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A lot of people talk about wanting to move to Hawaii, but for most of them, it’s simply a fantasy. When Kathryn Ryan first expressed that desire, I have to say, I thought she might be just another New Englander seeking to escape the cold and icy winters of our corner of the world. But I grossly underestimated this woman’s seriousness of purpose. On Monday night I had a conversation with Kathryn by phone accommodating the 5 hour time distance between Connecticut and Maui.
I got to know Kathryn a few years ago as an energy healer and client. She was looking to grow her practice when we first started working together. The desire to live near the water in a tropical climate came up early in one of our coaching conversations. It was a strong vision for her throughout our sessions. I was supportive of her desire and very happy to hear her story of success. It strongly follows the principles of creating visions and taking the action steps to make them happen.
In brief, Kathryn had an uncle in Hawaii who offered her temporary quarters while she tried out the Big Island. She knew she wasn’t going to immediately start her own business, so went for interviews as a massage therapist to earn income during her transition. She actually had to fly in a small plane to Maui for one of those job interviews. “If I’m meant to move to Maui, I want to see a whale,” she bargained with the Universe. The interview was only so-so, but she caught eyes with a man on the beach while on that island and exclaimed, “Did you see that whale?” shortly after one surfaced near the shore. Maui it was! That job didn’t pan out, but another did. Kathryn is supporting herself, living a block from the ocean and is in love. She also was happy to report that she’d those 25 pounds she’d been hanging on to before allowing herself her vision.
Kathryn took the risk of leaving her home of over 30 years with two suitcases and her massage table. She followed every lead that came her way and trusted her gut that this desire for a warmer climate and slower pace would bring fulfillment. In March 2011 it will be two years since she made that decision. By her own admission, she’s never been happier.
I’ve been a fan of Martha Beck ever since reading Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic over a decade ago. She’s a life coach, author and columnist for O Magazine, whose wisdom and words are inspiring. Her recent column in O’s September issue was so on point for one of my clients, I had to read her my underlines.
This particular client was being self-critical of her need for personal time and rest. She wasn’t finding her mojo and felt guilty about it. Martha’s piece entitled “Lying Low” addressed this. “Humans are the only creature in nature that resist the pattern of ebb and flow.” We think we have to keep moving, keep generating, keep trying to solve, solve, solve when sometimes the solution is to step aside and rest.
“…The darkness between days, the emptiness between fill-ups, the fallow time between growing seasons–are the necessary complements of upbeats.” To everything, there is a season. Resting and restoring are parts of the cycle we so easily overlook, more so when our minds are telling us to keep striving. Sometimes the solution is to stop and let time pass.
That said, I’m leaving for a mini-vacation to Kripalu, my favorite place to go for R & R. These last days of August feel a lot like the end of December when it seems that no one is around. The phone is quiet, networking events are non-existent (except for mine next week!) and everyone appears to be operating in back-to-school or last-chance-for-the-beach mode. Rather than fight it or try to make it different, I’m taking off to a place where I can rest, get a massage and be in nature.
Come the hectic pace of September I know I’ll look back on this quiet time and be grateful that I didn’t push my way through it but surrendered instead. Thanks for the reminder, Martha.
Check if this feels familiar: A company owed me a check for the books they had sold during a speaking engagement. I had anticipated receiving that money a few days after the event. Now it was closer to a few weeks and still no check. My resentment was rising. I had to take a look at my piece of the transaction.
- Did I have our agreement in writing? No.
- I noticed that I was getting more and more annoyed at the absence of an envelope in my mailbox.
- I then realized I hadn’t even been to my P.O. to check on incoming mail for several days.
- I owned the fact that I had not emailed my contact to be sure the transaction was in process.
- I realized my passivity was an old way of operating and hoping someone else would take care of me.
Once I got to my post office and saw that the awaited check was not there, I sent an email and got an immediate response and a check soon after. There had been a glitch in the system, and now they were on it. Very simple. No one to blame.
I find that I need to identify my old, but familiar relationship with victimhood every once in a while to be sure I’m not feeding myself a dose of adrenaline just for the rush of emotions it brings. That’s a dangerous place to live, and I don’t want to dwell there.
