Life is cyclical. Sometimes things are good, sometimes bad. There are times when the world feels like a friendly place, and others when everything seems hostile. There are always going to be times of upheaval, and as uncomfortable as big changes can be, life would be awfully boring without them. In order to grow, we must change.

Does it sound a little like I’m trying to convince myself that things will be okay? hmmm…

During the last six months, my clients have slowly dwindled and I have been faced with big decisions that I didn’t want to admit existed. Thoughts of rebuilding your business almost from the ground up

are scary. No business owner that I know wants to ponder whether or not it might be time to throw in the towel and “get a real job.” Choosing which direction to expand, where to invest your time, how to get the biggest business impact for your energy are all huge, intimidating topics – especially if you what you have done in the past isn’t working anymore.

It’s no fun to question your own choices.

But it also doesn’t stop the tidal wave of change that is heading your way.

Being the list-loving planner that I am, I find it impossible to just relax and see where that wave of change takes me. Something my grandfather said when I first started Smiling Tree has been running through my head. He told me that throughout his years of business, sometimes things were good, sometimes they were bad, and sometimes he had to go work for someone else for awhile. Knowing that he traveled the same path I’m on right now helps.

So does the story of Jia Jiang, a guy who is videoing and sharing his experiment with “rejection therapy.” The fact that I don’t feel like making cold calls, or looking for a job, or sending out letters of introduction seems shameful in the bright light of Jia’s experiment. He is taking the bull of rejection by the horns and learning all he can. It’s inspiring.

Strangely, the posts and articles and voices that usually motivate me are failing to do so at what seems like a critical juncture. The “you can live your dreams” type posts, or the “here’s what I did and you can do too” stories are leaving me in the doldrums. Perhaps that is simply another indicator that things are shifting.

How do you handle big shifts in your business? Do you let the tidal wave carry you, take on big, new projects, or cling to what you are doing relentlessly? 

 

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Trying to lose weight? Find more customers? Manage your time better? Get your finances in order? Find a job?

If you have been pursuing any of those goals for awhile, you might feel like there is a secret formula that you just can’t figure out. If you could just tweak your resume and cover letter, find the right combination of words to go on the page that will automatically unlock the good-job door…If you could just balance your calories and nutrients in the right way, take the right exercise class, run the right number of miles each week, then you

would look like a fitness celebrity…If you could just figure out which bill to pay first, how much of your income to save, what the best, most profitable investments are, you would never feel financial stress again…

There are plenty of books, training classes, and expert-led seminars that promise to teach whatever it is you want to know – the thing that you feel pretty sure will make your life a stressless paradise of ease, compared to what it is right now. You may have already spent hundreds of dollars on those products. But the secret formula is very simple.

Don’t stop trying.

That’s the key to success in whatever endeavor you are wholeheartedly pursuing. Keep going. If you give up, you will never figure it out. But if you keep trying, your chances are much better.

There are plenty of quotes from successful people that are more eloquent than “don’t stop trying.” Here’s a old one from Ovid: “Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”

And another, this one from Vince Lombardi: “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather, a lack of will.”

The problem is that the short-term gratification of poking around on Facebook gives us a nicer feeling than taking the risk of being rejected while making cold calls. It’s easier to watch movies on the couch than volunteer, even though volunteer work will expand your network, give you a good feeling and maybe help you find your dream job. Eating pizza and drinking beer is much easier than going for a run and cooking dinner, but it sure won’t help your weight loss efforts.

I have been teetering on the brink of giving up on several of my personal endeavors, but here are a few things that are helping me continue toward my goals:

1. Talk to friends – My friends tell me that I need to keep going. They remind me of what I have accomplished before, of plans I have laid out, of things I said to them when they were down, of the fact that giving up is not a good option, of other people who have walked my path and reached their goals. They make me laugh when I need it, they tell me it’s okay when I’m sad. If you feel like giving up spend some times with your friends.

There is one caveat, though, and that is to make sure the people you look to really are your friends. Everyone has “friends.” People who you care about but who are not supportive of you and your efforts, who think that even trying is silly, and who encourage you to give up. Stay away from those folks when you’re down. In fact, you might want to consider staying away from them all of the time!

2. Do something – If you gave in and ate the pizza and drank the beer, take yourself for a walk. If you didn’t make your sales calls, send out a few emails. If you over-spent while shopping, find something to sell on

craigslist. Even if you took two steps back, taking one forward will get you moving in the right direction again.

3. Forgive yourself – Sitting around beating yourself up because you are 39 years old and you have never come close to meeting your professional goals will never, ever help you get where you want to be. You have to let the mistakes go, and carry on. Just don’t sit around feeling sorry for, or berating, yourself.

4. Adjust – If your plan isn’t working, make a new plan. Think about fitness, and the zealots you have met. There are people who will tell you that Paleo is the only way to go, and just as many people who will tell you that vegan is the only way to go. No matter your destination, there are different routes to get there. Your path might be more circuitous and tortured than the paths of others, but so what? Isn’t getting there the thing?

Since this post is basically a letter to myself, can you add anything? What advice would you give to someone who is ready to throw in the towel and stop chasing a dream? 

