Someone is Watching You August 12, 2009

I don’t want to incite paranoia, but there’s something you should know: if you’re an entrepreneur who’s walking the walk, you’re a doer and someone is watching you.

To those who are not doing (we’ll call them watchers) entrepreneurship is a big dream, a “someday” ideal or, a hopeful aspiration for all their ideas and inklings. In this stage, watchers thrive when they see someone whom they know going for it.

Whether or not you asked to be, there are people in your circle of connections watching you, learning from you, drawing inspiration from you.

If you are a doer, here’s what you should know about being watched.

1. Doers inspire watchers to keep their ideas alive. Seeing you go for it helps watchers begin to start thinking in terms of what is possible instead of what’s inevitable.

2. If you can do it, they can do it. Every day that you persevere, a watcher believes more and more that they can do it, too. A powerful notion if you’ve ever been watched by a kid bursting with creativity.

3. Watchers are among your greatest cheerleaders. Your success is their success. They admire your accomplishments and tell you so. They tell your story at parties and work functions. They drop in on your website from time to time and marvel when they see you in the press.

4. Watchers will need you one day. When the time comes to for a watcher to become a doer, you will be among the first people they call for advice and encouragement, ideas and connections. Watchers moving in to the doer stage deserve your time and attention.

Now that I’ve pulled back the curtain on the fact that you may have a watcher, let me give you passionate doers one quick private investigation exercise: Do you know who’s watching you? What side of you are they most often seeing? Who are you watching?

And by the way watchers, if you are paying attention as you watch, you will learn and become a doer. However, if you perpetually remain a watcher, you may eventually be demoted to voyeur.

In either case, if you’re not taking action, no one is watching you.

Self-Doubt as an Ally? July 30, 2009

I Googled self doubt today. It’s a state of mind that drops in on me occasionally and, frankly, I wanted to know how to get rid of it.

The Google search results didn’t disappoint me.

I found links for “squash self doubt,” “overcome self doubt, ” and “break-through self doubt.”

Dealing with self doubt started to sound like a life-long quest and not something I could get rid of in a day. Bummer.

Deflated, I decided to pick up my copy of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I knew there had to be something in there. And there was something. Something radical!

Pressfield says suggests and idea about self doubt so opposite of where I was headed that it just might work. On page 39 he writes:

Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it. If you find ourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are.

I was shocked and then convinced all in one breath. Can the plague of self doubt actually be an ally?

It’s true that any yearning desire is the one most easily doubted.

I often ask my clients what they see themselves doing in their wildest dreams and the truth is always buried deep beneath a stash of more responsible or acceptable answers. When we are at last able to uncover the real thing, it is often quickly dismissed or peppered by self-doubting question that vaporize it into “just a silly old idea.”

But those deeply doubted desires are actually the solid truth.

Why do we doubt what is so solidly true and real? Pressfield gives one answer in the final line of the excerpt, which reads:

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

I get it now. We doubt what is true because doubt is a compass whose job it is to steer us in the direction of our dreams — a direction that feels uncertain, new and impossible. A direction that often supplies us with feelings that show us what it is worth the fight.

There is no fight in something that is easy, fake or a rip-off.

Self doubt is a natural reaction for the warrior who lives her dreams and defends them from herself.

Deciding What’s Next July 24, 2009

Have you ever asked yourself, “What’s next?”

It can be a difficult question to get to after wading through the gummy mud of, “What do I have to do right now?”

At the outset, the question, “What’s next?” can feel big and daunting. However, it is a question that is full of possibility, creation and attraction without any of that restraint of “What do I have to do?” or worse, “What should I do?”

Answering the questions, “What’s next?” carries a small element of suspense. But then, something interesting happens as we become more specific with that question.

What will I eat for my next meal? How will I spend my time next summer? What’s the next big idea I want to dust off? What is my next project? What will I change or add the next time?

