Knowing Your Limits

As I embark on my journey of living my dreams without limits, I just had the greatest experience, which actually involved me realizing that although I wish to dream without limits, sometimes you have to know your limits. I've been planning events for the past several years and actually did a very extensive internship with a well established wedding planner. However, cooking and baking are my God-given talents and the things I would do even without pay, so I decided to add catering to my forte along with wedding and event planning. For as long as I can remember I've always been asked can you fix this dish for me, which ultimately led me to cater entire meals for various friends and family members. As most know, word of mouth is one of the best kinds of advertisement, so as the calls continued to come in, some panned out and some didn't, but I finally got the one I was waiting for, or so I thought.....a couple called looking for catering services, wait staff and the whole nine yards. So initially I was like this is it, this is the break I was looking for, however reality started to set in and my conscious started talking to me...saying all the right and important things, i.e., you are not licensed, can you handle this, this is a very important day, you only get this one shot....and at first I thought it was just FEAR creeping into that space it often creeps into when you are trying to live out your dreams. I set up a date and time for a consult meeting to go over the specifics, sent out my confirmation email, but this feeling in the pit of my stomach and the back of my head would not go away. I talked to my fiancee about it and he said what I already knew....."follow your gut!" So the day before the scheduled consult meeting, I called my potential client and just laid my situation out on the line and although they chose to go with a more experienced caterer, the feeling I experienced afterwards was worth more than any amount of money I could have received for my services. I even referred three more established caterer's to the client and truly feel that I made an impression on her and feel very good about my decision and during our conversation I even received some good information as well. The morale to this story is....even though I know in my heart of hearts I could have done this, the stress and strain I would have gone through to make it work out weighed my "EGO," I love what I do so much that I will say no to the money, before I take the risk of tarnishing my reputation all before it even gets started. Thank you Latoya for helping me to realize that I KNOW MY LIMITS and Congratulations on your upcoming wedding!