With Rhonda's retirement, the Reflections blog has found a new home, and will be under construction for a short while.  Stay tuned for exciting new content, new authors and more coming soon!

For several years, Mary Kay Russia has led the way within Mary Kay in celebrating International Women's Day.  This year, many of our subsidiaries in Europe, Latin America and Asia/Pacific as well as the United States will also celebrate the holiday created to honor the economic, political and social achievements of women.  While the holiday is one of the most important in Russia and widely celebrated in several countries, it's relatively unknown in others.  

 
Did You Know?

• International Women’s Day has been observed for 100 years. It’s considered the biggest celebration in Russia next to Christmas.
• International Women's Day was honored the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland in 1911.
• At the first celebration, more than one million women and men attended International Women's Day rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination.
• It’s celebrated the same as Valentine’s Day and Mother's Day in the U.S. with men honoring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, female colleagues, etc … with flowers, candy and perfume.
• The day celebrates the achievements of all women around the world.
• International Women's Day is an official holiday in 14 countries, including Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.
• 2011 is International Women’s Day’s Global Centenary (1911-2011).
• As a result of this global celebration, The United States designates March as 'Women's History Month.'

Join Mary Kay Inc. today in celebrating all that women have contributed to our world.  Tell a woman just how great you think she is!

If you read the comments to my previous post "Wishes for the New Year" you will gather that I will be retiring from Mary Kay Inc.  I'll be here until April 30, and will continue to blog until then.  I am working on "willing" the Reflections blog to another women here at the company that will feel as passionate about it as I do.  I'll share additional thoughts on retirement as the day draws nearer, but in the meantime I did want to acknolwedge the comments from our readers and thank them for their kind words and well wishes.

It was snowing this morning in Dallas, which is quite unusual  for us this time of year.  If we get any at all, it's mostly in January or February.  With the dense cloud cover, everything in the house was a little darker than normal when I got up to get ready for the office.  I pulled out a new pair of black and white tweed pants to wear, with a solid black jacket and my black boots.  I thought it was the perfect outfit for a cold and snowy day.  As I do each morning, I took a last minute glance in the bathroom mirror to make certain that everything was in its place before I walked out the door for my morning commute.

As I was driving across town in the car, now outside in the daylight, suddenly the black and white tweed pants began to mysteriously change to brown and white.  How could that be?  I tried to remember back to when I purchased the pants, wondering if I had intended to buy black and white or brown and white.  What color did I think I was buying?  I couldn't remember, but unconciously this morning, they were definitely black and white.   As I continued the drive in, I had convinved myself that it was simply a reflection of the tan interior in my car that was casting the brown color on my black and white tweed pants.  Still, I wasn't completely sure.

When I arrived at the Mary Kay building, I went straight to the ladies room to settle the matter once and for all, only to find out that my black and white tweed pants had a brown zipper and brown lining!  Alas, yes, I fear I have gone out in public today wearing a black jacket, black boots and brown and white tweed pants.  I have many outfits that very effectively mix brown and black for a fashionable look, but I don't think I'd put this one in that category.  Oh, well.

So here's what it made me think about.  Just as my pants looked diffferent in different lighting conditions, so do our behaviors and the things that happen to us in life. Context is a huge factor in how we perceive things, and how others perceive our words and actions.  What seems right in one situation might turn out badly in a different situation.  Always be considerate of the context. Take the time to look around, and think about what is going on, before you act. 

P.S.  I was very tempted to wait until tomorrow to post this blog, thinking the fewer people that saw me today the better.  I'm not a celebrity, so the chances of my error in judgment winding up in the tabloids is slim to none, but I've seen too many examples recently that prove if you don't fess up, someone else will do it for you and then you have a lot of explaining to do. So, I decided to go ahead and face it.  Not to mention the fact that it gave me a great analogy to talk about the importance of context.

It's planning and budgeting time around the Mary Kay office right now.  That means we're all thinking about our most important initiatives for 2010, our revenue forecasts for all of our markets around the world, and what we think we'll be spending to accomplish our goals.  It's a process that goes on for a few months each year.  We each begin at the individual department level, but eventually all have to come together to make sure that our goals are in sync overall and that our company-wide budget is reasonable.  No one particularly enjoys the process, but everyone understands how important it is to plan.

