What does it mean to be depressed? Is it okay?
I'll be honest, my heart has been raked open by the hurt and depression that I've encountered this holiday season. Never before have I felt the rawness that is all around me in such an overwhelming way. It doesn’t seem to matter which direction I face, depression is looking back at me from the eyes of my friends, clients, and even my own family.
There is a cycle that many of us fall into that I believe is officially called Repress-Express, but that I affectionately refer to as Repress-Explode, or Doormat-Raging Queen.
In Doormat mode, we take it, we don’t say ‘Boo!’ to anyone about anything and we just ‘take it’. When people irritate us, we are polite. When our boundaries are crossed, we are polite. When our dreams are disrespected, we are polite.
I’m currently running a 12-week Business Building Foundations course and it got me thinking about this concept from the E-Myth Revisited and the different roles we all need to play in our businesses.
As an Entrepreneur, we need to identify a problem out there in the world and come up with a solution to it. Our job is to always have our eyes on the horizon and be looking toward innovation and what *could* be next.
As a Business Owner, our job is to create systems to deliver our solution to the world as efficiently as possible to generate profit. It is our job to figure out how to make our solution 'buy-able'.
As a Technician, our job is to do 'that thing' that we do so well and to do it to the best of our abilities. Here is where we actually get to do the work that lights us up and allows us to be of service in the world. Here is where we get to allow our desire for excellence to flourish within the boundaries set out by the systems we create as the Business Owner.
What does this look like?
Social media is a weird and wild place and I find it all too easy to slump into what I call 'Facebook-itis' where I am comparing my life to the 'lives' of the fantabulous many that I follow and am friends with. What can be all too easy for me to forget is that I am comparing my real life to their highlight reel.
What pulls at the strings of your heart? What longing are you holding on to that is calling our for release. To be thrown into the wind with as much passion and volume as you can muster from deep within in yourself? To allow it to be carried away on that wind to become part of the Divine plan?
The moon has begun to wane and it reminds me again, that life always ebbs and flows in a divine cycle of growth and release.
As we enter this powerful time of release (fourth moon in the tetrad anyone?) I wonder what I'm ready to let go of, but I don't wonder for long. The answers, as always, are right there... simply waiting for me to get quiet and ask the questions that I need to ask.
Today, we're going to look at what is maybe the most important and also the hardest aspect of our business: our numbers.
Cashflow, Profit and Loss (PnL), Balance Sheets, Taxes, Taxes, and more Taxes, and all the other numbers that determine whether we'll be able to pay our mortgage and vendors at the end of the month - let alone take a salary for ourselves.
If there is ANYONE who has succeeded in your business niche, that means that you can too. You CAN make it work. You CAN succeed.
But you have to be willing to be very uncomfortable. You have to be willing to do what I call Fail Forward Fast. You have to ask for help - a lot. You have to find the people who have the knowledge and skills you need to build a business and to make it successfully, sustainably profitable.
We're going to talk more about numbers in the last part of this series. Today what I want to talk about is the thing that most entrepreneurs LOVE to talk about: your thing.
Y'know, the thing you do that nobody else can do as well as you. The thing that compelled you to start your business in the first place. The thing you love.
Sometimes it is easier to escape into someone else's life than it is to deal with the reality of our own life. When we are hurting. When we are scared. When we are lost.
There is so much waiting for you. There is beauty and joy and rest. A deep rest so profound that every cell in your body will take a deep breath and slowly exhale in peace.