60 Day Challenge: Intuitive Entrepreneur
Goal: To create and execute a new business vision by following my intuition in 60 days. And do so without neglecting my family’s needs.
It seems to me like each week I uncover a new twist. Plans and ideas I had about my business is getting tried, and some ideas are having to be discarded.
For example, I knew that the heart of this endeavor lied in my recording my music. Yet, I have not recorded a single second of music so far. This week I made a good progress on setting up my studio for recording, but I’m not ready to start recording just yet. I won’t go into boring details, but I made some missteps in my process of moving into my new office/studio — and it’s taken longer than I imagined to get everything set up. Not a catastrophic mistake, but certainly a nuisance. My coach Tom Volkar mentioned that it may be the manifestation of my fear holding me up. I think he may be right.
Also, I am realizing now that I really am not going to offer much value through two of my blogs, NetPreneur’s Journal and AriKoinuma.com. I am glad I tried them — before I tried those sites, I had this nagging voice in my head going “I want a place to discuss entrepreneurship. I also need a place to keep more of a diary.” Well, now having given those voices their fair shots, I now feel good about putting those initiatives to rest. I’m not ready to pull the plugs on the sites themselves, but I am going to stop updating those sites for the time being to focus on the bigger fish in my pond.
Changing plan has always been something I wouldn’t allow myself to do. I’m not a quitter or a flake — and I finish what I start. At least that’s what I expect of myself. But the thing about intuition is that it tells me to try something, just so that I feel certain that it’s something I need to abandon.
I still feel that I need to be bold, decisive and quick on my feet. If I attach myself to my preconceived notion of the paths I’m going to take, then I’m going to either delay or sabotage my success.
You know, when you’re putting together a jigsaw puzzle, you start from the edges. And after you collect all the edges, you still have to try a lot of pieces before you find ones that fit. That’s what I’m doing now. It doesn’t make sense to get emotionally attached to this or that piece, saying “it really should fit here. I really want it to fit here!”
And speaking of intuition, my recent article “9 Ways to Tell You’re Listening to Intuition” is going through the roof on StumbleUpon. At 8000 hits and climbing, it is the most popular article on this young site so far. When I was writing it, I felt that I had hit upon something that was useful. Sometimes what becomes popular surprises you, but in this case it’s gratifying to realize that I was right.
Still, I constantly ask myself “what if my intuition is wrong?” But so far, the times I have been wrong have been when I either misinterpret it or ignore it.
I’m almost half way through my 60-day challenge, and I still have no idea how this is going to work out. Everyday, I think about how illogical it is to be doing in this in the middle of recession. Something is going to work out, the voice in my head says. Trust, Ari, and relax.
You better be right, is my response. 🙂
Thanks for this post. I’m reminded of what David Deida says about finding your purpose in life: that it’s like peeling away the layers of an onion, in that it takes some willingness to experiment with different possibilities to get to the core. It’s against the conventional wisdom in our society, which calls us “flakes” for experimenting. But if we want to live on purpose it seems we need to go against that grain.
Chris Edgar | Purpose Power Coaching´s last blog post..Free Teleseminar: Transcending Procrastination
Chris,
Thanks for that comment. Indeed, it’s like peeling an onion — this self-employment thing has been a very intense growing experience so far. It seems that each week I discover something within myself that I need to overcome.
ari
Ari – This series is so timely and helpful to me. I’m doing exactly the same thing – though I haven’t been able to stick with any of my numerous deadlines. Now it’s more urgent to make these experiments work so it’s a round-the-clock push. The courage to experiment, to drop the sites that don’t work, choose carefully to put the greatest effort in those that are promising financially is a tough one but so necessary. To this point I’ve been writing primarily about my own recovery, and it’s hard to switch gears to other things I know well but that are less vital to my inner health.
It’s encouraging to know I’m hardly alone in the experiences I’ve going through.
Thanks so much for being so open about this process.
All my best to you — John
John D´s last blog post..Feeling Fine on Prozac
Hi John,
Sorry it took so long to respond to you. You know, I ended up ignoring just about every plan I had before I went into this. It’s a bit like unwrapping a gift, when you don’t know what’s inside. It’s heavily covered in layers but as you peel off you begin to see the shape. I’ve made many mistakes and missteps, but I’m still peeling.
ari