The Power of Grit Kim developed a sort of mantra while Art was gone and she was managing her family and business at home. “Those times when I felt like I was going to sit down and cry,” Kim says, “when I had one baby on my hip and another crying at my feet, I would just tell myself, ‘We’re going to get through this. We’re just going through a hard time, and we’re going to get through it.’” Her ability to adopt such a mindset didn’t develop overnight. It was built upon years of not succumbing to magical thinking and not allowing herself to get overwhelmed when life didn’t go as planned. Simply said, her strength was built on years of grit. “Grit has played a huge role in everything we’ve done with our business, our lives, and our adoption story,” Kim explains. “I realized how important grit is in life after reading a book titled Grit by Angela Duckworth. In the book, she travels the world interviewing successful people trying to find what makes them so successful. She concludes that it doesn’t matter where you came from. It doesn’t matter what family you were born to or what you’ve been given or how much money you have. Those are not the things that make a person successful. What makes someone successful is how much grit they have. “I did not come from a rich family. I came from a family where my dad had to work three jobs to provide for his family. My husband got his degree on the GI Bill through the Air Force and was dirt poor growing up. We are not the type of people who own and run a successful business. That doesn’t happen to people like us—except it did. And the reason why is because we have grit. We are the perfect examples of how you don’t need opportunities given to you. You just need to work hard. And this is one of the reasons Melaleuca is so beautiful—it’s not just based off your skill, but off your willingness to work hard.” And just as there are no better examples of not needing opportunities given in order to be successful, there are no better examples of grit, hard work, and determination than Kim and Art McCauley.
“It was rough,” Kim states simply. “Probably the toughest three months of my life. It was about two weeks after Art had left and we decided he would stay in Ukraine, and I was having a very, very hard time. I was so stressed, so overwhelmed, and just exhausted with the adoption challenges, Art being gone, our new baby, our new house, running my business, and my team that I still needed to show up for, not to mention the added concerns that COVID-19 brought. But then I received a call from
“Grit has played a huge role in everything we’ve done with our business, our lives, and our adoption story,” Kim says.
Darrin Johnson. He said a lot of things in that call, but the one I remember most is that he said, ‘Kim, if you’re doing your best, that’s all anybody can ask of you. And if each day you can go to bed knowing you did your best, then that’s all that matters. No one knows what your best is but you. So just do your best.’” That phone call helped prevent Kim from getting caught up wishing things in her life were different. It helped her modify her expectations and changed how she approached the coming months while Art was away.
Rolling with the Punches
While it may be easy to get lured into thinking that Kim and Art are the lucky ones or that they have some secret to their success they aren’t sharing, that is just magical thinking. Kim and Art have had their share of frustrations and unmet expectations.
12 JANUARY 2021 | MELALEUCA.COM
These results are not typical. Please consult the Annual Income Statistics on page 58 for typical results.
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker