If they gave merit badges for anxiety, accidental entrepreneurs would have a bunch of them. The quintessential anxiety-provoking circumstance is a gap between how things are and how you want them to be coupled with uncertainty about how to close that gap. That just about perfectly describes self-employment (or any learning situation, for that matter).
There is so much uncertainty involved in working for ourselves that we can become habituated to anxiety. We assume that there will always be situations that require gritting our teeth and sucking up. If the rewards of self-employment outweigh the emotional cost, we keep going; otherwise, we get “real” jobs.
So far, it might seem that finding ways to reduce anxiety should be a high priority. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s why.
Anxiety Isn't the Problem
To begin with, looking for ways to reduce anxiety presupposes that anxiety is inevitable, and it’s not. Yes, self-employment is full of situations that commonly produce anxiety, but it’s not the situations themselves that make us so uncomfortable. It’s our presumption that uncertainty is a problem.
Tell that to an inventor, and he’ll cry, “Nonsense.” Tell it to an artist, and you’ll get the same response. To the creative mind, caps and uncertainties are not problems to be solved but opportunities, possibilities, invitations to be explored. When we lives as creators, the very situations that might cause us to shudder with anxiety evoke excitement and curiosity.
Reducing Anxiety Inhibits Progress
The second reason that reducing anxiety doesn’t help grow a business is that it works too well. What I mean is that reducing anxiety causes us to feel better, at which point we stop doing whatever we were doing to reduce anxiety. In time, the underlying problem re-appears, and we get anxious again and take action.
A classic example is how the accidental entrepreneur approaches marketing and sales. When business is good, who thinks about marketing? When business slows down, anxiety goes up and we use it to spur ourselves on in search of work. As soon as we have enough work, we stop doing whatever we were doing to get it.
How do we break the cycle?
First, let’s let acknowledge that anxiety can arise in spite of our best efforts to be creative and go with the flow. I don’t want any of us to beat ourselves up for being anxious – as if that would help. (Hey, if that worked, I’d be on cloud nine all the time.) Rather than mustering our resources to break the cycle, we would do well to make space for anxiety when it arises.
Thinking about the causes of anxiety does not create space. Bringing awareness to how anxiety feels in our bodies does. As you turn your attention to your body, notice where you might be contracting or resisting the way you feel. See how it might be to open up instead. Make room for the feelings just for the sake of seeing what happens.
Making space in and of itself evokes a different way of being. When we make space for anxiety, we become its witnesses rather than its puppets. As witnesses, we can also observe the anxiety-provoking gap without turning it into a problem. If what lies on the other side of the gap is truly meaningful for us, anxiety will give way to inventiveness.
Making space is anxiety transformation, not anxiety reduction. The cycle becomes anxiety--> awareness-->space--> inventiveness--> action. When we know how to transform anxiety, we no longer need to avoid it.
Staffan Nöteberg wrote a super little book called The Pomodoro Technique.Francesco Cirillo blogs about it. And between the book, the blog, and the emerging community, there's a good deal of wisdom about time, productivity, rhythm, and awareness.
That's a lot, considering the core practice, known as "a pomodoro" is:
Choose a task to be accomplished
Set the Pomodoro* to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break
On Friday, you can download an interview with Sean D'Souza about time, focus, and chaos. It's going to be a bit of a mind-bender, I think, because Sean has devised simple structures that make being disorganized productive.
I know. Sounds weird. But it works really, really well. (I've been using it since December.)
Meanwhile, check out The Pomodoro Technique. You can download the ebook free by clicking on the title: The Pomodoro Technique.
*A Pomodoro is one of those little kitchen timers that looks like a tomato. Like in the picture.
Note: I'd intended to get this entry up yesterday (Thursday). Sorry about the delay. I just plain forgot.
I’m willing to bet that every reader of this newsletter aspires to being honest. Some of you may even feel that your commitment to being honest is what makes self-employment hard, especially when it comes to marketing and sales.
It’s certainly not difficult to find examples of dishonesty in business. But I wonder why we, who are clear that honesty is not optional, would choose to base our idea of business on behavior we reject?
A Losing Perspective
When we focus on the underside of the business world, we make ourselves victims of a system that doesn’t exist.
