Like most
people, some mornings I wake up and feel less than enthusiastic about working.
Sometimes, this feeling doesn’t stem from laziness or apathy, it’s a stronger
power, a sense of futility and helplessness.
I know a lot of people look to my story of success as a source of
inspiration and that is one of the greatest benefits I enjoy when i do blog or talk about it,
but – I’m not afraid to admit it – I don’t always feel energized to pursue
business and sometimes in my darkest moments, I even consider throwing in the
towel.
This feeling is not so common for me now as I have lifestyle
flexibility and a better mindset about work, but earlier
on, it definitely was a problem. I want to explain how I overcome these moments
(and still do the same thing now on occasion) to stay on track and how you can
even have a productive day when you are not really feeling the mojo on the
inside.
I expect you have felt similar feelings of despair or a lack of motivation at different
stages of your business development, especially if you are yet to establish an
income stream online that is sufficient for you to live off, or if you are
right at the beginning and you have not seen one cent of return for the work
you have put in.
Depending on your world view and personality style, when you hear of the
success of others you may either feel inspired or dejected, and while it’s
obviously more fruitful to look at other people achieving what you desire as motivation, as a fallible
human, jealousy, depression and anger may be your initial responses.
Your mind is your greatest asset for success in business, but it can be
just as strong a force of hindrance, sabotaging your efforts, destroying your
work ethic and leaving you with no option but to return to the soul destroying
job you promised yourself that you would never go back to.
How To Work When You Don’t Feel Like It
One of the characteristics I believe is at the heart of my success and
the success of most entrepreneurs, is an ability to keep working in the face of
failure and an ability to force yourself to be productive when you don’t feel
like it.
I remember a time promoting one of my businesses, walking around the
city and placing posters on boards, experiencing a feeling of impatience, a
lack of confidence and a constant inner-questioning of whether what I was doing
was a waste of time or not.
It’s very hard to be confident of success when you have yet to seriously
experience it. In many ways, at this stage of your business career, faith and
fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence in your idea has to carry you through the
self doubt, the set-backs and the slow growth.
Nothing goes right all the time. Sometimes clients will ask for refunds,
or they won’t be happy with what you provide or the universe creates a
circumstance you had no way of predicting, which you just have to deal with.
For you beginners out there, one of the greatest challenges you face is
your battle with self doubt. Others around you will scoff at your attempt to
buck the trend to start a business, your own results will come slowly and for a
long time you will have to work every day for little reward. Patience and
willpower are necessary at this stage.
Placing posters around the city was an effective marketing method, but
the return on investment was delayed. I put up a poster and it would not elicit
a response for months – sometimes even years – so my “pay off” for hard work
was far in the future. This meant that I had to believe that clients would come
if I just kept at it for long enough.
In hindsight faith in an outcome is easy because the experience is had,
before this, you’re playing with chance and believing in the possibility of
success without tasting it. If you don’t have tolerance for ambiguity, you
better avoid the entrepreneur’s journey.
What Can You Create Today?
One of the things I did and still do whenever I feel less than
enthusiastic is to focus on output, rather than the external elements that
bring me down. I might feel utterly crushed, but I know if I create something
or take any productive action, I continue towards my goals.
The great thing about output is the power it has over your mood.
Negative emotion breeds negative actions – lying in your bed or watching TV for
example – or a lack of any action at all. If you focus on creating something
and just take one little forward step, the physical effort you exert effects
your inner emotional state. Your ability to soldier on in the face of emotional
dissonance can carry you through the darkness and return you to a state of
congruent activity and thought.
What you
should give up on?
“Success.” I wasn’t able to quit my job until I gave up on the vague ideas I had
about success. Stuff like having a good job and making a good salary. I
remember saying to myself: it’s possible
that nobody will ever think you are successful.
When my answer was finally “screw
it,” I quit. At the time I did not realize how fulfilling it would be to
work directly with customers and products I was passionate about.
Over-worrying about screwing up people’s lives (or being perfect for
your customers). If you try to make
meaningful change with your business, you will create collateral damage.
Period. Even relatively benign assertions like: “if
you want to make some extra money on the side, try building some niche sites” can
waste a year of somebody’s spare time. I’ve seen it happen. Seems harmless, eh?
Your desire to make money. This might be different for other professions, but
for entrepreneurs, money focus can destroy businesses. Money forces you to
compromise your values, which should be at the core of great products and
company cultures.
