Fearing Failure is a Choice!

Have the courage to fail big and stick around.
Make them wonder why you’re still laughing!
~ From the film Elizabethtown

There is a lot of wisdom in that statement.  It isn’t so much that you want to prove to others that you’re strong in the face of adversity but rather, to me, it portrays an individual who understands that fearing failure is only a result of caring about the opinions of onlookers. In the vast configuration of things that really matter, what those people might think have nothing to do with your actual experience.

Children are inherently good at moving past failures because, in their youthful pursuit of life experiences, they have no idea what failure means. Like everything, children are taught that fearing failure is “normal” by some well-intentioned adult who explains the mechanics of failure and success.

Strictly speaking and in my opinion, you can only fail if you are comparing yourself to external standards that may or may not apply.  Yes, this sounds a bit like double speak but please bear with me while I explain.

When we measure our success against another person’s accomplishments and find ourselves falling short of that mark, we are doing ourselves a disservice.  What worked for them in their environment may have no bearing on what will work for you.  Have you ever noticed the small print in advertisements and sales copy that informs us that results are not typical?

Don't let Fear of Failure Stop You!

I don’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t surround yourself with people whom you admire and pursue the level of success apparent in their lifestyle.  That is the premise of working with a mentor, after all.  They have traveled the road that you wish to undertake and, if they are charging fees for mentoring, they have *hopefully* learned something about the route that they can teach you.  But, if you cannot immediately mirror that level of success, please don’t let it slow you down or stop you!

In my mind’s eye, any effort to do something that one has never done before cannot ever be considered a failure.  Fearing failure has potential to stifle your creativity as you imagine ways to proceed with your plans. If things do not turn out as expected, that is not a failure either.  Remember, goals are only intended to measure progress.  If you have to regroup or reset your goals, that is NOT a failure.

Who says you have to have it all together by a certain age? In my early 50s, I threw away the success model my parents prescribed and started all over again because I discovered that what was true for them was not bearing out to be true for me.  You can read how to avoid fearing failure here.

Fail Forward, Fast
~Tom Peters

I can’t help finding analogies in the behavior of children when I think of this topic.  Children pick themselves up from a fall and keep moving after their goal.  If something hurts, they eventually learn to avoid it.  The same is true for our businesses.  Inexperience might cause a painful lesson or two along the way to your own definition of success but fearing failure can stop you from trying something new. It’s all about your attitude.

This is a link to a story about an 11-year old who understood the iterative process of succeeding. It is a pretty awesome video example.

In the video below, Brian Tracy gives some great advice for overcoming the fears that may be holding you back in your progress.

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It is completely true that we must have confidence in our abilities in order to gain and keep the trust and respect of our prospects and customers.  If we become too forceful about the value that we feel we are delivering, that can be perceived as arrogance which will be off-putting to people.

your ability to be transparent shows if you are confident or arrogant

In this era of full-disclosure and social networking, whether that is through Instant Messaging or other well-known social networks, it is critical that we are above-board with regard to our accomplishments and skills.  One of the easiest ways to demonstrate your expertise is to reveal the value of the knowledge you’ve gained by sharing it openly with colleagues, where this is practical and do-able.

It isn’t enough to say to others that you are the best at what you do.  The ONLY way that your colleagues, prospects and customers will come to believe that you are an expert in your field, as you claim, is through their perception of who you are and by the  information you share openly to back up your claims.   If someone asks you why you are saying what you are saying, this does not mean that they don’t believe you or are challenging what you are sharing.   The way you handle yourself will show people if you are confident or arrogant.

I’m not suggesting that you should give away all that you know without compensation.  What will gain more respect and higher quality referrals will be to display a spirit of collaboration when you are in group settings or in pre-sales discussions.

whether confident or arrogant, remember that you are not always right

Even though you have spent years doing what you’re doing, you will be viewed as either confident or arrogant based on your willingness to accept the possibility that you still have something to learn and letting people see that this is the case.  Face it, people are inherently innovative and it is possible that someone has discovered something that can enhance your previously earned wisdom. 

