A Reality Check for the Self Employment Dream

June 18, 2009 12:09 PM

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.

Photo: Courtesy of flickr.com

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Comments

Wonderful, wise post, Molly. Thank you so much for this.

Hiro

Posted by: Hiro Boga at June 18, 2009 6:06 PM

Wonderful Molly, thank you for highlighting all of the stumbling blocks and then effectively removing them! Very useful and honest information, the reason I keep reading...Teresa

Posted by: Teresa at June 19, 2009 6:59 AM

There's that "accepting what is" again ..... I think I've having a case of "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" with this. How great that you mention the wonderful things that are a part of what is - it's so easy for me to focus on applying acceptance to the more challenging things in my life. Thank you, Molly.

Trudy

Posted by: Trudy McKnight at June 19, 2009 8:17 AM

Good Golly Ms. Molly - I'm wondering if I'll ever be successful in my entrepreneurial efforts...I know I'm not wired to resume a role in the traditional trenches of the nfp or corporate community.

The synchronicity inherent in your work is staggering! I am puzzled by and grateful that the specific content and timing of what you share is so often juxtaposed with what it seems that I most need to hear/learn in the unfolding of my life and career.

Thanks for so generously sharing your experience and wisdom. Peace...

Dahna

Posted by: Dahna Willis at June 19, 2009 11:17 AM

this is unrelated to this post, but just a note, you mentioned in another blog not being able to download the game you paid for for iphone (edge) due to it being sued? it's now back on sale, so you can try again (just a friendly heads-up). apparently the maker of the game decided to put it back after realizing tim langdell is full of hot air

Posted by: Paul Eres at June 20, 2009 8:29 AM

I have a friend who always says "How can it get better than this." He says it all the time, and even ends his emails with it.

I've taken to saying it often, too, and have found it so helpful. I even wrote it on the other side of one of those "livestrong" plastic bracelets just so I can look at it when I need to.

You're so absolutely right on about all this. So here's to thinking rather than wishing. I raise my coffee cup in salute!

Posted by: liz at June 24, 2009 5:17 AM

Yikes! How did I let so much time go by before responding?

Hiro: Thank you for popping in. Can't wait to meet you in Taos at the end of July.

Teresa: I want to give you a big hug. Reading your note made me feel like I was getting one. :)

Trudy: I hear you. Sometimes we rise to the challenge in the BIG things, but find it difficult to apply the same skills and perspective to day-in day-out experiences. And we can always keep growing.

Dhana: You are so welcome. When I closed Mollycoddles (a fiber art studio) at the end of 1995, I realized I had become psychologically unfit for employment--other than self-employment. I love that you find what you need in what I write, and I suspect the synchronicity is easily explained by the fact that we share a path. xox

Hey, Paul! Thanks for the heads up. Amazing how things get around and come around online.

Liz, I love that! "How can it get better than this" is a wonderful approach to the here and now. You are fortunate in your choice of friends.

Posted by: Molly Gordon at June 24, 2009 12:58 PM