Glossary of Frequently Used Terms

Persons
The Empress: that's me. It's a reference to a tarot card signifying feminine leadership on the highest level.

The Emperor/Schmoogie/Moogie: My husfriend, greatest adviser, and best friend; so named for a card signifying masculine leadership on the highest level.

MKA: Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Inc. Read about here here. (You can also check out her autobiography Miracles Happen. I highly recommend it.)
g-d: This is my term for the divine, for lack of a better term, Oversoul. As a Jew, my concept of the creator is a little bit different from most of the people I know. I believe that the Universe is g-d, rather than g-d being God, a person with human feelings and ambitions. I draw a strong distinction between this idea of God and my idea of the Creator Consciousness of the Universe. It doesn't really matter, but sometimes people ask me why I write "g-d" instead of God, or GOD, or god, or whatever.

Terms and Abbreviation 

FIO: Figure It Out; a phrase often chanted by me and my colleagues

WPS: Weekly Plan Sheet, a tool used for maximizing time management

6 MIT: 6 Most Important Things list: make a list of the 6 things you must accomplish in a given day, number them in order of importance and get started. Anything that doesn't get finished that day gets moved to the next day. If it can be delegated to someone else, it doesn't belong on your list.

Active: the numbers don't matter so much here, unless you're actually a consultant (and if you are, you know this already), so for the purposes of this blog, an active consultant is one who is working her business
IBC or BC: Independent Beauty Consultant
Star Team Builder/Star Recruiter: Beauty consultant with 3 or 4 active team members
Team Leader: 5 active team members
Future Director: 8 active
DIQ: Director In Qualification; we are often told that DIQ is not a position on the career path, it is a transitional period
Director/Sales Director: Independent Sales Directors are women in a leadership position in Mary Kay, and kind of the mama on the family tree
National/NSD: Independent National Sales Directors are the top leaders in Mary Kay, defined as leaders of leaders (this is where I want to be!)

The big picture

I believe in social justice. 

I believe in giving people a safety net.

I believe in making sure that children are fed, clothed, educated, and that ALL of their health needs should be addressed and met adequately and immediately.

I believe that there are three avenues for this: self-directed, community involved, and government assisted, and that at least two avenues must be present in some form in order to maximize success and minimize poverty.

I'm an idealist.

The big picture with this whole Mary Kay thing, and I've said this before, but I really want you to grasp what I'm trying to say. Mary Kay Ash flipped a switch in herself in 1963 and that reaction lead to people being able to maximize avenue 1 of minimizing poverty. Women all over the world, (and I'm not necessarily talking about women in the states, but I include those who have used this business to take their meager beginnings and become millionaires), have taken their income from this business and made it work for them and their families. They didn't have to resort to humiliating methods* of employ to feed their kids. Then they were able to teach other women this new thing, and it spread and eventually, they're all making an income which takes me to the second avenue.

Mary Kay builds communities. We are taught to follow the Golden Rule, and seek to enrich the lives of others. If you've never been to a Mary Kay event, the community fostered just within a unit of consultants is amazing. But we are also active in our religious institutions, schools, and other organizations that are aimed at helping our communities. Strong connections in a community (look at your faith community for example) ensure that those who have needs they can meet will be met by the community. Some people call that "collectivism", and those people are assholes. Developing a strong community is how humans have come to be the dominant species on the planet. It's in our genes, and it's in all of our religious teachings.

The third avenue, government, is a bigger, more complicated and therefore more flawed version of community. Yes, in the past (and currently) government (as well as religious institutions) have been used to control people, brainwash them and divide the populace against itself so that a few rich people can have all of the money. But just because some of the people who run the show are bad, doesn't mean the entire system is bad. I don't think that Mary Kay can change governments, but because government is (supposed to be) made up of the people, by changing the people and bringing us back to being more community oriented, most of the people will be fooled less of the time.

When we teach women to value doing the right thing (because it's right), they teach it to their children. Those children become the community and political leaders of the next generation and then change the direction a society is going. Just look at the US now: young people were taught GREED IS GOOD in the 70s and 80s, and now everyone is so focused on getting their own that they vote against their own best interests because they don't want to pay more taxes (which is another conversation all together -- I get a little wonk-ish about taxes). BUUUT, when you look back further, you see that the people who were taught to pull together as a country in the 30s and 40s, well, they put a man on the moon, and created the Great Society, producing the biggest middle class in history (up to that point).

We're not all going to agree on everything (I should hope that never happens), but there are some things we have to agree on: do the right thing because it's right, build your community, share prosperity with others, and when someone is down on their luck, help them up with one hand, and give them a book with their other. That's the big picture. You don't just change your own life. You don't just change the lives of people you know. You change the lives of people all over the world, and alter the course of human events. That's the big picture. That's why I am striving in my business and I hope that vision will help others to strive too.

*And I believe that being a sex worker so that you can feed your family is probably pretty humiliating. I'm not making a value judgment on that, or saying anything about sex workers to perform that work because they like it.