The ability to hear a message without the background noise of your own filters is not easy for some folks.  When you KNOW you are the best at something and a new person inquires about the wisdom you are sharing, check your ego before responding.   The way that you respond will inform those directly involved in the conversation, as well as those looking on, as to whether you are confident or arrogant.

You can easily avoid confrontations by keeping an open mind.  If you feel that the person asking the question has less knowledge than you, do not react to their inexperience with a phrase like:

I’ve been doing this for years so I know what I’m talking about.

Kick your ego to the curb by admitting, to yourself, that nothing is static in our world.  Try to actively listen so you can learn more about their position.  You can experiment with statements such as:

I hadn’t thought of that.  Can you tell me more about it, please?

The first part of this phrasing validates the speaker by giving them credit for their idea.  The second part lets them know you are interested in what they have to say and leaves the door open for them to discuss it with you.

People will notice whether you are confident or arrogant, especially  if you have a genuine interest in learning more about them and what they have to say.  A good rule of thumb which I’ve discovered is that it is much better to be interested than it is to be interesting.  Besides, you actually might learn something new!

mean what you say!

Overly confident people rarely have the ability to truly appreciate someone else’s expertise, especially if it approaches their own.  If you are in this position and find yourself congratulating someone, make sure that your praise is sincerely offered because insincerity has potential to undermine the less experienced person with whom you are in conversation.

Always focus on building or improving your relationships by being honest.  Sarcasm or self-deprecating humor is a tactic that is sometimes used by arrogant people to draw attention away from others and to themselves, so be careful about how and when this is used.  If you can’t offer praise authentically, wait until you actually feel that emotion before dishing out your Kudos so the recipient knows whether you are being confident or arrogant when it is offered.

make yourself easy to approach

Your relationships will be enhanced and define you as being either confident or arrogant based on your ability to set aside your judgments that someone younger or having less experience automatically knows less about your subject than you do.  This will also make you seem more approachable. 

When you position yourself as an authority in your field, people will gladly follow you and have more respect for you because they want what you have.  They may not have decided yet whether you are confident or arrogant, and their decision is based on their perceptions of you.

As I used to quip:

She puts on her pantyhose one leg at a time too… 

When given the opportunity, provide your fans and followers with some personal information about how you arrived at your position of authority in your area of expertise.  I do not recommend being overly dramatic, as this will turn some people off.  What I’m suggesting is that it is totally OK let people know about things that bug you or mistakes you’ve made along your way. 

In the spirit of authenticity, always ensure that you are differentiating between what is your opinion and what is a fact, based on your knowledge. 

It is too much work to be perfect and it is probably an unobtainable goal anyway.  Your admirers need to know you are human in order to truly value the expertise that you have to share.

confident or arrogant?

Leaders and mentors understand the responsibility of the characteristics that have attracted people to them.  Marketers sometimes appear to have problems weighing the balance between being confident or arrogant and, sadly, some do not even recognize that this is an opportunity for them to change and gain higher respect. 

It is my opinion that confidence and ego have the power to make or break your patterns of success.  As useful as it is to have an ego to propel you, that same ego will cause people to stop listening to you if you stomp on them in public or stifle their ideas by telling them they are wrong.

People will quickly spot whether you are being confident or arrogant. Truly confident people don’t have to prove that they are good at what they do for it is obvious without declarations.  Such people have a very firm BELIEF in their own capabilities, as well as a CLEAR UNDERSTANDING about their own strengths and weaknesses. 

An individual with a properly balanced ego will embrace what others feel is risky because that person believes in themself and knows that they have the ability to manage the risks and make it work.  Thus, these sorts of people will often take leaps of faith that would totally freak out a less confident professional.  But this can be inspiring to onlookers.

Having talent and being good at something is a gift.  Don’t abuse your power by diminishing those around you, no matter how much you know. 

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In an effort to overcome my disappointment about their denial about what is owed for my services … or even discuss a compromise, I decided to write a post to advise and educate small business owners on better ways to structure contracts with clients who expect to receive benefits prior to payment.