 

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Not too long ago, a friend told me, “I think I just stared at a wall for the entire month of June.” It happens to me with unnerving frequency – there’s plenty to do, but for some reason it just isn’t getting done. Maybe you make a nice list of things you need to work on, but then wash dishes or read books or play games or talk on the phone instead. I think that these periods are normal, and sometimes necessary. But, if they involve your income, they are also terrifying.

Four or five months ago, I decided to diversify some of my client base. Since I started writing, I’ve worked almost exclusively with small businesses, and nearly everything I’ve written aside from posts on this blog has been ghostwriting work. I love working with entrepreneurs, but wanted to develop some different skills, and so I’ve been learning about writing for trade publications and contacting lots of editors and sending out query ideas. I diligently contacted a certain number of editors each week (never quite as many as I planned to) and then…just stopped.

Beginning two or three weeks ago, I just couldn’t seem to get anything at all done. Articles that had already been assigned sat on my to do list forlornly waiting for attention. Calls that needed to be made kept the articles

company. I watched my bank account dwindle and thought about all the projects in my idea file but didn’t make a move toward working on them. It felt like the air was weighted and my mind was slowly blanking out. It would be nice to say my mind was adjusting to the transition or something, but I’m not sure enough to make that claim.

Then, this week, the turn-around began. I completed a large part of a book project (I can’t wait to tell you about it!), got several assignments from those editors I’ve been contacting, posted my first author interview post, emailed three other authors to line up more interviews, and finally started working on those articles that were still sitting on my list. Just like that, things started clicking again.

So here are the things I did during that dead time that might have helped things start clicking again:

• Continued making daily and weekly goal lists. Even if the things on them didn’t get done, I kept making the lists so that I at least knew what needed to get completed.
• Had weekly calls with a writing buddy, or friend, or mentor. I’m not sure how to classify this wonderful person, but I do know that talking with her makes my brain churn every week and that she helps me figure out what to do and is totally willing to share what she is doing.
• Exercised and cleaned. My goals fall into three general categories: professional, health, and home. Pretty much any goal I’ve set for the last four or five years (maybe longer) fits into one of those categories. The times when I feel as if there is no progress happening in any of them are dark times indeed. So, when I’m not getting my work done, I try extra hard to make sure I exercise enough. When I’m feeling stuck fitness-wise, I try to make sure my house is clean.
• Made notes as things crossed my mind. Even though nothing was really getting done, once in awhile I had an idea or vague thought and I wrote those down somewhere, knowing that more productive days would come again.

Do you experience these kinds of low periods? What do you do when you just can’t get anything done? Do you think it is better to just “ride it out” or is it better to push through these kinds of slumps?

 

 

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Do you know what a seed tick is? If the answer is “no,” count yourself lucky. If you do know what a seed tick is, you are going to understand how uncomfortable I have been for the last week or so.

I live in an area where there are lots of uninhabited, heavily wooded acres. Hiking and trail running are two of my favorite activities. Last week a friend and I went for a hike. We didn’t really have a destination, and the trail we were on ended at the power lines – where there is a wide right-of-way, and the trees are regularly cut down. It’s about a hundred yards wide, and covered in grass and scrub. There is a path along the power lines right-of-way and we followed it, eventually coming to a road. The whole walk took just over an hour.

When we got home we jokingly called the part of the path under the power lines a “hike through death valley” because it was a good 10-15 degrees hotter, and there were some steep hills. That part of the walk wasn’t much fun, but we felt pretty good about doing it. We had been home for probably 20 minutes or so when I noticed what looked like a piece of dust moving along my arm. SEED TICK!!!

Seed ticks are so small that they are hard to see. They are actually tick larvae, and they congregate in groups of hundreds or thousands, usually in grass. When you brush by the grass, they all jump onto you, hoping you provide enough of a meal that they can progress to the nymph stage. Ugh. Gross. If you see them right away, before they start crawling like crazy, you can grab some tape and press it to your skin, and the ticks will stick to

the tape. Lots of people make the mistake of thinking they can wash the tiny demons off in the shower, but that doesn’t work. They dig into your skin and stay there.

I’m fairly certain I got the ticks while walking through death valley, so they were on my body for no less than 40 minutes before I saw that first one. When they first get on you, they are in a big group, but they spread out – quick. The sooner you can get to them with the tape, the better your chances of getting them all. I got the tape and started sticking it to those ticks. (hah!) After about an hour, I figured I’d gotten as many as I was going to find, and sat down on the couch. And found about 10 more. Later, when I showered, I found even more. The situation was not looking good.

That night, I woke up scratching my ankle. The next day I was covered, toe to head, in tiny tick bites. There’s not much you can do about it – I kept a bottle of rubbing alcohol handy and wiped the bites with it. Stinging is better than itching in my book.

Six days later, the bites were healing up, and not itching nearly so intensely. I decided to go for a run, and didn’t want to go back in the woods. I went to my grandfather’s farm and ran along the driveway – it’s a 1/3 of a mile loop, so makes a great place to track time and distance. Since no one lives there now, the mowing is not done quite as regularly as it maybe should be…You know where this is going, don’t you?

