I’m Over It: How a Little bit of Patience can Lead to a Lot of Success
It’s been a little over four weeks since my mom passed away. I found myself coming home the other night and thinking, “I should send an e-mail to all of my clients and tell them all is well. I feel better and everything is back to normal.” Then I caught myself and realized how completely ridiculous that thought was. Nothing is back to normal. And it’s going to be a while before I find a new sense of what “normal” is.
I think I was just impatient with myself to make everything OK. To not have to go through this period where it feels like there are parts of myself that are scrambled and re-organizing in a new way. I wanted to skip to the part where everything is OK.
It made me think about the impatience that we have with ourselves, and how this translates to how we behave as entrepreneurs. It’s like we are running a race, seeing just how fast we can get to the finish line – measuring how far we’ve come and comparing ourselves to everyone along the way. We often have the tendency to think – I should be farther along then this….
Have you ever felt this way in your business? I know many of my clients do. They want to skip to the part where they have tons of clients, are well known and the money is flowing in.
Here’s what’s interesting – we need the part in the middle – that learning part. It reminds me of an episode of Star Trek that I watched once. They went to a planet where you could manifest immediately. If you wanted a horse – a horse appeared. The problem was that no one was ready for what appeared. You got a horse, but you weren’t prepared to take care of the horse. You didn’t know where you were going to keep it, what to feed it, how to ride it. There was no time for research, preparation, learning and adjustment. So when you got what you wanted, the joy of having it didn’t last long.
It’s like the stories of the lottery winners who lose their money shortly after they win it. Or young athletes who squander their millions. They didn’t have the time to become the kind of people who could keep money and make smart decisions. So when the money appeared, it didn’t last long.
As an entrepreneur we don’t just get clients, earn money, get known – we actually become the kind of person whom more clients want to work with. We become the kind of person that more people want to partner with. And that process takes time.
It is the process of becoming that allows us to grow our internal containers so that we can handle more. As we become more skilled at running our businesses, managing our time and dealing with voices in our heads – we create more space for more opportunities to land and more success to grow.
In my first 12-month group program I only had 6 participants. At first the numbers disappointed me. But then it became abundantly clear that 6 was the perfect number for me. We had technical issues. We had e-mail issues. Everything was a learning process. It wasn’t long before I was glad that I was learning with 6 people and not 20 people.
So whatever you are becoming – whether it be the kind of person who can sustain a six-figure or multiple six-figure business. Or like me, the kind of person who can continue to create transformation after the loss of someone I love. Know that this process of becoming is actually at the heart of your success.
We just need to give ourselves time to go through it. Time to let our parts re-organize. Time to let the learning’s sink in. Time to get comfortable being whatever and whomever we desire to be.
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