Qualifying Business Prospects

As a former Realtor, one of the refrains that they drilled into my head during training was that Buyers were Liars.  We were taught to qualify people for mortgages prior to investing time and energy in setting up showings or writing contracts.  This is easy to do when you can “spin” your request for qualification as a service that will benefit the Buyer but it is not so easy to do in other service businesses.

The difficulty may lie in the fact that most small business owners cannot afford to use expensive credit checking services.  Thus, the qualification process involves interpersonal communication that almost seems intrusive while qualifying a prospect for their ability to pay.

In a perfect world, you would take 100% of the payment up-front but that is a hard sell.  In lieu of that, insist on a retainer of no less than 50% of the total contract price and establish milestones that pay the remaining 50% for each deliverable at the time of acceptance.  You may want to consider using an escrow service to ensure that you will be paid as tasks are completed.  If you are in the middle of their project and they begin to tell you they are having trouble paying their bills, stop working on their project.  Retainers are non-refundable.  You cannot recover the time you’ve spent once it is gone.

Get it in Writing!

If there is no written contract to enforce a business agreement, things can easily go wrong.  At the very least, put the request into an email message after you’ve agreed to deliverables and pricing.  Don’t begin work on the project until you have an email reply that acknowledges the agreement.

Stick to Business

Since time is the commodity that service providers trade, don’t allow yourself to get engaged in personal discussions with your clients during the project.  Clients will act friendly and they will say anything to get what they want.  Inevitably, they will try to gain your sympathy and convince you that they will pay you later when they want more than they can afford.  In my experience, this never happens when the bill comes due and the friendship that you felt was merely the tool they used to get what they wanted.

Negotiate Before You Do the Work

If a services client requests work that you know will take more time than the payment arrangement allows for, take notes about their request and tell them that you’ll have to get back to them with a price.  Regardless of their insistence, don’t lift a finger to get the work done until you have reached an agreement about compensation and received an additional retainer payment.  This is business and you are delivering value.

I repeat:  Don’t budge if they say they will pay you later.  They won’t.

Don’t be Afraid to Walk Away

As the saying goes, when one door closes another is opened.  If you feel that your client is difficult to work with and they are exhibiting signs of ambivalence about your requests for payment, this is a sign that you need to move on to another client who understands that this is your business.  You are not their employee and you owe them nothing.  You are an independent business owner and it isn’t your job to save them at your expense, no matter how nice they seem.

Don’t Get Distracted by the Noise

When a client knows they are wrong, they will endeavor to assign blame to you for their irresponsibility.  If you get caught up in their accusations, you’ll get distracted from the goal of being compensated for the work that you’ve done.  Acknowledge that you have heard what they are saying but do not engage in a debate about why you are demanding to be paid and do not involve yourself with explanations about your actions as you pursue payment.  You did the work.  In a business relationship, you deserve to be paid.

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An acceptable definition for creativity is having the ability to find solutions where none are apparent.  This is often seen with children who are learning something new.  Less obvious are the toiling movers who manage to fit your heirloom dining room table through a narrow hallway without destroying the furniture or the walls, which is certainly admirable. 

In business, creativity is characterized as thinking outside the box, creative problem solving, and maybe even critical thinking.  Has your business creativity ever been stifled by colleagues or clients?  Have you ever inadvertently stifled them?  There are so many ways this can happen, and this article exposes a few of them.

You Want it When?

During my corporate days, I had an image of a person beneath a thumbscrew with a caption that read:

Turn it again you SOB!  I work well under pressure!

The poster was irreverent and got many laughs but there really was no truth in it.  The fact of the matter is, people don’t perform as creatively when severe deadlines are imposed.  While the tasks may be completed on time and satisfactorily, there is kind of a hangover after the fact for those involved that can literally immobilize them for days after the effort is over.

Time pressure disrupts one’s ability to fully engage themselves in the solution.  True creativity requires an incubation period.  In my business, premium rates are applied to “rush” projects for good reason.  When we come to terms on delivery dates and pricing, another dark side can be introduced by anxious people.  Folks who are in a panic with a high need to feel in control can upset the creative flow with interruptions.  To avoid this possible problem, I’ve learned to suggest a date in advance for status updates.