Sure, there are dishonest business people. There are sleazy marketers. There are greedy salespeople. So what? There are also honest, classy, and generous people in every facet of business and marketing. When we make ourselves victims, we lose.
One cost of relegating commerce to the moral dung heap is that we fail to promote our work with vigor and clarity. Another cost is that we abdicate our responsibility to shape the systems, practices, and media of commerce and to infuse them with dignity, meaning, integrity. And perhaps the highest cost of all is that we cast ourselves as helpless victims, which is a bar against every sort of growth.
Start the Flow
If you are serious about making a living doing the work you love, start the flow that connects you with people who need your work. You open the conduit in three ways:
Make your gifts visible and useful at minimal cost to yourself and optimal benefit to others.
Showing your real personality and perspective so people who resonate can find you.
Getting support to work through the mental, emotional, spiritual, and material issues that invariably arise as we grow.
For years I conspired to keep myself in genteel poverty because I thought it made me a good person. No, let me be even more honest. I thought it protected me from being a bad person. I was living a miserly existence that had no inherent dignity or virtue. Righteousness and fear kept me small and anxious. Other people’s needs were a threat because, after all, I barely had enough for myself. Every day I gathered evidence that there is not enough to go around.
One day I woke up and saw that my own hand on the tap. Sure, external circumstances influence how much I prosper, but the only one controlling how much of the available prosperity flowed in, through me, and out again was me. I resolved to start the flow.
It worked and it still works. (And no, it's not always as open as it could be, If you had to be perfect to thrive, I'd be broke.)
Into Action
The moment I realized that I had been restricting the flow of well being, I knew with utter confidence and clarity that I could expand it. That’s not an overnight job, but I have to tell you it’s a lot more fun to work on increasing your capacity for joy, compassion, wealth, pleasure, and support than it is to concentrate on being stuck or victimized.
If you have a stack of business building tools gathering dust on your bookshelf, it's time to pick one and dust it off. It almost doesn't matter where you start, only that you do.
If you don't have a program or tool that is inspiring and practical, check out The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit before midnight PDT, Friday, June 26.
Why You Shouldn't Buy Another Program
Last night I received a heartfelt request for advice about whether or not to buy the toolkit. Believe it or not, my answer was no! Read on to find out why.
Dear Molly,
I am sorry to bother you but I wonder if you might offer me a bit of help. I HATE asking for help but this email you sent really got to me (in a good way).
I'm so excited about this tool kit (I think the "O" part of this is so exciting b/c I love to write) but I'm feeling too scared to buy it. It's not the money, but I was in Amway (I'm not saying anything bad about Amway).
It's just that I spent SO much money on tool kits and seminars and I guess I didn't have the right mindset and I was in it for several years and well, I still feel like the biggest failure - like how can I think this tool kit might help me be my own boss and enough make money to live off of- but I want to!
I read your newsletter and love it (and I read most of one of your books :) and I have grown I think and am even more organized now but I'm still scared to fail myself.
Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom you or someone on your staff could provide me.
My Response
My honest thought?
Another collection of tools, no matter how valuable, will not help unless you have structure and support. It is incredibly difficult to hold the big picture that the details at the same time, and to grow an income, that is what we have to do.
I'd rather see you save your money and invest in a community of support like Shaboom County or Mark Silver's Oasis. Then, dive in. Introduce yourself and tell folks what you want to create. You don't have to know where to start, we will help.
Then, when you have support to help you focus and follow through, investing in tools and programs makes sense. But you won't have to invest in a heap of them all at once.
Now, if you have the resources to buy The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit AND join a community, do it. The Toolkit is an incredible bargain and most of the products are phenomenal. But again, even the greatest products won't help you if you don't have support and structure. You just can't do it all yourself.
I hope this helps, and thank you for trusting me to answer honestly.
Warmly,
Molly
PS: I am allergic to businesses like Amway. I know they work well for some folks, but they make me nuts. I have never been able to make a dime in network marketing.
Bonus: An Honesty Exercise
Set aside 15 minutes to reflect on an aspect of your business or work that has been troubling. Set a timer and write answers to the following questions at least until the time is up. If you are stumped by one question, move on to the next one, then come back to the one you skipped. Keep your pen moving (or your fingers keying) even if you have to write nonsense to do so.
