How A Little Bit Of Patience Can Lead To A Lot Of Success
I wrote this article in 2013 when my mom passed. Right now, I know many of you are going through a HUGE learning curve of taking yourself online. And that fear of visibility is more than likely rearing its ugly head right now! Learning new technology, doing videos and webinars – they require patience as you learn a new skill.
If you are like a lot of my clients you’ve experienced some disappointment and frustration in getting it to work, having people show up online and being proud of your performance.
I thought this article was so appropriate and would be helpful right now.
It was 2013 and it had been a little over four weeks since my mom passed away. I found myself coming home one night and thinking, “I should send an email to all of my clients and tell them all is well. I feel better and everything’s 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 having to re-organize 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 further along than this….”
“It’s so much easier for her to do this…why isn’t it working faster for me…”
Have you ever felt this way in your business?
I know many of my clients are feeling this way right now. They want to figure out how to make money in this environment. They want to pivot and have certainty that it’s going to work. They want to skip to the part where they have tons of clients, are well known and the money is flowing in – and things feel “back to normal.”
Here’s what’s interesting – we need the part in the middle – that learning part.
The frustrations. The part where the camera should have been horizontal not vertical (and you don’t realize this until you’ve spent 45 minutes shooting). Or the part where you forgot to press the record button. Or when you showed up and there wasn’t anyone watching.
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 that 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.
For 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 email 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 is a person who can succeed during uncertainty. A person who can pivot her business. A person who isn’t afraid to learn the process of becoming visible online. Know that this process of becoming and staying strong during the uncertainty 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 learnings sink in. Time to get comfortable being whatever and whomever we desire to be.
Be sure to share your thoughts below. And don’t forget to join me tomorrow as I go Live in my FB group. I’ll be talking about how to make the learning curve easier for your videos and lives. Join the FB group here.
flickr, Virginia State Parks