Please Put Your Weapons Away

With morbid fascination, I’ve observed threats that some people have  imposed in an effort to inspire.  This was more or less a daily fact of life on the job in the information technology industry.  As a Realtor®, a client’s posturing that they would withdraw their listings didn’t motivate me to change anything about the marketing plan we had agreed to at the time we wrote our contract and the listing still sold within the pricing and terms we had set forth at that time.

These days, as an internet entrepreneur, oppressive behavior serves as a signal that it might be time to fire the client. Proceeding with people whose projects are fraught with self-serving drama is rarely worth the effort involved in their high maintenance, although some empathy and discussion can sometimes alleviate the  problem.  Yet, if someone wants to be a unhappy, they want to be unhappy and it is never worth entering into a battle of wills.  Let them be right and move on.

If we enjoy what we’re doing, getting out of bed in the morning is never a chore.  Happy liaisons are not only much more fun.  Working with joyful people induces higher creativity for everyone involved.

Roles and Responsibilities

Casting a stereotype, based a limited perception about the skills involved in that role, can be limiting for the individual contributor and dangerous for the type-caster.  Consider your bookkeeper, for example.  The joke associated with creative financing is well known to us all but, when your accountant suggests a financing solution that you’ve never heard of before and it helps you to forward a business goal, their creativity is a huge asset to your business.

Financial Incentives May Not Be The Answer

A study on business creativity suggested that tying compensation to overall team results isn’t necessarily the ticket for inducing higher creativity OR better solutions.  In fact, the study’s results demonstrated that people who were focused on bonuses were less productive than those who worked for the love of the effort.

Although there is a somewhat common belief that people will work harder if they are rewarded through performance incentives, concerns about negative compensation effects lead people to risk aversion, which ultimately affects creativity.  Ranging outside the norms of what is imagined is an outcome of being truly interested in the effort at hand, knowing that it’s OK to try anything that has potential to work, and believing that one’s suggestions are taken seriously and that their contributions are valued.

How this Relates to VirtuallyMarj.com

As a WordPress website designer,  the truth in the tagline at Codex is not lost on me.  Even though most people will never truly appreciate the elegance of some of the code they use, which the tagline describes as poetry, one’s ability to envision and develop it certainly requires a special sort of creativity.

Personally, I get much more satisfaction out of consulting with clients, who have come to me for help with their marketing and branding strategies, and seeing the light bulb illuminate.  This happens when our discussions unearth something about their pursuits that is not obvious to them because they are too close to the proverbial forest to see the trees.  That is fun!

Right Brained or Left Brained … Does It Matter to Creativity?

Our right brains influence our creativity, so science says.  Here’s a place for you to take a test, if knowing your brain’s preference is important to you.

I’ve known remarkably creative people whose claim to fame was clearly left brained.  The most renowned example is a former real estate client and friend of mine, Leo Hurwicz, who achieved Nobel Laureate status for his Economics Theory at the age of 90.  It was a privilege to know him and and memories of our talks are truly treasures for me.

His special skill was mathematics, which is clearly left-brained and analytical.  Yet, his creativity allowed him to see beyond the equations and develop a theory that explained financial markets and ultimately garnered world-wide recognition.

So, the moral of the story is to not hold yourself back if you are left-brained by nature.  Creativity is the product of what you believe is possible for you to do and it is nurtured by an environment where your ideas can expand to reality … regardless of your brain’s bias or your assigned role.

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One such goal could be to branch out in your business.  Many pursue the goal of passive income and this doesn’t always entail joining a business opportunity or MLM, thank goodness.    The difficulty that exists, however, is that you can become swept  away by your primary income-earning activities because you enjoy what you do, have built a reliable reputation and you like the people with whom you are working.

My primary business is project based.  A very high percentage of that business is returning customers with new projects.  If the experience of working with them in the past was mutually beneficial, as well as being fun, I have no qualms about taking on their requests.  On the other hand, there are some clients whose projects I can’t wait to finish and with whom I will not work again.

