“There are no problems to be fixed, only more truth to be revealed.” Jeffrey Van Dyk, Entrepreneur, Spiritual Business Coach
It seems like so many experts are advising and giving their opinions about HOW to be an entrepreneur, HOW to sell more stuff, HOW to build your platform/audience, which is important stuff to know. Don’t get me wrong.
But there are more pressing questions for many of us creative entrepreneurs, and I’d say one of them is what to do when you feel like you’re doing everything you can and your results are still not what you expected them to be. I’ve had this scenario many times this year. In spite of some big successes this year (65 attendees at my Pacifica Graduate Institute workshop and 3 amazing beta Prosperous Creativity participants), I began to feel like everything I was doing was wrong.
And then I found myself asking the wrong questions.
“Why is my business broken?”
And …
“Who can fix my business?”
We live in a world of imperfections. Sometimes we feel as if we are broken, not enough, bad, stupid, ridiculous … and on and on goes the list. Instead of pointing the mean, blaming finger at ourselves, which is abusive, wouldn’t it be better to accept that this is not a perfect world and sometimes we need to just be and do nothing. Accept for the moment that we’re not sure what the hell is going on, but in our hearts be gentle with ourselves.
Since we all have the power of story, that’s our birthright, what can we do to change this?
I say, let’s start by reframing these two not-so-great questions.
“Why am I [or my business] broken?” —> change this to:
“How can I step fully into my true calling, my greatness and joy?”
And …
“Who can fix me [or my business]?” —> change this to:
“Who can support me as I experience this change/transition into my fullest self?”
Start from zero. I love this Rumi poem:
Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we say No, we don’t see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.
We are all experts in our life experiences, studies, skills and talents. However, when we try to solve problems from the “expert’s” point-of-view we get stuck.
It is when we stop *trying* to do something and walk away from it … take a walk, make a cup of tea, do some yoga or sweat it out on the dancefloor … that the answers fall gracefully into our minds. Softly, as if they’ve been there all along.
Stop trying. Start being. Your book, screenplay, project, invention, sales page, website will thank you for it.
My challenge for you is this: think of where you are stuck in your life or business and stop trying to solve the problem. Pretend you’ve never experienced this conundrum before, in fact, go so far as to imagine that you’re totally inexperienced in everything. Maybe you’ve beamed down from another galaxy and don’t even know the physical laws of Earth. Approach the situation with fresh eyes and an open mind. Tell a story about it. Not the facts, but from your feelings and imagination. Write multiple endings on separate pieces of paper. Put them in a bowl and pull one out randomly. And do that.
Or something totally different that pops into your mind!
Tell me what you experienced during this imaginative playtime in the comments below.
All my love,
Kris