“I’m not lost, I am exploring!”
That’s the title and chorus of a song by one of my favourite artists, Jana Stanfield (Amazon affiliate link). It sums up very nicely how I’ve felt about my life and my work pretty much since leaving Corporate back in 2003.
It’s fair to say I haven’t always known where I’m going, but the journey has been a lot of fun, if not always great for my bank balance!
Change your life
The big change came for me when I realised that the thing I do best is “Encouraging Potential”. That was the moment I finally had to own up to being a coach. Looking back over my career – well, three pretty successful careers really, in retail, in supply chain, and in key account management – all the times I’d been having the most fun and achieving the best results were when I was coaching the teams I worked with to achieve more than they believed they could.
Up until then, I’d seen myself as a consultant, and I was always plagued by the terrible anxiety of what’s called “imposter syndrome”, that fear that you’re going to get ‘found out’, they’re all going to realise you’re making it up as you go along. While I still do some consulting, and I quite enjoy the bits I agree to take on, it’s not the core of my work anymore. And that’s a great relief.
Challenges with going solo
One of the big challenges with going out on your own is just that: you’re on your own. And that can make it difficult to know whether you are on track or not, whether the work you’re chasing is going to be right for you.
A lot of people will tell you to just knuckle down and get on with it, just do whatever people will pay you for. Trust me, that’s a recipe for getting stuck – I got distracted by exotic training gigs in faraway places, that were great fun, and moderately lucrative, but ultimately did not allow me to be me at my best.
Others will tell you “Just do what you love, and the money will come” – excuse my French, but that’s utter crap! If you don’t know what you’re doing that’s making other people’s lives better to the extent that someone will pay you for it, then you are not going to ever get properly paid for your genius.
Find focus, take control
The trouble with both those approaches is they are reactive. They both advocate just doing things mindlessly, without thinking about WHY – one because it’s fun, the other because it’s lucrative. And neither will get you loving what you do for a living, and making a decent living doing what you love.
This is where a little time invested now will pay massive dividends for your future – maybe even for the rest of your life!
Taking the time to explore your particular version of my “Encouraging Potential” will help you identify what’s so very special about you that people should be paying you handsomely to do the work you love. It will give your work the focus it needs. The focus to discard distractions, prevent procrastination, and to run your business efficiently and effectively by concentrating on just the things that allow you to be at your very best.
So, to get back to my title, if you’re feeling a little lost, maybe it’s time to do a little exploring.
Isn’t it time for you to start working to your own plan, rather than everybody else’s?
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Photo by Max Goncharov on Unsplash
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