New projects and cash flow are great to have, and hard to say no to.  But, with only 24-hours in a day, you begin to wonder if you are spreading yourself too tasks to forego are the ones that aren’t producing income for you yet .  It is true that you can outsource some aspects of your business but, when YOU ARE THE COMMODITY that people are seeking, you ultimately must decide if you want to decline new business so you can stick with your business building plans.

This is what I lovingly refer to as a Creative Conundrum.

The best strategy that I’ve found for achieving balance between what I have and what I want is to list all of the things that I want to do, as well as the things that I must do, on a schedule of some sort.  Don’t forget to set aside “me” time.

Blocking time is not a new concept but it works.  In fact, this was the basis of Steven Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.   Among other things, Covey recommended establishing your task list, prioritizing those tasks and checking them off or updating their status on a daily basis.

A little more tedious, but also helpful, is keeping some sort of log on how your time is being spent.  If you do this for a week or so, you will notice patterns in your days and where you are spending time that takes away from your business building or income generating activities.

Once you have a handle on how your time is being spent, you are in a position to determine what you can spend less time on, or possibly stop doing, so you have more time to pursue your creative goals.   Those are the things that you really wanted to do when you imagined them, right?

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Scrappers are people whose offices and desktops look like modern art with a collage of post-its and paper scraps. While conventional wisdom accepts that a cluttered desk is an indication of a cluttered mind, disorganization can result in missed deliverables and over-commitment.

Personal Styles and Business Productivity

If this is your style, whether you are working solo or in a partnership, adopting a method that serves to remind you of what you have to get done can be useful. If you have a partner, ask them to send you email reminders prior to important deadlines. Using a website like Airset allows you to set up a system that will allow you to put your projects online with automated reminders about deliverables sent to your email. Face it, a little up-front planning is needed for any endeavor.

Pilers don’t throw anything away and file nothing. They can sometimes find what they’re looking for quickly but watching them sift through their piles of books and papers can be unnerving. Many years ago, I adopted the tactic of dating a hard copy document if I decided I needed to keep it after reading it. These days, most of my files are kept on my hard drives and I still tend to precede the document name with a date, year first, if I’ve taken notes using notepad.

My work entails writing business proposals, marketing plans, project plans, website code, creating website artwork, and researching business niches for good keywords. For obvious reasons, these sorts of files must be saved for a period of time, even if the project has ended.

At the end of 2008, after a cross country move, I spent several hours moving client folders off of removable storage and onto a secure location within my network. Using a standard folder hierarchy allows me to go directly to a client folder to locate content related to those projects immediately. My clients seem grateful for my organizational skills when they call to ask for a password that they’ve lost!

At the beginning of each month, I set aside a few hours to sift through file folders in my inbox and in the folders related to my clients. It takes time but the time is well spent.

Multi-taskers have millions of things they hope to get done simultaneously and seem to take great pride in talking about their long lists. A downside for some can be that a lot of things get started but none get finished.

If you are an entrepreneur with clients or own multiple websites multi-tasking is essential, but if you’ve begun to notice that you are feeling frazzled or overwhelmed by your work, it is time to take a serious look at your short and long-term goals. Document all the things you have committed to do and organize it into do-able chunks that are prioritized by relevance. Aside from family commitments, your most important things to do ought to be money making activities.

Interrupters are people who do not respect the fact that, just because they have time to talk about something now doesn’t mean that you do. Because I am sensitive to this myself, I’ve always allowed the person whom I think I need to talk with know why I’d like to talk with them right away and never fail to ask if it is a good time for them.  If not, I negotiate a more agreeable time for them.

When someone unexpectedly requests my time, I’ve found that my best defense is to be honest with them and, if I don’t have time for the interruption, I force myself to refuse and also let them know when I’ll be free. If I feel that I can take a few minutes at the time of their request, I inform them up-front about my time constraints and hold to that schedule by curtailing the conversation or text chat when the boundary is reached.

Procrastinators claim to work well under pressure and use this an excuse for putting things off to the last minute.  Their real crime is that they work on things that they would prefer to work on, which pushes the less desirable, and often more complicated tasks, back and puts them at risk.  Sure, we all are guilty of this sometimes but the pursuit of business success doesn’t guarantee that everything you will work on will be easy to do or fun.

