60-Day Challenge Wk2: Shopping for Success

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.

This week, I rented a U-Haul and moved into my new office/studio. Also, I took a delivery of 6 very large boxes — an acoustical treatment panels I ordered, which are the most unglamorous, yet most expensive, puchase I’ve made on the business.  And I broke my back again — the 2nd time in 2 weeks.  My system is still screaming in resistance to what I’m doing.

Spending Money to Make Money

I knew that in order to make money, you have to spend some first.  You have to invest.  Yet, until I made the decision to furnish an office/studio outside of home, I never really realized to what extent this is true.

For example, I realized this week and I needed a new printer and a vacuum for my office.  Both items, I have at home — but my intuition is telling me it is not acceptable to take my work home to print or cart the vacuum back and forth to clean my office (I commute by bus).  Not acceptable, if I plan to be a success on my own.

And the other thing that wasn’t really acceptable to begin with, was the idea that I was going to skimp on renting an office and just work out of home.  That’s how my previous attempts at self-employment went, and I failed miserably.  I have a hard enough time separating work from home, but now I realize that to work that way just to save money would have surely been a business suicide.  Why?

Creating a Space for Success to Come in

It’s because success can’t enter my picture until I create a space in which it is allowed to happen.  My business success hinges on me doing what I love — an activity most packed with energy — and I can’t do that at home, without a dedicated place for it. I’m not saying this is true for everybody.  Some people have no trouble with that.

But I’ve never been a person who could manage “smooth” transition.  I have never had a new job lined up before leaving the old one, for example.  I always had to end up jobless in order to find a new one.  I have come to accept that I simply am a person who need to create a space for things to come in.

And speaking of my personality, I also need to find myself in a corner in order to really be productive.  Comfort and safety deactivates me.  I’ve always been a person in need of deadlines — and I don’t start working until I feel the stress of having to make the deadline.  Diving head first really is the best way for me to succeed, because other ways of going in are simply not urgent or strong enough to really force me to put in everything I got.

Transitioning for Success

So I remain in the spending mode at the beginning of the 3rd week.  Money is going out, to create a way for it to come back in.  It’s been a great exercise — I do need to set up my space so that every time I walk in, I feel that it’s a place where a successful person works.  To do otherwise is to stifle success.  The advise to skimp on every penny you can skimp, isn’t applicable to my particular situation.  (not that I need to spend carelessly, but) I’m beginning to accept that.

Toward the end of the week, my back was starting to feel better.  And I realized that until I have proper furniture and organizational tools in place, my office feels too overwhelming of a place to write in, so when I’m working on blog posts I have to go to a library or a coffeehouse.

I’m amazed what a big difference 2 weeks makes.  I can’t relate to being an employee any more — an environment where I simply needed to clock my time in and do what I was asked to do (and no more).  I am now in a place where my wheels are constantly spinning, and they have very direct impact on the productivity of my business.  Before, it felt like I had a computer with some keys disabled.  I could use my creativity to push buttons that were available to me, but yet what I could do with it was ultimately limited.  Now all the buttons and functions are fully engaged, and the new range of influence I possess to my own life can be daunting and overwhelming.  But I also realize that this is a great power.  If I learn how to harness it, it’ll produce things that were unimaginable before.

My fate is now squarely in my own hands, and I now have access to all of my life, to make it do what I want.  I’m learning how to wield this increased power.  I am learning, quickly.

Ari's Personal Stories / Career and Your Calling / Realizing Your Potential   / /

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