Written by Firing your boss, and staying self-employed involves having to produce results without a boss.
Obvious?
Well, yes. Not just working, spending time, going through the motions of a workday, but actually producing results, and getting paid. That’s the turning point. You know you passed from the employee world to the entrepreneurial world when you no longer require someone else’s rules to produce results.
Problem is, we’ve all been conditioned to be told what to do. Being alone with our own high expectations can be overwhelming at first.
Let me illustrate.
[Story continued from Why Fire Your Boss, aka Bubu & the Bees and Myth of Multitasking (aka Bubu the Bear Makes a Mess)]
Bubu the Bear was into melchemy now – the lost art of creating honey without bees (the stupid little stingers were still after him).
The ancient tome he nicked from the restricted section of the bearbliotheca was difficult to follow.
He went through the ingredients for what seemed to be the 100th time.
Sugar, check. Madeyehoney-root, 2 chunks, check. Teardrop of a baby dragon, check. Snowflake from hell, on order.
All the easy bits were taken care of already. Then came the snag. “Story of your life in 300 words or more, written out on parchment, then finely ground.”
There was no helping it, he sat down to write.
Suddenly he noticed how dusty his desk was. It never seemed to stand out to him before. “Surely I can’t get dust in the mix, who knows what may happen,” he reasoned, quite logically. Carefully he started to wipe the dust off. It clung to his fur and it annoyed him, so he went to wash his hands. At the stream he remembered he liked tea and required water to make some. He filled up the buckets and was on his way back, when, from the corner of his eyes, he saw the most ridiculously large and shiny salmon glitter just beneath the surface. He caught it a few meters downstream. Salmon in the pocket, he picked up the buckets he dropped, and got the water again. Back in the house, he started preparing the salmon right away. He wasn’t a bear of patience. “Fresh is best, after all”, he reasoned.
2 hours later, lounging on the sofa, belly now full with pasta salmonara, he was trying to remember why he was at the stream in the first place. Looking around the room for clues he noticed how his bearball trophies looked neglected and dusty. Ah, dust! “Oh yes, I was dusting my desk,” he remembered. At that precise moment the doorbird sang. It was the delivery guy with the snowflake from hell. “Amazing, the things you can get from Amazon these days,” Bubu thought. He tossed the cryogenic carry case to the side and popped the snowflake into the honey-to-be mix. By this point he remembered what was his objective for the day. Writing his life story (in 300 words of more, on parchment) was the action that was going to move his cause forward. Unfortunately, missing the last ingredient, the honey would have to wait for an other day.
Has life ever snuck up on you like that?
Happened to me all the time, and still does, though within limits now. Personal development books have theories about why this happens, and how to “fix” your mind to overcome this resistance. Some call it procrastination, and other fancy terms that justify me using a spell-checker.
In my eyes, that’s paralysis by analysis (eat that, spell-checker). I’m yet to see anyone overcome procrastination by reading about it. In my experience, based on the group I’ve been working with, lack of action can directly be addressed by – shock, gasp – taking action. By thinking less, and doing more. Thinking creates navel gazing, action creates momentum.
Oh, and resistance doesn’t go away, by the way. It never does. It will tell you crap such as
- Oh I need more information
- Oh I don’t have the time
- Oh I’ll do it later today when the wife/kids/dog/etc are out of the way
- Oh I have to clean my desk first, run some errands, and so on. Insert any number of seemingly urgent non-income-producing activities that prevent you from doing what’s important.
That’s why it’s vital to be ready when resistance comes. What you want is a system to take action. A system that makes showing up to your business, to your dreams, a habit.
Log in below or on the side for access to the action-taking system I’ve been using to elevate my life and business.
