounded out the offerings, all served on paper and plastic.
I was eager, energetic, and pretty good at what I was doing, so the “station” I was assigned a lot of the time was the one furthest from the kitchen (a bank of window tables overlooking Little Bay). It was worth it, since guests who got seated at those tables were happy for the view and great service and tipped accordingly.
Building Anew from Scratch
In the early 80s, the restaurant burned to the ground. So that summer, the waitresses had the option of filling shifts for the crew in the sister restaurant in Hampton, NH and the fry cooks and busboys (all guys) got to work construction putting a replacement restaurant on Dover Point as quickly as possible.
Resented as upstarts and poor cousins by the Hampton crew and losing money like crazy, I approached Jack Newick and persuaded him that the women should also be a part of the construction crew. He assented, and a few of us immediately traded our polyester dresses and white shoes for shorts, T-shirts, and sneakers. Up on scaffolding, we hung ceiling tiles inside and stained the outside.
The restaurant was opened within weeks—even before everything was finished, including the building of replacement tables for seating our customers. As enough were completed, a new station would be put back into service. Customers flocked to the place, eager to see the progress and to resume their fish feeding frenzy. We were busier than we’d ever been with long lines stretching out the door most days and nights.
An Insurmountable Challenge?
Looking back, those days were busy but pretty straightforward. If I thought relationships and responsibilities were complex then… well, I guess I was a bit green. Of course every age has its stresses, and I remember how mine used to manifest back then.
After a particularly tiring two-shift, often 12-hour day of race walking from one end of the building to another, I would get home at night (sometimes after a few hours of drinking and dancing in a local bar) and once asleep dream about a busy day of waitressing. Arrgh! Enough already!
In these dreams, the kicker was that each time I emerged from the kitchen a new table would have been added to my station. This happened months after the rebuilding was complete. The night-time challenge was to juggle my current tables, notice when the new tables were added (nobody would tell me, so the customers would have already been waiting a while), deliver the ever increasing amounts of food to the right customers, and keep everybody—my boss included—happy. Yikes.
Life Said, “Get Real, Stop Dreaming”
Even though I stopped waitressing after college and moved on to office work and professional togs, these dreams still popped up when I was extremely overtired or overworked. In time, though, I learned to pace myself, get appropriate rest, and I developed a fair amount of confidence as I became proficient in the skills needed to do my jobs and took on more responsibility.
And in recent years, with that much more experience and success in overcoming challenges, I felt confident and capable, deciding to move on to a new profession and to start another business.
So why am I sharing this story? Well, a few weeks ago I had my first waitress dream in over 15 years. I wondered why on earth would I be visited once again by these evening excursions into food service?
The funny thing about these dreams—twenty-five years ago and now—is that I never fail in them. It used to be that I was challenged physically and mentally to do the impossible; one women cannot really wait on and reasonably satisfy 12 tables of famished families simultaneously without sacrificing good service and one’s sanity. But that didn’t seem to be the point.
The dreams were a manifestation of my system being under stress. When I was in my early twenties, it was the combination of physical fatigue paired with the uncertainties and doubts I carried around as I established myself in the adult world. Too busy to be thoughtful during my waking days and nights, my mind processed my feelings while I slept.
Always Evolving & Learning New Things
My latest waitress dream was different than the ones from long ago. In the sequel, it’s not that I race to keep up with the frenetic pace of too many tables and people to serve. In this dream, the world has been updated and I struggle to figure out how it works.
I no longer need to memorize tax charts, legibly write complex orders on my two-part carbon forms, and repeatedly pop my head into the kitchen to check on the status of my orders. Instead, all my manual systems are a thing of the past. Everything has been computerized. I realize that I don’t know how to use the touch screen to place orders, compute the totals on my checks, or learn when I’m scheduled for shifts. And, of course, all the staff has turned over, too.
So my old late-night movie has been updated to match the new and biggest stressor in my life: technology. I am immersed in learning and mastering the new systems and processes that have been put in place over the quarter century. It’s not that I can’t keep up, it’s that everything is different—I’m different, too—and I need to make the appropriate adjustments.
It’s a Sign of Progress
I’m reaping the benefit of all these years gone by. I no longer have to memorize every detail of every project, my schedule isn’t subject to the whims of others (or the quality of the fish), and I don’t have to wear myself out physically to earn a living. I wonder how many hours of my life I spent prepping my order slips with the date and my initials ahead of my busy shifts. These changes are good things—whether I’m sleeping or awake!
Are you struggling to change or keep up in some area of your life? Figuring it out—learning new rules and tools—does put a strain on the system. Same concepts apply, no matter which “waitress dream” might be playing in our heads. We need to pace ourselves, rest and refuel as needed, and trust that bit-by-bit we will learn the new things we need to meet our set of next challenges.
And if we are lucky, we’ll never wear a uniform, get snapped at, or “stiffed” for thanks or tips. We’ll make our own rules and trade in our dreams for our uniquely scripted and fulfilling lives.
© 2007 Andrea R. Williams
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Andrea Williams, personal and small business success coach, is the creator of the Fearless, Fabulous Life Launch, a 90-day, step-by-step discovery and rejuvenation process to help you gain clarity and commitment about what is most important to you. If you're ready to pump your life with more fun & fulfillment, check out Andrea's coaching programs and resources now at www.FearlessFabulousLife.com, and sign up for “Fearless, Fabulous Female,” her free ezine on personal reinvention at midlife.
Andrea’s Bookshelf
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
by Susan Jeffers, PhD
I read this book eight or more years ago. The advice and exercises are among the best I’ve ever found on the topic of fear. Basically, Jeffers’ message is that it’s better to push through your fear than to let it sit like an anchor around your neck, holding you down and keeping you from moving forward. She offers common sense thinking for managing fear, and strips down the conventional excuses for avoidance behaviors of all kinds. Feel the Fear should be on the bookshelf of everyone who is serious about achieving something more than her current status quo.
Her updated book with similar title is not quite as good. New and used copies of the original can be had on the very cheap.
Fearless Recommendations
The Power of Attitude
These short, inspirational movies are becoming the latest rage. Mac Anderson produces some of the best. Watch this if only for the beautiful photography. However, the techno pop will have you bouncing in your chair in a minute to two. And the quotes are some of the best to activate your sense of possibility.
Maybe you’ll be inspired to jazz up your life by signing up for the Fearless, Fabulous Life Launch. You might as well embrace your latest phase and live your life full out!
About Andrea
Andrea Williams, Personal & Business Development Coach, works with boomers, career changers, and others in transition to reach core issues quickly, to promote their inspirations and aspirations, and to provide unswerving support for ongoing life improvement.
Andrea also offers teleclasses, workshops, and other resources to help individuals and groups achieve greater self-awareness, success, and satisfaction. Learn more now at www.FearlessFabulousLife.com.
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