Starting
my own business is something I never, ever thought I would do. I was firmly
ensconced in my academic career and fully expected to stay there until I keeled
over at the lectern. I never expected having to reinvent myself and start
another career path, yet there I was…
One
of the nice things about life in academia is how much control you have over
your time. Don’t get me wrong, there’s A LOT of work to do, but you get to
decide, for the most part, how and where you do it. Aside from classroom time,
office hours, and (seemingly endless) committee meetings, you can prepare
class, grade exams and papers, conduct research, even hold office hours, from
wherever you want, whether home, the local Starbucks, or even at the beach.
While
struggling with where my next career should take me, there was one thing I knew
with certainty: that I couldn’t give up the kind of freedom I had as an
academic. I spent nearly ten years in a cubicle farm during my days in the
insurance industry between BA and PhD, and never wanted to return to a job
where I had to punch a time clock, even if only figuratively, and spend my days
chained to a desk. I’m a wanderer you see, I need to get up and move around and
be in different environments throughout the day to be inspired and at peak
productivity. Cubicle life was not for me. Academia was the perfect fit.
It
became clear to me that I pretty much had to be self-employed in order to
maintain the freedom I wanted, ability to wander that I needed, and
self-determination I craved. And when I put two and two together about how much
experience I already had with coaching from both my insurance days (with
injured workers) and during my academic life as advisor and mentor to my
students, it was obvious this was the right path and that self-employment was
in fact in my future.
And yet another lesson about never
saying never!
So
here I am. My own boss and soaking up all I can about how to not just run a
coaching business, but how to run a business period. Yikes! I’m actually mostly
having fun with the process, but there are times when I feel overwhelmed and
completely in the weeds. I talk to fellow coaches about their business development
and some of them are absolutely terrified and frozen in place like deer in
headlights, whereas others are blazing ahead fearlessly. What determines how we
react?
And
that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Fear. That big F word that causes so many
of us to throw up our hands in frustration and give up on our goals and dreams.
It can be fear of change, fear of failure, fear of looking like an idiot, or
even fear of success. Thing is, fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It becomes
bad when we let it drive our behavior, but in and of itself, it’s a normal
experience and one from which we can learn. Sometimes we just need to let
ourselves feel it and move on from there.
So how am I managing the fear that
accompanies building my business?
I
have a few tricks I use regularly to help me work through the fear and get into
a place of inspired action. Most are practical, but there’s also a pretty cool
Jedi mind-trick too! And the beauty is, these tricks can be applied to all
kinds of situations, not just building a business.
Lists
work wonders. They help to keep me organized and clearly show what I have to
do. Once it’s all prioritized on paper, rather than floating around all
disorganized in my brain, it often doesn’t appear nearly as intimidating or
fear inducing as it did.
From
there, I start by tackling my list and breaking it down into turtle steps,
which are tasks so small and natural they don’t even seem like work. They’re
the natural steps broken down into manageable and unintimidating bits. For
example, when I had to figure out how best to manage client appointments, it
seemed overwhelming. But then I made my list of what I wanted to accomplish and
how I wanted it to work and then broke that down into bite size pieces. Fear
and overwhelm managed.
For
me, fear can be triggered by a lack of knowledge. “I don’t know how to do this,
I’m afraid to do it wrong, so maybe I should just quit now.” Sound familiar? But
as soon as I start to educate myself about what I don’t know and what I need to
know, the fear starts to melt away. I know what I’m talking about, gain
confidence, and voila, things get done!
Now
for the Jedi Mind Trick. Well, it’s actually a mind trick on myself, but let’s
not split hairs here. This took some practice, but once mastered, it allowed me
to tap into my inner voice, which never lies, and override my critical voice,
which lies a lot. Tapping into my inner voice (also known as gut or intuition),
allows me to easily discern between useful fear and destructive fear.
There
are many ways to accomplish this, but meditation and/or checking in with my
body and its physical sensations while focusing on the fear inducing thought are
two useful tools. Either is a good way to deal with fear in the moment, and
then, when there’s time, there’s the deeper thought work to help identify
underlying causes and patterns of the fear.
Fear
can be harnessed to open the mind’s inspiration and increase productivity, or
it can stop us dead in our tracks and paralyze us. I find each of these tools
useful in helping me tackle the fear that creeps in while building my business
and am confident they can help you with whatever project is striking fear in
your heart today. For more info or to talk to me about this, you know what to
do…
Be passionate
about your path
and power up
your life
with LifeWalker
Coach