More  *^!@!! seed ticks. Not nearly so many this time, but my poor feet are covered in scabs and bites. It’s really horrible – and it reminds me of marketing.

If I have ONE itchy bite, it’s not so awful, just like sending out one marketing query or making one cold call is not so terrible. But 400 (that is not an exaggeration) itchy bites is physical torture in the way that the prospect of having to make 400 cold calls or send out 400 queries is mental torture. Unhappily, there is no way to prevent a seed tick infestation other than staying out of the woods (or dowsing yourself in poison, but I don’t like to do that). But, you can avoid marketing overwhelm fairly easily.

Schedule in a minimum number of calls or emails a day. It really is that easy. Just don’t go to bed until you’ve hit your marketing target. That’s my simple system, and most of the time, it works. Do you have a system to keep you from avoiding the tiny tasks that quickly pile up in your business? Even if you don’t have to do marketing, you probably have some similar thing that can quickly overtake your whole world if you don’t handle it.

Oh, and the common denominator between seed ticks and marketing? They both suck. (I itch everywhere. Forgive my bad joke.)

 

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Have you seen the documentary Alone in the Wilderness? Sometimes, I wish that I had the skills and knowledge to live like Dick Proenneke. Living completely alone would eliminate so much of the angst and pain that we are faced with almost everyday. Of course, it would eliminate the joys that we can offer one another, too. Being a member of society, or even just a member of a family, means experiencing moments of the most amazing elation, but also the darkest despair. Recently my life was touched by a tragedy. It’s not my story to tell, so I will not share the details here, but I will say that it has been one of the most difficult situations I’ve ever faced.

People get sick. People get hurt. People die. Spouses leave, children suffer, and all manner of other awful things happen. When presented with something terrible, huge, and life-altering we have to figure out how to keep doing the mundane, day-to-day things. When simply remembering to eat becomes a challenge, then doing something as complex as running a business or fulfilling the necessary duties of your job become Herculean tasks.

Yet, the bills must still get paid.

How do you keep working when you cannot concentrate on anything? How do you continue to function in a professional manner when you don’t even want to bathe?

First, it’s important to be prepared for a bad situation before it happens. Like having a small savings account, putting a few safeguards in place can save your business if you are faced with the worst. I’m not talking so much about money, as about processes and systems. When your mind is scattered, it is easier to lose things, or forget to do things. If you have solid systems in place, you have a little less to remember. Taking a just a bit of time when things are normal to get some automated systems set up really pays off when your world turns upside down.

Last tax season, my wonderful accountant recommended Wave Accounting. It’s a free service, and it’s great – unlike many free services, even the support is good. Although I’m sure I’m not using it exactly correctly, Wave sure has made my invoicing and income and expenditure tracking processes easier. My Wave account links to my business checking account, which simplifies things even more.  Knowing that I didn’t need to worry about accounting during the last three weeks has been good. That kind of stuff is too sensitive to do when you know your mind isn’t working quite right.

Another thing that I learned through this recent bad time was that you should carefully choose who you talk to about your personal stuff. When you are overwhelmed by tragedy, it’s hard to not tell people what is happening. It fills you up and dominates everything. Most of my clients are quite close – I probably take the whole “relationship marketing” thing too far. It definitely would have been hard to avoid telling at least a couple of them what was happening because they would have sensed some weirdness, or maybe even perceived me as being rude.

Interestingly, I found that it was uncomfortable, and I wished that I had not shared. Talking to the people who did not know was a relief. There was no need to discuss it, and so those conversations provided some respite. After the first terrible few days, I found that sitting down and doing research actually helped calm my mind and served as a sort of mini-mental-vacation. If I had very pressing deadlines, though, I don’t think that would have been the case. I try to work mostly with clients who are not rushed, and that was a huge benefit in dealing with personal upheaval.

Enormous events impact every part of your life. During the last two-three weeks, I didn’t work consistently, eat properly, or exercise. The house got messy and the garden was neglected. In other words the things that keep my life (and my personality) balanced and sane didn’t happen.  Making yourself do normal things is a good reminder that, no matter what bad things are happening, the world is still there, and time is still passing. Depending on your situation, it may feel as if the world has shifted and things shouldn’t be as they always have been. Sometimes it feels like there should have been some sort of fundamental change, like the pull of gravity has doubled or like the sun’s rays have diminished in intensity.

Knowing that is not the case can be either comforting or stunning, depending on the bent of your personality, or the extent of your tragedy. For me, finding some semblance of routine was comforting, and I suspect that is the case for lots of people. Remembering that each of us is one of many and that all of us face unbelievably difficult personal trials can bring a clearer, easier-to-handle perspective. Yesterday was the first day that I forced myself to do some of the things that help me feel okay about the world – and doing them did, indeed, help me feel better.

The enormous importance of kindness is most obvious during times tribulation. There is no kind act that is too small, and no kind word that is unimportant. If you feel the urge to express some sort of goodwill to a fellow human, please do so. You never know what it might mean to someone experiencing difficulty. I don’t often throw out quotes, but these three seem to fit:

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”   —Plato

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”   —George Sand

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”   —Mother Teresa

 

 

 

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