It’s My Birthday- Lessons I’ve Learned from Life

Intro Music:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach, and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live, love, make money, and change the world.

Tracey:
Hey, I’m glad you’re here. This is my birthday episode!
Today is my birthday, and I want to share some lessons I’ve learned with you. I’ve got a lot of decades to cover. I’m turning 56 today, and I just don’t really have a problem sharing my age because I don’t feel that old. Oh, my gosh [laugh].

Anyway, I’ve got a lesson from each decade of my life. And don’t worry, I’m not going to get too deep in the weeds here, but I just thought it’s kind of fun to look over my life and go, “What lesson did you learn?” I’ve learned an awful lot of lessons. That’s one thing that covers all of them- I’ve learned an awful lot.

It’s hard to choose, but we’ll start with my first decade of life, the lesson I learned from being born up to age ten. Here’s the lesson I’m choosing.

I went to four different elementary schools in three states over five years. I was, more often than not, the new kid. Baby, I learned compassion. Compassion for the new kid, for the outsider, for the person who felt like they didn’t fit in because I felt like that so often. So my first decade’s lesson is compassion. I’ve carried it with me through my life. I had a soft spot for the new kids, the outsiders, the people who don’t feel like they fit in. I got you – from way back in the day.

Now, for the second decade, the teenage years. So many lessons. I will say one lesson that I wish teenage Tracey had understood. Girl, it does not really matter how your hair looks. Get over yourself. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, but I’ve learned it. All right.

So the lesson I’m going with for my second decade: Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Personally, I understand you can look really good on the outside. You can have academic awards. You can be fantastic on the outside, you can look great AND you can feel lost and insignificant and depressed on the inside. And nobody will know. That’s how I felt a good bit of the time, because teenage years, oh, my heavens. But that’s an awful good lesson to learn. Don’t judge a book by its cover. We’re all going through things and especially with social media- now it’s really hard to tell what’s on the inside. So there’s my second decade lesson.

Now onto the third decade. This is the decade where I got married and had miscarriages and had babies and had new jobs and had new challenges. Lots of new stuff going on here. But the lesson I chose for my third decade, I learned how to give. How to give to my husband, I learned how to give to my children when they were born and I began raising them, I learned how to give in the new jobs and the new challenges I had. There was a lot of giving, how to give, and I think of myself as a natural giver. I don’t know that’s really accurate because it’s something I really have developed and strengthened, that giving muscle, over my life. But I adapted to the new roles I learned.

How to give. It was a really important lesson for me, which feeds right into my fourth decade lesson. I learned how to receive. This was the decade where my chronic undiagnosed illness began. And again, so many lessons here. Deep, deep, powerful lessons. I could have gone with the power of being persistent or how to trust myself or relying on others. But really, how to receive. I had a friend who sat me down and said, “Tracey, you are an incredible giver, but you’ve got to learn that if you don’t let us give to you, you’re denying us the blessing. So learn how to receive what we’re giving. Don’t take away the gift of giving from us.” That was a really powerful lesson, to learn how to receive. The lesson in not being quite so selfish and always wanting to be the person who gives. Learn how to receive.

Now my fifth decade, the big lesson here, with lots of little lessons wrapped up into it. My fifth decade is when I became an unintentional entrepreneur. Now we had homeschooled for years by this point, before we started our own business. And homeschooling in a lot of ways is much like being an entrepreneur. You’re running your school rather than a business. But with entrepreneurship, I learned how to be my own boss, how to learn for myself, how to think for myself, decide for myself, how to trust myself, how to do the new hard things, how to deal with money, how to make a sale. Oh, my gosh. I could go on and on and on. So many lessons in entrepreneurship. And of course, I’m still learning them. I’m still an entrepreneur. So powerful.

Powerful lessons in the fifth decade. And now here I am in my 6th decade, which, yes, it still feels really weird to say I’m 56 now. Well, I’m in my 50s. Sometimes I walk by the mirror and think, what is that really you? And some days I do feel my age. But most days I don’t, I don’t feel my age. But here’s the lesson in my 6th decade. Purposeful effort beats hard work. I am so anti-hustle now. I can ‘hard work’ with the best of them. I have done hard work most of my life. I can work long, hard hours. I can do it. But here’s the thing. I don’t have to, and I actually do a lot better when I work wisely instead of just hustle hustle hard work. So I honor the ebb and flow of my energy and I know the times of day that I work better, that I think more clearly. I know if I need to think creatively, well, that needs to happen in the morning hours, not in the afternoon when my brain just doesn’t work as well. And because I am my own boss and I’m in control of my hours and my efforts, I get to decide when I’m doing that work. So I love this lesson. Purposeful effort beats hard work every day of the week.

So there you have it. Six lessons from my decades of 56 years of living.

So happy birthday to me and happy birthday to you whenever your birthday is.

I want to offer a birthday gift to you just because I think it’s fun to give gifts.
I’m offering a package of three coaching sessions completely as a gift.
No strings, no fee, no money. It’s a birthday gift.
A series of three sessions. Three just because I happen to like the number three
It’s to give you a taste of coaching, to help you gain perspective on your life, your job, your relationship, whatever. Maybe you’ve been trying to figure something out and you need a little assistance. Maybe you just wondered what it is like to be coached. Does it really make a difference?

Well, here’s your chance. Take me up on my offer. Seriously, let me give you a gift!

You’ve listened to me. There’s not going to be a hard pitch. I’m not going to do this guilt inducing drama thing at the end. Oh, don’t you want to buy more coaching? No, this is a gift. I don’t do hard pitches.

I just want to do all I can to put more good out into the world. So now’s your chance.

If you’re interested, all you have to do is email me Tracey@ tbrowning.com. That’s my website. So if you can’t remember it, just go to my website, tbrowning.com and put ‘birthday gift’ in the subject line. Send me that email. We’ll connect and set up a time for our first call. Easy peasy.

So happy birthday to me!
And I hope you’ll take me up on my gift.

So now let’s go live, love, make money and change the world.

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.