As I was thinking about this, I was reminded about two things:  (1) Mary Kay Ash always said that one should "plan your work, and work your plan", and (2) that many young women these days don't have a plan for their life, but wish they did (as we learned from our 2009 What Women Want research study). It occurred to me that as individuals, we don't often take the time to plan for our year with the careful thought and discipline that we put into the planning process for our jobs.  I wonder what would happen if we did? What if we all practiced "plan your life, and live your plan"?

I've decided that I'm going to give it a try and see what happens.  Instead of making the usual New Year's resolutions, which quickly fall by the wayside, I'm actually going to sit down with my husband this year and craft a plan for 2010 for our personal life.  I'd like the plan to include what we want to accomplish next year, collectively and individually.  What do we expect our income to be? How much will our living expenses be, and how much discretionary spending should we plan based on what we want to do?   I'd like to set a goal for a certain number of hours of volunteer time, and a financial plan for our charitable giving.  This would really be a big step for us, as we typically take life one day or one week, or one month at a time, as most people do.  We are blessed at this point in our lives, in not having to live from paycheck to paycheck, but the idea of actually planning a budget and sticking to it is kind of exciting for me. Just like we do at the office, we can sit down and review our progress each quarter, see where we've stayed on track and where we can improve.  And it will be fun to look back at the end of the year and see how many of our goals we actually met. I can imagine that having this plan would make all the daily decisions we face that much easier, because we would have a "filter" of sorts to weigh the decision against.  If we do "X", is it consistent with the goals we set?  If not, are we willing to change our goals?

Of course I know that things will come up along the way that will get us sidetracked, they always do -- those little, or sometimes BIG, things that are out of our control and come up at the most inopportune times.  But it would seem that, other than those times, the peace of mind in knowing where we were going and how we wanted to get there would bring a tremendous sense of freedom and independence, leaving far fewer things to clutter our minds each and every day.

If you've been disciplined about planning your personal life this way, I'd love to hear about it.  How did it work for you?  What did it feel like?

I saw a great quote on Twitter yesterday.  Unfortunately, an author wasn't cited, so I don't know who to attribute it to, but it really got me to thinking about what happens to us when things don't go our way.

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted"

If that is true, which I believe it is, then I know without a doubt that Mary Kay Ash would have said that she had lots of "experience"!  For example, when she was a salesperson herself (before founding our company), she had set her sights on winning a beautiful handbag that she had seen a previous sales leader earn.  She set that as her goal, and worked hard all year long to earn one for herself.  She achieved the level of sales required, but she didn't get what she wanted.  Instead, she was rewarded with a flounder light (evidently it's something you use to attract fish when you're trying to catch them).  From that experience, she decided that if she ever got the chance to award prizes to other sales women, they would be the kind of Cinderella prizes that women really wanted, like that original handbag that she wanted.  And that is exactly what she did, and we still do today.

I often Heard Mary Kay say that "If we ever decide to compare knees, you're going to find that I have more scars than anyone in the room.  That's because I have fallen down and gotten up so many times in my life."  Yes, Mary Kay Ash was very familiar with experience.  One of her most famous and oft-repeated and re-Tweeted anecdotes is "We fail forward to success," most assuredly derived from all those instances when things did not go her way.  Even with all the "failure" she experienced, Mary Kay went on to accomplish what no other woman in business has been able to match.   Some of this success can surely be attributed to her hard work and willingness to make the sacrifices she needed to, but it also came from "knowing how to lose".

I can think of so many times when things didn't go the way that I wished for them to, or the way that I imagined them to, and I'm certain there were times when I was a really sore loser.  But looking back on those times now, I know I'm stronger, wiser and more helpful to others who need advice and coaching than I would be had it not been for the experience, and I'm thankful to have had a role model in Mary Kay.  I guess the real lesson I've learned is that my way may not be the best way after all, and I've learned to appreciate those times when things don't go my way, because I know that I'm going to grow as a result of the "experience."

After 20 years of running the company she founded, Mary Kay Ash set down to compile the traits that she thought had made her company so successful.  That "list" was published in 1984, as Mary Kay on People Management.  An updated version was released in 2008, under the title The Mary Kay Way.  One of the many traits that she relied on for her success in business was her woman's intuition, and a caring, nurturing spirit, and she was pleased that she had proved wrong the many who had criticized her for "thinking like a woman."