Mark Twain said, “My life has been full of catastrophes, most of which have never happened.” Are you susceptible to this behavior? The best antidote I know is to share the situation with a trusted friend or colleague, shine the light of day on it, and remove it from the dangerous neighborhood of your brain.
I received this email from a client yesterday morning. I hear this sentiment a lot and knew it was worth quoting directly:
“I am on my way to Charlotte to the WITHIT conference. Women in the Home Furnishings Industry. I feel a bit guilty going so much this month, but that is the way the schedule fell, and I am determined to network more and outside my normal sphere. Driving this time and planning to spend the night with a dear girlfriend on the way home to spend time with her.
“Not many of us can just go when we want to and I am new to this freedom. Pretty amazing. Looking forward to speaking to you next week.”
My response:
“Let go of the guilty feeling for a second, pull back and take a look at the life you have created for yourself. I see a woman on the move and making a living, with friends in all places and the agility to manage the freedom and joy of this independence. What’s to feel guilty about? That others haven’t designed their lives to have what you have? That you get to be happy?”
And hers back to me:
“I have printed this out to read and reread as I travel over the next couple of days.”
We as business owners all know that the way to capitalize on our resources is to spend our time doing the tasks we do best and delegating the rest. When I was new and young in my business I did it all: data entry (handwriting names on 3×5 cards), producing the items for sale (decorated eggs, jewelry), marketing (designing the postcard mailings and applying the stamps myself), etc., etc. I always felt like I didn’t have the money to pay someone else. And besides, it would take longer to explain it than to just do it.
Over time I learned that in order to grow, I needed to let go of the work that I could hire out and that had a lower dollar-an-hour amount in cost. If I could design and sell an egg for $100 and it took me an hour to do that, then anything taking up my time–like filing or licking stamps (this was pre-self-stick stamp days) valued at less than $100 per hour–I would be wise to delegate. Eventually I hired an assistant in my studio at $10 per hour and never looked back.
Nowadays, I spend 90% of my time coaching, speaking and writing for which I have the highest return on my investment. I hire people to convert my online e-newsletter to html, take registrations for my events and outfit me so I look professional and stylish.
Think of it this way if you’re having a hard time letting go. At some point our forefathers and foremothers let go of milking their own cows and trusted that the milk they drank would be okay, even if it didn’t come from the labor of their own hands.
Is there a to-do on your list that you’d like to let go of but are afraid of losing control? Can you trust that delegating this labor-intensive task will free you up to be more productive in your business? Call a goal buddy and commit to letting go of the equivalent of cow-milking. Let me know how it goes.
Dr. Debbie Danowski, a professor at Sacred Heart University, is a friend of mine and also a former client. We were in a writers group for several years and have stayed connected since. Over a year ago Debbie wanted to work with me on her vision for her dream house. She had found this poster image which, she said, captured exactly what she was looking for–a log cabin on a large country property with a water view. My business is all about helping people reach their visions.
So, it was not a surprise when I got a call from Debbie saying, “I did it!”
Last Sunday I went to visit Debbie in her dream house–a log cabin on a large country property on the side of a large pond. Debbie had followed the recommended course of action which includes looking at your vision daily and taking action steps along the way. She did it all herself, and it was an arduous journey. But, sitting on the front porch and looking out on a divine summer afternoon made it all worth it. There were plenty of glitches along the way–there always are–but, Debbie’s perseverance, powerful vision and hard work turned her dream into her reality.
That’s the title atop page 68 in The War of Art, a volume I recently listened to on CD and also own in paperback. The author, Steven Pressfield, likens being an artist to being in the Marine Corps.
“The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.
This is invaluable for an artist. [My note - You can substitute business owner for artist here.]
…He will be dining for the duration of a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation…
Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.”
There’s something perversely heart-warming about how Pressfield states this. I want to say, “Yeah! I’m fighting for my life every day!”
If you’re reading this, and you’re and artist/entrepreneur, you will thoroughly enjoy this book. As promised in the subtitle: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.
I don’t know an entrepreneur out there who doesn’t face the challenges of, what the author calls, resistances and coaches call gremlins. This book arms you for that battle and makes you proud to show your scars.