A money focus inspires
short-sightedness. If you could just do something and ::: BOOM! ::: make money
from it, it wouldn’t be that
valuable. Entrepreneurs focus onvalue.
Specific, elusive, unseen– it can’t be bought and sold on the open market.
Have you ever spoken to full time
investors in financial markets? These are generally people 100% motivated by money. Ask them “if you had a great
year, what percentage would you make on your money?” You’ll hear answers
ranging from 11 to 20 percent, generally. Now ask the same question to an
entrepreneur. 20% would very much be on the low end.
Your desire to avoid feeling like an idiot. A couple years ago I set up a writer’s mastermind group (which has been hugely
useful to me). We’ve all tried to address this issue of “feeling stupid” head
on. It’s been liberating to post half-baked, ambitious projects in our group
chat.
I put a lot of stuff out there,
and I suspect most of it doesn’t work. I’m dumb and dangerous, and that’s
probably the way it goes for many entrepreneurs. The punchline is that the
small percentage of good stuff that sticks around and gets refined, re-worked,
and cultivated. One day you wake up with something great.
Your fear of change. I was listening to another entrepenur who made a point. Let’s call it the “paleo theory of
fear.” His point: we are wired to fear
change. I suppose that’s because back in the good old days, when things
changed, you died. Now, not so much. Learning how to both enjoy and engineer
change is the foundation of business success. I’ve found that over the years
the idea of re-working everything becomes more thrilling and I seek change out.
What you are doing right now. Something popped into my head the other day as my good friend and I was
talking after a seminar. We were talking
about different thing and i said “why do
business owners find it so difficult to relinquish control and let
other people run their business?”
My response got us laughing: “they aren’t having a hard
time relinquishing control, they are having a hard time finding
something better to do.”
9 times out of 10 that’s true.
It’s one of the things I love about creative pursuits in general– you are
always at square one. You are always in danger of utter failure. Where you
play, there isn’t any sure thing. It’s the same with writing
and entrepreneurship. Falling back on your cash flows is the same thing as
falling back on a job. Often I’ll fail, but I’m always looking for ways to move
on and find something more important to do. Hopefully I can backfill the space
I create with processes and team members.
Your self-focus. Or: putting
your immediate needs in front of the principle or the project. This is
the part of the post where I diverge from the hoards of broke-ass personal
development bloggers telling you to express yourself more fully or follow
passion and stuff like that. Yes, I’m all about that. But we are talking about
being Samurai’s here– it’s tough to stay focused on meaningful projects when our
passion for Youtube lurks! Entrepreneurship is a strange mix of personal drive
and egoless ear-to-the-ground care. It’s a dichotomy I’m fascinated by.
Following the advice of others. Have I ever ever mentioned the sharks or the dolphins thing on this
blog? Sharks and dolphins are two different types of entrepreneurs. There’s a
lot of things that distinguish them. Here’s one: dolphins
listen to advice, sharks watch it. Be a shark. Or rather, watch me to
tell you to be a shark.
Your desire to avoid conflict. For all the kumbaya talk in the blogosphere, you’ll notice that
when you meet-up with some of your favorite peace, love, and change bloggers
that they’ve got some teeth. I’ve met some of the kindest online personas (and
most popular) on the planet, and despite what you see online, they are very
often the object of controversy, conflict, extortion attempts, petty
attacks, and outright jealousy.
Get in line. It’s par for the
course. Asserting yourself in the world means you’ll have detractors. Some of
them might even be those closest to you. It’s okay. I try to be thankful for
the attention in the first place, pick the places I ought to improve, and try
to understand precisely which elements of the feedback are about my projects
and which are really a reflection of their own ideas about themselves.
So...
Bear in mind
I’m not promoting BLIND faith, merely consistent effort based on a solid belief
in an outcome.
There is a point where you need to take stock of progress and make
changes or even quit altogether. Unfortunately most people take the exit door all
too early and this lack of action merely reinforces the already prevalent lack
of results.
It’s not rocket science, but as moody and imperfect human beings, there
is a challenge to overcome oneself. This is, and always will be, your greatest
challenge in life.
If you truly want to realize an outcome and taste success, then you must
complete the necessary steps to get there. Not some of them and not just during
your best days. This needs to be congruent and forceful effort regardless of
external circumstances or internal turmoil.
Why not go take some action right now?
