Sandbox Consulting: Breaking the Rules

It was Wednesday night. My son was sick. While his fever had vanished and his appetite was returning, he was in no condition to return to school the next day...or to accompany his little sister to daycare.

And yet the next day, I was scheduled to deliver a mini workshop to my fellow mompreneurs. I had been looking forward to it for a month -- the chance to not only showcase my business but to also provide something of value to a fantastic group of working moms.

What should I do? Should I cancel? Should I call a sitter? Should I ask my husband to go to work late?

I couldn't possibly bring him...oh no, no, no, no.

Millions of thoughts ran through my mind:

• If I bring him, my focus will surely be split, and that isn't to be allowed.
• If I bring him, he'll most certainly be bored, and I'd hate to put him in that situation.
• What's more, if I bring him, the other women in the group would be distracted by him, and I couldn't create a situation like that for someone else.
• I need to be 100% effective tomorrow, so that people will know what I can do.
• A good mom would cancel and let her son stay home.
• A real professional would get a sitter, do her gig, and let her son stay home.

So many rules to follow. So many guidelines to heed. And yet, at the end of the night, having made zero calls to sitters, I finally decided to listen to that little voice in my head that kept saying, "Bring him. It'll work out. It'll be fun!"

And it did. And it was.

During the workshop, my son spent his time listening to an audio book, watching SuperWhy? on an iPhone, and also intently listening to our workshop. After the session, he had so many questions to ask about what I had been doing, and who all those other people were. Most importantly, he was excited about the special time he had spent with his mom while she was at work.

Had I followed those voices in my head, I would never have had this special time with my son. And while I wasn't the perfect presenter, and the group experienced occasional interruptions, the event was meaningful and valuable in so many other ways.

Those voices in our heads are often self-imposed, self-created beliefs and rules that we tend to follow blindly, thinking that they are absolute.

That day, I broke my own rules and found out that there's a lot of beauty in living a life outside of them.

What kinds of rules have you created for yourself?

What would really happen if you were to break one? Or two? Or all of them?