Did you feel it? The suspense quickly folds into a shooting star trailing right into our gut. I can tell you that I can clearly answer each one of those questions above almost instantly from my gut.

That’s a lot easier than trying to figure out what I have to do or should do. Those are just questions we try to answer based on what we think others would do or would have us do.

Asking “What’s next?” helps us find the answer from a position of what we most want to do. That feels 100% better.

Give it a try.

Ask yourself, “What’s next?”

And let me know what you discover!

New Beginning July 8, 2009

Something newly present in our lives can not only create new knowledge and new routines, new friends and new interests, but also can mark a new beginning.

Some beginnings are full of anticipation, adrenaline and immersion.

Others are familiar, even second nature, in some ways, but strangely unfamiliar and mysterious in other ways.

My new beginning is more like that. He’s 8 weeks old, 12 pounds and has 28 razor sharp teeth.

We call him Wesley and he is most definitely the mark of a new beginning.

I look forward to sharing more as he grows.

Creative Activities Lead to True Calling July 1, 2009

Many people I have met over the years who are exploring entrepreneurship have something in common: they are searching for who they are meant to be in the world. What they were born to do in their time on the planet.

So often when we are searching for this thing we’re born to do, we are looking for it like it’s something we lost or something valuable we dropped in the street, like a lost $100 bill, that we must always be searching for or we’ll never feel responsible or complete.

Recently, however, one of my clients shared her story with me and illustrated so clearly that it’s not that we have to go searching for that one thing we are to become but, rather, that we need to connect to the creative conduit that will reveal it to us.

She explained to me that toward the end of  her corporate job experience, she felt a deep sense of longing to do something creative. At that stage, she felt that doing something creative as a career would be such a wonderful way to make a living.

She had always been interested in flower arranging, so she took a class and loved it. She had a natural talent for it and enjoyed connecting to her creative self. Within months of completing the class, she took a second job in the evenings and on the weekends as a floral designer at a local flower shop, and during the day she continued working at her corporate job.

She explained to me that at that point, she felt her world opening up. She started seeing possibilities instead of wallowing in misery. This new awareness and attitude was key to finding her calling. Within a year of floral arranging, she was looking through some local newspapers and flipped through to a page with an ad for a workshop teaching Reiki. She had never studied or thought about Reiki before, yet somehow she knew the minute she saw that ad it was the opportunity for which she had been searching.

Right below that ad was another for therapeutic coaching certification. Yet another curiosity was sparked.

The workshop in Reiki uncovered her gifts and talents as a healer. She wanted to take it even further and soon became a certified therapeutic life coach and added a few more healing modalities that she could use to help her clients.

It wasn’t a strong desire to become a healer that led her to her true calling, but her ability to connect with a creative conduit, in her case floral design, that led her to her ultimate calling. And now she has the added benefit of having both in her life.

As you search for a connection to the person you long to become in the world, I encourage you to look for your creative conduit. Woodworking, writing, painting, singing, acting, teaching, crafting, sewing, gardening — whatever connects you to that center of creation. It will ultimately lead you in the direction of your dreams.

Poem: Let “Famine” Inspire You into Action June 22, 2009

Famine
by Alice Barry

It was true
What I knew
What I dreamed
What threatened the seams of yearning in my heart.

It was gone
Before I listened
Before I cared
Before I dared to say, “I love you,” and sweep it off its feet.

It remains
Someplace it can breathe
Someplace within reach
Someplace it can breach the false security of my fear.

Use Summer to Pull You Through June 15, 2009

It’s gorgeous outside right now. And almost no where in the country do we appreciate that more than here in Minnesota.

But when the weather or other forces of nature do make everything easier, there’s an interesting phenomenon that happens to many entrepreneurial spirits: we take a deep breath, we roll up our sleeves and then…we rest.

We take a break — a long three-month break. Then before we know it, in the throws of Fall with Winter nipping at our necks, we panic. We suddenly realize that we had a whole summer of opportunity that slipped by because we rested. We languished in the false relief of sun and fun instead of using all that energy and ease to our advantage.

