One Size Does Not Fit All

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. I am taking a short break from cleaning out my closets, and that’s something, oddly enough, I do enjoy. I like to have clean, fresh, organized spaces with things in it that I love and are useful and bonus points if I love it AND it’s useful, I like having a little bit of clean, open space.

So anyway, as I’m taking my break, I ran across one of my shirts that I was trying to decide- Do I hold on to it? Am I really going to wear this again? I don’t know. It’s my favorite color. I love red, I love all the colors, especially love bright colors, but red is a favorite.

Anyway. Here’s this red shirt, and I glanced at it and the tag said, one size fits all. I kind of did a double take. What? I’ve got a one size fits all shirt? Because I just don’t normally buy that kind of shirt because one size does not fit all. One size doesn’t flatter us all. It doesn’t function effectively for all you have to make it fit. And apparently I’m on this kick of words with the ffff sound. So look out, friends and family. But anyway, back to my point from my rabbit trail there.

One size doesn’t fit all. We’re all unique. We are a product of our environment and our experience and our personalities and our own needs and desires and abilities and all those things coming together. It’s really hard to have one item of clothing to fit you, much less anything else in your life. So yeah, of course I’m talking about a one size fits all shirt.

But I’m also talking about one size fits all solutions in life, because how often do we do that? We’ve got a situation or a problem we want to solve or something we’re trying to work on and make better in life, and we think, oh, well, this worked for them. It should work for me. So we just take that solution right off the shelf and it doesn’t work for us. Then you think oh, well, that just doesn’t work. It’s because we’ve got that one size fits all approach to it.

Now, think about this. Think about here with my red shirt that I’m sitting here holding. I can put it on and wear it just like it is, and it hangs on me. It covers me. Yeah, but it doesn’t really fit. It doesn’t flatter until I start customizing it and making adjustments.

So here’s all the different ways I’ve worn this shirt. I’ve tied it in a knot in the front. I’ve tied a knot to the side. I’ve even tied a knot in the back. I’ve belted it. I’ve worn it with vest, with a jacket, with another shirt, with a scarf, with jewelry. I’ve worn it with jeans, with leggings, with tights, with boots, flats, heels, tennis shoes. Not all at the same time.

I’ve worn it in all these different ways and all these different combinations. If I were a gifted seamstress, which I am not, I could have altered it. I could make pillows out of it. I could make cool little teddy bears for kids in the hospital. I’ve seen people make the coolest quilts out of pieces of shirts,T shirt quilts. If you don’t sew, you could rip it into strips and make a rag rug. I have done that before and didn’t finish the rag rug, now that I think about it. I had really good intentions with it though. You could use the rags to clean your car or you could not rip it up. You could just give it away and let somebody else have it.

There’s all kinds of things to do with this one size fits all shirt, which are much more flattering than just wearing it, just like it is.

So take that same idea and think about, where do we do this in life?

Well, do we do it in the workplace when we’re looking to hire a person.
Do you just look at that’s the kind of person that works well for them so they should work well for me in my business, in my department?

Do you do it when you’re looking at how to develop your business? If you’re a business owner, you’re an entrepreneur. What’s the next best step for YOU? It may not be developing your business in the same way one of your competitors developed their business or how your friends and mentors develop their business. You can’t take a one size fits all approach.

You can’t take a one size fits all approach in raising your kids because we’re all different. Everyone is different.

You can’t take one size fits all advice. You can hear the information and appreciate the experience and the insights from the advice, but you have to customize it.

So the biggest takeaway here is going into a situation realizing that one size does not fit all.
Start with the expectation that you can take the one size fits all off the rack, generic standard advice or software or whatever solution it is. But you take it and you adjust it and you tweak it and you make it fit you and your needs. And when you maybe you feel a little frustrated because it’s not happening, it’s not working like you think it should. But if you’ve got the expectation that this is all part of the process, the adjusting, the tweaking, the figuring out how it works for me, then you’re far less likely to get excited ,I say excited, excited with frustration and just toss it and go it doesn’t work when you haven’t really given it a fair shot.

Start with the expectation that with time and patience and experimentation, one size can fit you when you’ve taken the time to make the adjustments.

I hope this thought has been helpful to you and thank you very much for listening.

I appreciate you!

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