Unmanaged, a procrastinator on a project can create havoc for other members of that group. While their creativity and talents might be welcomed, they require firm guidance and follow-up from a more focused team member.

Socializers waste incredible amounts of time communicating in frivolous ways. With the advent of social networking, people I was fascinated by and lost a lot of time on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook profile updates and responses. In an effort to recover my productivity, I established an hour or so at the end of each day to research topics that I wanted to post to Twitter and set up those transmissions using one of the many tools available for timing them. Many of these sites allow you to update multiple social networking profiles at once, and always include the highest quality sites.

I use a very similar tactic with both phones and Skype. Turning off the ringer during times of the day that I need to focus avoids phone interruptions. Similarly, putting Skype on “do not disturb” allows me to see when someone is trying to contact me and choose whether or not an immediate response is required.

Meeting addicts are obsessed with convening to talk about what needs to be done. So much time can be spent talking about such things that forward progress is hindered, however. If you’re invited to attend a meeting, ensure that the organizer has a clear purpose and that an agenda is issued in advance. If the topics on the agenda do not mesh with what is critical to your immediate needs, take care of yourself and decline the meeting.

If you are in a meeting and have something to say, make sure to apply the “So What?” rule before opening your mouth. This may sound like a statement from a belligerent child but it does force you to evaluate, in advance, whether what you have to say is relevant or useful to the group at the meeting.

E-mailers never use the phone to deliver a short update and love to broadcast their news to everyone on their list. It’s easy to ignore superfluous emails but, IM broadcasting software has opened up a new arena for pointless intrusions. Without exception, everyone who uses a Skype broadcast tool to communicate useless BizOp updates has been blocked from my list.

Although it is “polite” to acknowledge communications, not all emails or IMs require a response, especially if it is an uninvited solicitation.

Crisis creators dwell in a state of anxiety and everything is critical to them. The slightest problems can be exaggerated and their alarmist mentality can draw you in, if you are close to them.

Fire-fighting is a part of my business, at times, but keeping a cool head is what my clients seem to appreciate. If I cannot see an immediate way to help them with their problem, I will get offline with them and decide or do what needs to be done.  If I am able to resolve the issue without another conversation, I will provide a real-time or email update apprising them of the cause and the solution.  If not, I get back to them with a strategy, at the very least.

Packrats have never thrown away anything in their lives. This obsession has become a matter of public interest but not all packrats are obsessive. Like clearing your desk on a regular basis, making sure that you are eliminating clutter from your office or household is important. If you are looking over stored items and realize you haven’t opened the box or envelope in years, then you might want to honestly evaluate whether or not you need to hang onto it.  Heirlooms and sentimental keepsakes are excluded from this, of course.

As a funny aside, I once dated a fellow like this. The first time I visited his apartment, the ancient computer equipment and stacks of printouts astounded me. There was but a narrow path between spaces to a chair in the living room, his bedroom, and the kitchen. When he moved to a new place, all of these things wound up in his garage too.

Perfectionists are so interested in doing things perfectly that they often neglect to get them done. Impressively long lists and generous offers to contribute are part of their style. I have known people whose lists were so lengthy that their lack of completion caused them distress. I recommended that they write shorter so things could be checked off quicker.

This actually could related to the multi-tasker style and the suggestions that were made there are certainly applicable here. Organizing and prioritizing “to-do” items into chunks that are easily accomplished not only gives a sense of personal satisfaction but also demonstrates to your clients that you are capable of getting things done.

Workaholics can’t seem to think of anything but work and also can’t seem to avoid reminding people about how much they work. As an entrepreneur working from my home, it has sometimes been difficult for me to separate my work and personal life but assuming dual expenses for internet, phones, utilities, and rent is not desirable to me.

I’ve learned to schedule “free time” for family, play, and personal projects figuring that, as human beings, we were given life so we could experience pleasure and fun too. I like to call these things mini-vacations, for all work and no play can make one dull and this is the last thing any of us wants.

This is a fairly complete list of things that could be hindering your entrepreneurial output but I’m sure that those of you reading this post can think of others. Any thoughts that you have and want to leave as comments are welcomed.