Back-to-back coaching calls with similar themes give me ideas for my blog. Yesterday two of my creative clients reported in with extraordinary success stories.
A designer client began apologetically, saying she hadn’t completed her fieldwork assignments, but that she had booked $15,000 in business that week. She was about to rush into her reasons for not making her first Toastmasters speech. But, I stopped the conversation right there to celebrate her enormous victory.
“This is the universe showing you that you can support yourself with work you’re passionate about,” I reminded her. She knows this, but because there are no labels like ‘end-of-year-bonus’ or ‘promotion’ attached to these occurrences, they’re harder to identify.
Another client who is a successful illustrator targeted getting her MFA, creating a body of work and extreme self-care as her goals in our work together. She had just returned from a two-week intensive program that marked the beginning of her studies. Her husband is taking a work opportunity on the West Coast leaving her on this side of the country to completely focus on her art. Again, because these coincidences don’t come labeled, it was important to articulate exactly what was happening in her life. The planets had lined up to allow her to have precisely the time and space she requires to accomplish her goals.
Often, it’s only in looking back that we can see how these events pave the way to our future. Sharing what’s going on with another mortal, be it a coach or colleague, is an excellent way to validate what is happening for you. It’s easy to miss the signposts. And the gremlins are never far behind saying, “Yeah, but…”
Wishing you a success-filled and gremlin-free day!
I’m attending the Kushi Institute’s Macrobiotic Conference for the next few days in Palisades, NY, and just heard Annemarie Colbin speak. She’s the founder of the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, plus author of multiple books on nutrition and cookbooks. The talk I attended was about Healthy Bones, to which Annemarie applies what she calls her Three Bears Rules. You’re probably way ahead of me on this already, but here they are:
- Too much is no good.
- Too little is no good.
- You want it just right.
Today she was referring to the amount of calcium we take into our bodies. Too much, like a quart of milk a day–which she admittedly frowns upon; too little–not paying attention to your intake of dairy or leafy greens; or just right–finding out exactly what YOUR body needs and giving it that. I loved what she called an accurate means for measuring your bone strength. She asked for a show of hands if anyone had fallen in the past year and not broken a bone. Many hands went up. Then she asked if anyone had fallen and broken a bone. A couple of hands went up. That, she said, was as good a bone density test as there is.
Being who I am, I can see this set of rules for everything related to owning and operating a small business as well. Too much marketing, networking, goal-setting can interfere with production and quality of your work. Too little of those can result in stasis or disintegration of your business. The test with a healthy body and/or business is discerning what the exact right formula is for you. Although I’d love a doctor’s or consultant’s precise recipe or remedy for a healthy body or business, I’ve known for a long time now that I am the best advocate and practitioner for those formulas.
July 4 is my birthday, and I plan it very carefully. Having been at sleepaway camps for much of my youth, my summertime birthday often got glossed over. So, as an adult, I carefully construct my day to be everything I want it to be. (Note the underlying lesson here…)
Among the festivities for my celebration was a birthday breakfast with s special group of friends. I’m lucky that the world is “off” on my birthday every year. I get very good attendance. I chose to have the breakfast at Sticks and Stones Farm which I’d written about a few weeks ago. I was totally charmed by the facility and loved the rustic quality and totally unplugged feeling you get when you’re there. I didn’t want any distractions from the celebrant.
The chef at Sticks and Stones is Annie Stiefel. The breakfast was sumptuous, organic and colorful as well. I can’t say enough about the overall experience. Annie emailed me the next day to find out if everything was okay and was there anything to be improved. She wanted to know.
I wrote her back a rave review and that I was reminded of something my very first evaluator said to me after my Icebreaker Speech in Toastmasters. I had prepared and rehearsed a million times. I took my entry into the public speaking arena very seriously. Every evaluator in Toastmasters is charged with the mission of praising what you did well and offering one or two areas to improve upon. “I do have some criticisms to offer Jane, but it’s like picking fleas off a gnat’s ass.”
That was in 1993 and I never forgot the way he put his disclaimer, even though I have forgotten what he told me to work on. It surely made it easier to hear, and I couldn’t wait to sign up for my next speech. I told Annie the same story. The overall experience was one I’ll always treasure, and the minor details that might be improved upon can wait.