What do I know about the way I look at business that I'm pretending not to understand?
What am I afraid of? How did I set that up?
What's my responsibility for this? (Responsibility = ability to respond.)
What do I want, really?
What do I have to offer, really, whether or not I am ready to give it?
What's in the way of my being honest with myself?
What's in the way of my being honest with others?
From whom am I concealing my real concerns, motives, or beliefs?
What would happen if I told the truth?
Some of these questions may feel uncomfortable. Good! That's a sure sign that you've been keeping something from yourself. Keep asking these uncomfortable questions until you can face the answers squarely. Chances are that other people know or suspect what you've kept from yourself, so do yourself the favor of letting yourself in on the secret.
Honesty is not kid stuff. It's hard work. When you are tempted to wimp out, ask yourself if you can afford to be the last to know the truth.
One of the themes that runs through Believe: A Guide to Practical Attraction is the distinction between the creative power of thought and the resource-depleting practice of wishful thinking.
On the one hand, thought has the power to bridge current reality and a dreamed-for outcome. Our experience of the world is created by the thoughts we believe. But wishful thinking, by definition, keeps us and what we wish for separate. The wish is always a distant dream. The harder we wish, the more we resist (and even resent) current reality.
With this in mind, here is a quick reality check. After all, your possible dream begins here and now, not there and then.
You Will Make Mistakes
Hello! Mistakes happen. If you position yourself as a know-it-all, mistakes can be fatal. Position yourself instead as a human being, a learner, an adventurer, and your mistakes become platforms for next steps.
Not Everyone Wants or Needs What You Have
That's good news, because odds are that you can't respond to everyone anyway. Cultivate the courage, integrity, and clarity to listen deeply to prospective clients and decline to work with those whom you are not ideally suited to serve.
Obstacles Are Essential to Creating
Opposition is an essential shaper of the creative process, closing off some choices and pointing in new, sometimes completely unfamiliar and unexplored, directions. Think of it as putting banks on a river. Without those banks, a river's flow loses force. Add banks, and you focus and direct a powerful flow.
Humbly Welcome Opportunities to Profit
Remember the Marianne Williamson quote, "We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?"
Who are you to not profit from your work? It's simply wasteful not to harvest, use, and recycle the gifts we've been given. Let's get a clue and stop starving ourselves and our businesses of the oxygen they need to thrive.
Clients Have Bad Days, Too
Some times they're going to take it out on you. That doesn't mean you have to slink home licking your wounds, nor does it mean you get to strike back. It certainly doesn't mean you have to accept abuse.
When you feel unfairly used, take a few deep breaths, notice what you wish were different, and remember that we're all human. Maybe it's time to do some boundary maintenance. Are you pretending that you need to please everyone or that everyone needs to like you in order for you to thrive? Look to yourself, not because you are to blame, but because you are the only one whose behavior you can manage.
Sometimes Whole Systems Go Wrong
Or you find out too late that a new project was not quite ready for prime time. (Tell me about it.) At times like this you get to practice being available and responsive to client needs while also taking care of yourself.
Sometimes you won't (yet) know how to solve or resolve the problem, and you may resent the time you're using to reassure clients instead of getting things on track. Breathe. Learn to say, "I don't know, and I do care, and I will get back to you as soon as I can." Practice saying it with dignity, conviction, and patience. Take some time to wonder what you would need to believe in order for all of this to feel right and true.
It Takes a Village to be Self-Employed
Self-employment doesn't mean we don't need or want support, though we may be the last to realize it. Spend some time wondering how other people might want you to thrive. Let your imagination run free as you speculate on what kinds of collaboration could work for you. Turn your complaints about networking into dreams of your ideal support system. What would your business look and feel like if you knew you did not have to have it all together because there was lots of help at hand?
The secrets to creating the possible dream are all related to accepting what is, which includes accepting the support that is everywhere around you and accepting your own desire to build a business that adds real value in the world and allows you to thrive. Some days it will be easier than others to believe that reality and your dream can co-exist. But if you persist with humility, passion, and trust, your dream will teach you how to make it real.