During holiday seasons, when stress levels are higher, make sure to take care of yourself.  Business success may be critical to your survival but so is your emotional health.

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Similar to the great new TV series on ABC, some of our imagined scripts are pleasant and some are less so.  Either way, the film director in our minds has set the stage and played out events that are expected, projected or imagined to occur in the future.  The polar opposite of a flash forward is a flashback, which are the stories that have occurred in our pasts that we use to guide our judgments.

Finding success takes much more than positive thinking and watching training videos.  All that we take in is supposed to be applied.  Measuring our success against another person’s can cause us to stall in our forward progress.  For example, if one of our colleagues has tried out a program and made good income in a minimal amount of time and our attempts do not produce a similar or greater amount as quickly using their same methods, we can easily talk ourselves out of proceeding with our plans.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t work.  It means that those methods used by your colleague do not work for you.

In the movie Hitch, perseverance is defined as continuing with a course of action without regard to discouragement, opposition, or previous disappointment.  Man!  Does that ever describe the mindset needed to effect change in your business or in your life but let’s stick to business.  Like kissing frogs to find a prince, programs that we try can manifest what we are looking for … or not.  Using the proverbial “cup is half full” viewpoint, we must be adaptable and take things in stride, fully aware that each one has taught us something that we can leverage down the road.  Eventually one will be “the answer” or spark a brand new idea that cannot be quashed by anyone or anything.

So what if your idea isn’t unique?  If the information or product isn’t readily available for free, you have found something you can monetize.  Pining over worries that your new idea will not be as popular as a similar one you have heard of or tried is a flash forward can keep you from innovating something even better.  Clairfy your thoughts, jot down your idea, conduct your market research and, if the results of your findings reveal a niche market that you can go after and hope to dominate, continue by defining your market strategy and business plan.  Once you know where you’re going and how you will get there, it is full steam ahead!

Frequently, our ideas are born from personal needs.  As the old adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention.  It is the truth that there were no wheels, once upon a time.  There are literally millions of examples just like that in your everyday life, once you stop to think about them.  Each of those inventors and entrepreneurs may have sounded like lunatics when their ideas were new but they didn’t let that stop them, thank goodness.

Brilliance is a Birthright

Brilliance is everyone’s birthright, isn’t it?  Whether or not we made the Dean’s List at school, we all come up with amazing ideas which seem mundane to us and others view as being strokes of genius.  You will know when you have latched onto one of these.  When your light bulb moment consumes your waking thoughts and is exciting enough to keep you from hitting the snooze button in the morning, promote it to a passion.  You know it is right, you know people need it, and you must do what is necessary to bring it to them.

Your Flash Forward doesn’t have to be a flash in the pan.  You know what you must do.  Quit thinking and talking about it and get to work!

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Personal belief systems can keep us stuck so why not turn that to an advantage?  Believe that change is critical in order to thrive in the face of adversity.  Granted, basking in the things that we are familiar with makes us feel more comfortable but isn’t it time to confront the awkwardness of change and try something new?

Orchestrating a significant change in your life takes some amount of confidence along with a dash of creativity and perseverance on the side.  But there may be more important ingredients that you must NOT include in your career shift recipe, which would be to subtract your mental image of what you do along with the ideas that your family and friends have about what will work for you.

Recently a friend of mine, who has been a nurse for over 40 years, offered this bit of profundity while ruminating about a career change in her 50s.

“The more that I let go of, the closer to no thing I will be”

When we hold onto roles, like having a job or being jobless, our freedom to choose a new life is limited by the belief of what we are.

Why not try an experiment at your next social outing?  When someone asks you what you “do”, answer their question by listing the things that you are passionate about doing, rather than providing the rote answer that they are expecting.  It might give them pause but it also might expose you to a like-minded person who is interested in one of your passions that they have considered turning it into a source of sustainable income.

As for the people that say “Uh huh…” and walk away, let them rotate in circles of  small talk with less passionate people.  This experiment is not about making anyone feel comfortable that you are a “normal” person.  It is about shifting your own mindset and visualizing the possibilities of your passions as a possible source of future income.

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