In the introduction to that book, Mary Kay says, "Throughout this book I discuss the specific ways in which women do think differently from men.  Such differences are in no way inferior to or incompatible with 'the way a man thinks.' And so one of my objectives in founding Mary Kay was to create a business atmosphere in which 'thinking like a woman' would not be a liability.  In my Company those special sensitivities and talents often labeled 'women's intuition' would be nurtured -- not stifled."

One of the first things I learned of when I came to the company more than 25 years ago, was that each week, a "care bulletin" was created and sent to Mary Kay.  This "care bulletin" was a list of women in our independent sales force who were very ill or in the hospital, had family members who were hospitalized or recently diagnosed with disease, had just given birth or were newly married, or had a family member pass away.  In other words, those "life events" that cause us to reach out to those people that we care about to offer condolences, get well wishes or congratulations.  Each week, when she received the list, Mary Kay Ash made it a priority that each woman on the list received a personal note from her, reminding her of how important she was to us and that we were thinking of her and her family.  Back then, I think we had about 120,000 Independent Beauty Consultants in the United States.

Today, there are 600,000 women in our U.S. sales force, and each week the care bulletin is created, just like it was back then.  Since Mary Kay Ash is no longer with us, our executive team sees to it that each woman on the list receives a personal note from one of us.  I'll have to admit that in this day and time I don't send many hand-written notes or letters, except for these.  I know they are quite rare in this e-mail, text message, Facebook, Twitter world we live in, and I think that, perhaps, that makes them even more special.  I never really thought that much about the form of the note being that important, I was always focused more on the message.  Until today.

Today, I received a letter from a beauty consultant in Georgia that I had sent a note to in August when I learned through the care bulletin that both she and her husband  were injured in an automobile accident.  I have copied the contents of her letter below:

Dear Rhonda:

I received your letter and it certainly made my day and lifted my spirit.  I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to write me a personal hand written letter!  Wow, you sure know how to make a consultant feel special!

Truly, you all are my family; I honestly feel the warmth and concern.  Thank you so much!  My heart is forever touched!

We are recovering well and we will make a complete come back!

In spite of my pain, I am determined to make it!  We are so happy to be a part of the Mary Kay family.  I know I have challenges ahead of me, but, somehow, the pain just does not seem to be so bad when you have a family that truly cares.

May the blessings of the Lord be upon each of you always.

With sincere thanks,

Cheryl Roberson

You see, Mary Kay Ash knew the impact of a personal, handwritten note.  She made them an important part of her company, and I'm so thankful that today they are still just as important.  Another day at the office for me, and another warm, fuzzy reminder of why this company is so special.

(Note to self:  write more hand-written notes. Will you join me?)

On this day, August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified that guaranteed women the right to vote.

It was a major step for one half of our nation's population and a step that undoubtedly has changed the course of our nation forever.  But it was only the beginning of creating a society that valued the contributions of women,  recognized their potential and gave them endless opportunities to change the world.  I'm certain that are a great number of women in the U.S. who feel we still have a long way to go to truly gain the level of equality that is inherent in the very fact that we are one half of the nation's population.  And in many ways, they are probably right.  However, one only needs to look outside our borders to gain a broader perspective.

This article from The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?_r=3&ref=magazine#, was shared with me today by a colleague here at Mary Kay.  As I read the article, it brought tears to my eyes for the women who still today, in the 21st century, are enduring things so evil that it's hard to imagine.  Mixed with the tears is a great deal of thankfulness, for the people who are working to make a difference in the lives of these women, whether it's offering them opportunities to receive an education or loaning them small amounts of money to help them start businesses that eventually lead to their self-sufficiency.  I also feel an enormous sense of pride that our business opportunity for women has spread into many of these countries, bringing hope and solutions to women in need. 

The small dream that Mary Kay Ash had in 1963 to provide women in America the opportunity to develop their potential and make money is now making an even more profound difference in the lives of women in India and China and 35 more markets.  Mary Kay knew then that women could change the world, if they were just given the chance.  Too bad the critics all told her "There you go again, Mary Kay, thinking like a woman", (and they weren't paying her a compliment, I assure you!).  But then again, she didn't listen. 

I look forward to the day, when, in every corner of the world, "thinking like a woman" becomes recognized as the highly-valuable gift that it is. I wholeheartedly agree with Mary Kay Ash, and the premise in this story from The Times:  we truly can change the world, one woman at a time.