If you’re not a small business owner, the best way I can describe this time of year is: the moment you turn out a 1000 piece puzzle onto the table. You know there’s a beautiful image in there somewhere, but my gosh right now it sure resembles CHAOS. some pieces are up, some are down, some are stuck together even though they shouldn’t be, oh baby what have I done?
Let’s talk about stories. The ones we tell ourselves, about ourselves. Starting a business forces you to dispel a lot of them, quickly. Thriving in your passion and living in illusions can’t exist in tandem.
Before making any decision, all potentialities feel equally as “right” as they do “wrong.” Living in imagined futures is paralyzing and so often we end up floating somewhere in between, in non-committed commitments. But once you CHOOSE, and do so wholeheartedly, from a place of love, and alignment, and Your Baby-Oh-So-Unique Truth, life rearranges around your resolve, revealing a new future you didn’t even know possible.
Two people could be making the exact same cookie, and you’re going to experience that cookie very differently based on the person talking to you about it. YOU are your strategic edge.
I stopped telling stories of impossibility. I moved away from "or" and towards "and." I decided opposing ideas could coexist. What if it’s all possible? I declared this MUST be lucrative AND fun, this MUST grow rapidly AND be easeful, joyful & sustainable. Cue: endless new options for how to move through the world. Endless opportunity for aligned action.
People will be dicks sometimes. That’s about them, not you. Can you imagine having the audacity and lack of compassion to say something shitty to a small business owner at a farmers market? They don’t understand the level of courage and creativity it takes to get even as far as you have. Those who don’t lift you up are not your people. As they walk away, let their words leave with them. This is a skill, it’ll take time.
But a revelatory moment for me was the day I realized that deeply uncomfortable things existed inside my comfort zone. That the bed I was free-falling into wasn't actually all that soft. Pain was in there, struggle was in there, swallowing words I knew to be true, allowing my experiences to be minimized - a cacophony of circumstances that felt like shit, were all right there inside my comfort zone. I felt safest in discomfort.
What if you found out that keeping things in pure-pursuit-of-joy, leads to more creativity, more energy, and more ease in all areas of life (and psst, you will improve, you’ll just improve without the “try”)?
When I get stressed, I get vague. Particularly about the things I want from life. How can I receive the exact meal I want if I waltz into a restaurant and say, "Hey, hi, I want food!" Why not order the precise thing I'm hungriest for, and trust that the server will bring me that? As a voracious eater, this restaurant analogy makes the whole thing seem so easy, so obvious, so delicious.
I’m not saying don’t have goals, I’m not saying you don’t already know what your dreams are. I /am/ saying the only thing you can really plan for is the space for your dreams to look totally different than you ever expected.