Find out how The 2009 Self Employment Telesummit can help you achieve your possible dream. Registration opens July 5; telesummit September 10-22. To learn more, click here.
Flow is described as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." (Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi)
Going with the flow is supposed to signify natural, effortless movement from one moment to the next. When it comes to managing your energy and attention in the absence of an external boss, going with the flow can be disastrous.
In fact, it's not flow at all, but faux-flow.
Aimlessness
When going with the flow means flowing any which way, it's not flow, it's aimlessness.
Flow requires us to make a decision. De-cide, from the Latin "cut off." Harsh words in our feel-good-crazy times, but essential to flow.
Flow requires deciding on a direction and turning away from competing directions. Until you make a decision, you may feel all flow-y, but you're in a faux-flow trance.
Apathy
If going with the flow means not going anywhere until the limitations are removed, it's not flow, it's apathy.
Flow requires constraint. A river gathers force from the narrowness of its banks relative to the volume of water. The same is true when you decide what to create. Limitation and constraint focus your attention, require you to make choices, and keep you moving forward.
Self Deception
If going with the flow means believing your thoughts and feelngs, it's not flow, but self deception.
Accurate feedback is essential to flow, and we can't get accurate feedback if we live in our heads.
The only way to get accurate feedback is to look to what philosopher Ken Wilber calls a community of the adequate. (I know. Not a very juicy term for the village that gives life to your creative endeavors, but he's a guy.)
Left to our own devices, we see what we expect to see, what we want to see, what we are afraid to see. It's not that we are unwilling to see the truth (well, not always), it's just that the committee of me, myself, and I produce distorted information.
Breaking the Faux Flow Trance
Breaking the faux-flow trance means:
Making a decision.
Accepting constraints as an aid to the creative process.
Actively soliciting feedback from a community that can see you in ways you can't see yourself.
When you have those three factors in place, flow will happen. Without them, it won't.
Let me say right off the bat that the biggest barrier to prosperous self-employment is rampant suspicion.
Suspicion about people's motives, integrity, intentions, ability, understanding, reliability, and more can leave the self employed person isolated, frustrated, and resource-less.
And everything we suspect about others we suspect about ourselves, sometimes to a greater degree. Which, since we're our own bosses, can make work hellish.
In one fashion or another all the work I do could fall under the umbrella of "healing suspicion."
Still, I say that if you aren't suspicious you aren't paying attention. And you really should pay attention, at least some of the time.
To reconcile all this, let's look at what suspicion is and what it's for.
Suspicion Is a Messenger
According to the Oxford American Dictionary, suspicion is:
1. a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true.
2. a very slight trace of something.
Now, you wouldn't get very far, you might not even get out of bed, without the "feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true." And if you didn't pay attention to very slight traces of something, you'd miss out on all kinds of good stuff.
The Difference Between the Messenger and the Message
The function of suspicion is to alert us to a possibility. Suspicion becomes a problem when we experience possibility as fact.
It's perfectly reasonable to suspect that the stranger at the door is a solicitor. What's not reasonable (and what can seriously impair your relationships with the neighbors) is to bark "We don't want any" at the new neighbor who dropped by to introduce himself and drop off some cookies.
Suspicion is a signal that we should pay attention. Which is why I say, "If you aren't suspicious, you aren't paying attention."
Two Kinds of Attention
When suspicion strikes, it's natural to become vigilant, and vigilance is one way to pay attention.
But when the signal has been received, we need to decode the message. To do that, we need to shift from vigilance to inquiry.
Prolonged vigilance burns out our adrenals, produces chronic anxiety, and distorts perception. Oh, and it makes it very difficult to decode and evaluate the message.
What to Do?
The simplest way to shift from vigilance to inquiry is to ask a question: "Is this (person, organization, offer) trust-worthy?"
Of course, asking this question puts the burden of investigation and evaluation on you. It takes away the psychic barriers that protect us from action (and possible failure). It asks us to shift from being vigilant (this could be dangerous) to being responsible (response-able).
This week, when you sense suspicion, give yourself a moment to really notice it. (Greet the messenger.) Define what is up for examination, and ask "Is this (person, organization, offer) trust-worthy?
