Listerine’s Bring Out the Bold Campaign is stepping outside of your comfort zone and living your life to the fullest. As a part of a sponsored series with Listerine and SocialStars, I’m highlighting a woman who’s been “bringing out the bold” since as early as I can remember, my Mother.
Twenty years ago if you asked me who my best friend was my Mom, definitely wouldn’t have been in the running. Like most adolescents she was probably too busy thwarting every hair brained scheme that I came up with to be worried about whether or not she made it on my like or dislikes list. Today, however, if you asked me that same question my Mom would win hands down. My Mom is one of the boldest, strongest, smartest women I know and she embodies everything I hope to be as Mother when I finally take the leap into having children. Like her, I don’t want to be a friend to my child as they’re growing up, but instead a role model. Through the way, I live my life I want them to learn how to navigate their own. I like to consider myself a successfully functioning adult, and looking back I realized that I learned so many valuable life lessons from my Mom, and to go through them all would basically mean I would need to start an entirely new blog. So today I’m sharing with you two that currently resonate at the forefront of my life.
The first important skill I learned was Critical Thinking. Many people would say I developed my critical thinking skills from working as a scientist for almost ten years. What they don’t realize is that I developed these skills very early on because my mom would never give me advice whenever I called with a dilemma. Instead, she’d tell me “You’ll figure it out..”. It was her way of teaching me to become independent and turned out to be an important life lesson. At first, it would only anger me and make me wallow in self-pity because no one was going to solve the problem for me and then I would do just what she said I would do and figure it out. Life is always going to hand you lemons, and figuring out how to turn those lemons into a fabulous Sangria isn’t always going to be easy. This not only applies to life in general, but also to how you handle situations on the job, and relationships.
The next important skill I learned was to keep pushing. My mom had a great career, she started off a Home Economics teacher, moved on to teaching Culinary Arts at a vocational school, and then became an Assistant Principal . She’s also a fully ordained Baptist Minister which she still practices though she’s retired from the school system. Her advancements weren’t met without opposition. My mom achieved her Masters while raising three children and working full time. She could have let raising a family and working get int he way but set her sites on a goal and worked to achieve them. Stepping out on faith and following your dreams is always met with some type of resistance. When people hear me talk about starting my own business and moving away from research it causes them to raise and eyebrow or voice a concern. Some people have even mentioned that it can’t be done. From my Mom, I’ve learned that I can’t let other’s doubt deter me from what I really want to do.
How have the life lessons your Mom or another Mother figure in your life taught you help you “bring out the bold” Share your stories with me in the comments below!
