Elizabeth Lyons knows, it's all about choice. Choosing your own happiness. If quitting your job, driving a minivan and staying home with your kids brings you happiness, Elizabeth will root for you.
Elizabeth's husband says she's an inspirational entrepeneur and since he's married to her and they have five children together, he should know. An inspirational entrepeneur inspires others to make their own choices and fulfill their own dreams. Elizabeth Lyons was made for this.
(Transcribed from interview)
Parenting: Can I Choose To Be A Happy Mother?
Elizabeth Lyons:
I was doing a key note at one point with a group of moms of twins and a woman came up to me afterwards and she looked absolutely desperate. I mean I thought she was going to be like, “Hi, my name is desperate.”
I mean she was absolutely desperate, and she said, “I am so, I don’t know what to do. You have to help me.”
And I said, “What’s wrong?” And she said, “Well, I have just had these twins and I am working and I don’t want to work anymore. I want to be at home with these kids all the time. I want to make them lunch and I want to take them on walks and I want to be there when they beat each other up for the first time and I want to see, I want to be present for it all.”
And I said, “Okay, well what’s the problem?” And I knew it was going to have to do with money but I said, “What’s the problem?” And she said, “Well I can’t stop working because our lifestyle depends on it.”
And I said, “Oh, you know, that’s hard, I understand.” And she said, “I mean it really doesn’t,” she then started to go down this path, “It really doesn’t. We have this huge house and I mean it’s like 8,000 square feet, and I guess we don’t really need 8,000 square feet.”
And I said, “Okay, all right.” And she said, “I have got this car and I worked my whole career to drive this car.” And I said, “Aha, of course.” And she said, “It’s this beautiful Mercedes,” and she went on to describe it and great, she is clearly very proud of the vehicle.
And I said, “That’s great and I’d like to take a ride in it later but what’s the issue?” And she said, “Well I’d have to get like a minivan.”
And I said, “Right because that is the end of the world when you are driving the minivan.” And so we talked about this for a while and I said, “Listen, at the end of the day you have more power than you think. It’s all about choice. You have to choose happiness.”
I mean how many times are you in the grocery store and you go to check out and the cashier says, “How are you?” “Great.” It becomes harder to answer that way and I did it for a while until I realized my gosh, I am doing this.
So even when my kids are flailing on the floor of Babies-R-Us and the cashier says, “How are you?” As though I am going to say, great, I say, “I am awesome.” It is great, because you have to create this self-fulfilling prophecy. You have to take back the power, to choose to be happy and to choose to have the life that you want.
So I said to this woman, “You are going to have to make a choice. You are either going to have to get the minivan and downsize the home from 8,000 to 6,000 square feet or something, or keep doing what you are doing. But at the end of the day, it’s your choice. Make the choice.”
And I have seen so many women become empowered by that, by just that knowledge. They are kind of, “Oh yeah, it is my choice. I can make that choice,” and realize that it’s not other people telling them the life that they need to have.
It’s them needing to tell themselves. It’s them needing to create their own set of rules by which they navigate this incredibly crazy world around them so that every night they fall into bed and they are completely and utterly exhausted.
But they can say, I love my life and I am busier than I have ever been in my whole life. My life is absolutely insane and I love, I wouldn’t change anything. I wouldn’t change anything.
http://www.elizabethlyons.com