Let me know what you notice in the comments section of The Accidental Entrepreneurs Blog. http://www.shaboominc.com/blog
And check out the free teleclass described below. It's all about how to get from suspicion to trust without losing your shirt. This information could have saved Bernie Madoff's investors a lot of grief.
Free Trust Teleclass
Learn how to go from chronic suspicion to informed trust in this week's free preview event for The Self Employment Telesummit. The class is called Authentic Trust:
How to Rely on Others Without Being Taken for a Ride, and it will be at noon Pacific time, 3pm Eastern time on Friday, June 5.
If you're interested register even if you cannot attend. I'll send you a link to the recording.
It's gorgeous here in Suquamish this afternoon. Temps are in the mid 80s and the sky is a cool blue, not the white-hot blue that sometimes steals freshness from a summer day.
I just finished editing this week's episode of Self Employment TV (you can see it below, and someday I'll even add it to the Self Employment TV web site). The reason that's relevant is that I've been enjoying a spell of flow: focused, relaxed productivity.
I really like it when that happens.
Mom, Where Does Focus Come From?
Sometimes I swear that focus is a myth promulgated by over-adrenalized self-help gurus to sell books and CDs. I resent it mightily when someone pontificates about the latest system for getting focused.
In fact, I resent it so much that, sometimes, I stay unfocused out of pure spite.
But I digress.
I suspect that the focus I experience today is the manifestation of a few wise choices, one healthy practice (which has led to another), the support of wise and compassionate friends, and grace.
And it's the grace I'd like to dwell on (and in) for the moment.
Wow, How's this for Hanging a Left?
My mind just turned to Gerald May's challenging and insightful book, Addiction and Grace. May, a psychiatrist and a devout Catholic (if memory serves), invites us to look into the deep dark corners of unexamined habits and preferences to discover where we turn from grace.
As we encounter and acknowledge our habitual turnings away, we may experience a profound and helpless sense of remorse, which is a turning toward that same grace.
It occurs to me that there is something quite lovely about the whole of this, the turnings away and the turnings toward, the hiding and the disclosing of ourselves to ourselves and to whatever greater power we recognize.
On Being too Full of Ourselves
Perhaps you, too, grew up overhearing the disdainful whispers, "Oh, he's so full of himself" and "Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." And maybe to this day you find something a bit distasteful in public displays of self love and approval (or PDSLAs, as they shall heretofore be known).
The admonition against self love and approval can steal a lot of joy from innocent beauty.
I'm talking about the innocent beauty of any one of us during a momentary encounter with his or her own essential amazingness. (This topic is hard on one's syntax.) We know it when we see it in children (except when we are feeling very, very grumpy). The joy of spontaneous self-love is beautiful to behold.
And what a turning away from grace it is when we step on the sparks of enthusiasm for ourselves. (And, remember the suggestion that this turning is part of a larger turning, thus not necessarily to be disparaged or feared.)
In January 2008, at the Certification Workshop for facilitators of The Work of Byron Katie, I noticed myself thinking, "I should be feeling more sober and serious. I shouldn't be so full of myself. I shouldn't think I'm so hot."
As I walked down to the lunch tent, I did The Work on "I shouldn't think too highly of myself." Here's a synopsis of what I found.
Is it true?
Yes.
Can I absolutely know that it is true?
No.
How do I react when I believe that thought? What happens?
I contract. I see others' beauty and wisdom and feel resentful, envious, less-than. I compete both overtly and covertly. It's like putting on a girdle and shoes that are way too tight, then bitching at myself for being cranky at the party.
Who would I be without the thought?
I would be the woman walking to the lunch tent in the sunshine with happiness bubbling in her belly. I would be shining. I would be so full of love and ease. I would be light.
I could go on and attempt to tie all this together. Fortunately for you and for me, it's Wednesday, and that means I have a big honking permission slip that says, "Molly is allowed to write without purpose or responsibility today."
Staffan Nöteberg wrote a super little book called 
It's gorgeous here in Suquamish this afternoon. Temps are in the mid 80s and the sky is a cool blue, not the white-hot blue that sometimes steals freshness from a summer day.
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