Why Momentum?
For anyone who has tried to name anything before, I applaud you. In total transparency, I didn’t come up with the name Momentum. In fact, Momentum was an option provided to me by the wonderful team at Blink Creative. One of the things I’m particularly horrible at is making “unimportant” decisions. You would think naming my business would constitute as important. However, as I go through the process of starting said business, I find myself more inclined to believe the only important thing is the actual coaching. Plus, words are hard!
I have a degree in English from UW Madison. Perhaps that means words should come easily to me. I mean, I paid thousands of dollars to learn how to word. Yet, when it came time to labeling myself, nothing seemed to fit. Words are both beautiful and infuriating. Take the word “beautiful”, for example. Even in the Merriam-Webster dictionary there are two separate definitions: “having qualities of beauty: exciting aesthetic pleasure” and “generally pleasing: excellent”. I can honestly say, I take no stock in dictionary definitions. Most of the time, we learn words through context. My mind connects words to personal past experiences and ideas. When I hear the word beautiful, I think of flowers and light. I feel warm and a smile comes to my face. While those images and feelings correlate to the dictionary definitions, they differ from person to person. There is, roughly speaking, billions of different definitions of the word “beautiful”. Which led me to think, “how the hell am I supposed to pick a word to encompass all I want to achieve with this business and read the minds of others to know that they understand what it is I have to offer to them and the world?”
Luckily for me, my worries often turn to vapor when “the right option” presents itself. Momentum hit me like a light pole. I was so distracted by words I felt I needed to use (balance, purpose, accountability, action, being) that I smacked right into that pole. How Blink pulled that word out of the ether from the little information I gave them will always seem like magic to me. I loved Momentum so much that I spent 24 hours trying to convince myself why I shouldn’t use the word for my business because it just seemed too perfect. Yet, here we are, with the perfect logo to sit alongside it.
Understanding what I said above, I realize this word can mean different things to different people. Here’s what “momentum” means to me:
- Movement
- Forward motion
- Gathering speed
- Beginning
- Force (though not forceful)
- One moment followed by the next, and the next, and the next
- Progress
A lot of the time, momentum reminds me of a train. It’s the first chug that leads to the next, gathering speed and eventually reaching a point where it looks like it could break through a brick wall. This analogy fits well in many ways to life and coaching because that first chug usually seems impossible. The effort it takes to get that train moving is daunting, to say the least. This is where my logo comes in.
When working with my own coach, I was asked to fill in this life purpose statement: “I am the ____, that ____”. Immediately, the phrase “I am the sun that warms your face” popped into my head. There is nothing that puts a pep in my step more than a face-warming sun moment. Unbeknownst to Blink that this was my purpose statement, they magically pulled that out of the ether, as well, and I now have the perfect combo of sun in my logo and an action-based name to warmly inspire others to start building momentum towards whatever wall they want to break through.
Movement isn’t always easy. Momentum takes time and effort to build. However, as physics likes to remind us, an object in motion stays in motion. Additionally, having a partner to add their own time and effort allows for a greater force to push forward.
I’ll leave you with this…
What direction are you moving in? Are you the one choosing that direction? What support do you have to move freely?
I lead a community of individuals whose main purpose is to move forward in their lives by setting goals, following energy, and supporting like-minded people daring to think big.
What can we do today to build momentum? Let’s start together.