What if good were great? What if great were outstanding? What if everything you do now to nurture your connections, creativity and commitment were enough to carry you through until next June, even when things don’t feel so easy later in the year?

Now is a great time to connect with other people, enjoy the beauty around us and use it to our creative advantage. So don’t rest. Instead, rest assured that you made the most out of an incredibly opportune time of year.

Energy Prod April 1, 2009

I’ve noticed a powerful tool available to we entrepreneurs. It’s not new, but it’s sometimes overlooked.

I call it the energy prod.

It takes energy to create ideas and energy to take action to implement them. And if you feel your energy to do that is down, all you need to do is find an energy prod.

To my knowledge, there is no such invention on the market yet, but there are endless sources to that can give us the energy we need. My favorite source is watching another entrepreneur in action.

One I’m watching closely right now is Sandy Dempsy. I first met Sandy last summer in at the Las Vegas Storytelling Workshop with Barbara Winter. She didn’t have a business, she just had an idea of what she loved. And now I’m watching her grow that into something magical and meaningful on her new website, www.thedreamingcafe.com.

It’s re-energizing me and reminding me of how much fun it is to connect to an idea that is so important you keep coming back to it and playing with it in new and interesting ways. Sandy is an example of an energy prod.

Who can serve as an energy prod for you?

What can you watch in action?

What can you learn by watching?

The Entrepreneurial Hour March 25, 2009

One of the obstacles many of my clients feel is a barrier when they are just starting their business is time. Not having the time, not taking the time, not knowing the value of their time.

The truth is, it takes as much time as you want to build a business. There is no formula you need to follow, however you do need to find the guidelines that work for you.

Fellow entrepreneur, Sandy Dempsy, for example, was feeling frazzled, overworked, exhausted and creatively drained from her day job. Yet her creative voice was begging for attention and she wanted to get a jump start on her business.

Sandy gave herself the gift of time by using her vacation as an entrepreneurial sabbatical. She used the time before then to plan out her days and goals and anticipating obstacles that may have derailed her so she could strategize ways around them.

During her time off, Sandy said, “I wrote every day, meditated every day, got my new website up and practiced living a new way.” By the way, she also launched that website, www.thedreamingcafe.com, 30 days sooner than she anticipated it would take.

Consider this, in my experience 1 hour in focused entrepreneurial time is equal to about 8 hours in what I call “cubicle” time. Imagine what a difference one hour a day can make!

Now that she’s back to work full time, I know it’ll only get easier for Sandy because she has established the framework and the practice. All she has to do is keep writing something every day and taking one small step at at time.

Learning from Sandy’s experience, know that time is there for you. All it needs is for you to tell it what it will become for you.

Learning to Be OK with Learning March 23, 2009

When I began my business four years ago, I noticed an instant trend: I had to learn something new about myself every single day. There were so many revelations, trials and lessons that I can remember feeling so exhausted at one point I asked my mentors if there would ever be a reprieve. They wisely answered that question with another question, “Do you want to stop learning?”

Of course I knew the answer was, “No,” but I felt so overwhelmed.

Then my coach, Lynn Baskfield, did a great exercise with me that I now use with my clients. At the end of each year, we tallied up my achievements, disappointments and lessons.

She used this exercise to teach me one more important lesson. First, she had me burn my disappointments. No problem there. I wanted those things out of my mind ASAP.

Next, she made me take a match to my achievements. I stayed with her on that one, but I admit I almost dove in the garbage can to save them. How could I let those go? Weren’t those lessons proof that I was here and made a difference?

The she told me I would get to save my list of lessons. Not just save my list of lessons from being burned at the stake in our exercise that day, but actually get to keep those lessons forever.

Now I finally get it.

Learning and learning and learning is so important because the lessons are the only thing we get to carry forward.