EPISODE 37: HOW TO SPREAD HAPPINESS LIKE CONFETTI AND END 2020 WITH JOY WITH MAGHON TAYLOR
Live Date: December 14, 2020
Show Description: Heather is joined today by author, artist, and speaker, Maghon Taylor, who has built an entire business rooted in spreading happiness and joy. Maghon reflects on how she has been able to maintain a positive posture in her past eight years in business. With a year like 2020, Maghon shares practical tips on how to discover your passion projects and find happiness in your valley seasons.
Biggest Takeaways:
Maghon shares how important it is to embrace your imperfections and believes that God uses her hand lettering, including her mistakes, to highlight that. In an effort to let go of her desire for perfectionism, Maghon has found the beauty in owning your mistakes and shifting her perspective to repurposing her scraps in a different way that can be used to spread positivity and serve others in need.
After a year like 2020, Maghon remains committed to joy by simply choosing to look for the good in everything. She also looks back and compares her days realizing that she has gotten through more difficult times before which puts things in perspective for her.
Both Maghon and Heather expressed their gratitude for time and business growth during this year. While it was a challenge at times to want to celebrate huge business wins in a year where so many people were experiencing loss, Maghon highlighted the importance of recognizing that it was simply just her time to pay it forward and help others, particularly small businesses.
When trying to discover your own passion project, Maghon encourages us to think back to what we enjoyed the most as a child that may be missing in your life now. She also believes that not every hobby needs to be turned into a business and it’s vital to be able to have hobbies that you do just for the fun and love of it.
Maghon shares practical tips on how to cultivate a state of mind rooted in joy:
Write down things you’re grateful for on that day
Look for ways you can bless and serve other people with your gifts
Wear clothes and colors you love
Quotables:
“I grew up as a perfectionist. I wanted to check all the boxes. I wanted to make straight A’s. I wanted to not even just make the team, I wanted to be the captain on the team. And I felt anything less than that was falling short and anything less than that was going to disappoint my parents. And I carried that with me all through high school, all through college. And it wasn’t until I had some seasons in life that didn’t go my way, that didn’t go the way that I would have planned or predicted that I started to learn that you don’t have to be perfect to be good.” Maghon Taylor – 11:43
“Really early on in my business, I was too cheap to throw the paper away, and so I had this really big bucket full of all my scraps. And I got the idea to run them through my office shredder and out came the most beautiful confetti that you’ve ever seen. And once it was confetti, you couldn’t see the mistakes anymore, like you couldn’t see where I had spelled something wrong, you couldn’t see where I had scribbled it out. It just all worked together to make it good. It all worked together to make it beautiful. And it’s just been such a great reminder to me that confetti is literally just trash that has chosen to live a happier life.” Maghon Taylor – 12:43
“2020 is not the worst year of my life. This year hasn’t been easy by any stretch – my husband lost his job for a couple months, we weren’t spared all of the drama in 2020, but this is not the hardest year of my life. And I think for a lot of people, it might not be the hardest year of your life. And the good news is if this year is bad, if you find yourself at a low point right now, it’s going to get better and it can only go up from here.” Maghon Taylor – 17:12
“So thinking 2020 is a dumpster fire, like all the negative messaging around and people bought this phrase more than any other phrase, and it was ‘Today is the perfect day to be happy.’ Like more than thousands of items and products were sold all around the world that said ‘Today is the perfect day to be happy.’ And I’m so proud of us. I’m so proud of people for choosing that, and for wanting that message front and center in their life. It was on mugs, it was on postcards, it was on stickers. They wanted to see it and they wanted that reminder.” Maghon Taylor – 21:18
“And I think it’s so important that to me being positive doesn’t mean that you have to be happy every day. It doesn’t mean that you’re happy 24/7, that you’re smiling all the time. It just means that on the hard days that you believe that better days are coming, that if you’re having a hard year, that you have hope in the future and that you believe that things are going to get better. And to me like that is what’s most important.” Maghon Taylor – 21:55
“I just think that there are going to be mountains and valleys for all of us. And I have been through mountains, I’ve been through valleys and I try really hard when I’m watching somebody else go through something. I don’t want to be jealous of them on their mountain because I do not know what their valley was like.” Maghon Taylor – 28:41
“I think especially for us as women, when we walk through life, if a compliment is laid on our heart, like that needs to be said. I feel like you are nudged to think those things because that person needs to hear them. And so many times we see stuff in other people that they don’t even see in themselves.” Maghon Taylor – 48:52
“That’s how you build a happier life, it’s by literal happy minutes and seconds and choices that you’re setting up in your lives that are going to really work together for the good.” Maghon Taylor – 54:21
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