30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: Goals vs. Actions

Day 5's goal: Focus on your part.

I asked several freelancers to tell me their biggest obstacle to creating a business plan and one of the most commonly recurring reasons was that they didn't see the point. Freelancer (and personal mentor) Conn Hallinan had this to say:

How do you make a business plan if you have no control over the means of distribution? It is the same reason peasants during the Middle Ages didn't have a business plan: they had no power over anything, plus they had to bow to their lords (just like us!). For instance: My business plan is to write four 5,000 word articles for The New Yorker at $3 a word, and an 8,000 word piece for Atlantic at $4 a word. Also I intend to produce five other magazine pieces at $2 a word, minimum 4,000 words. That's my plan, and after I have smoked this really good stuff that someone from Humboldt gave me it seems perfectly reasonable. Once the stuff wears off, it is back to begging for four magazine pieces at $1 a word, and an every other week column at $75 a pop. So, good business plan: have a partner who is too smart to try and make their living as a writer.

To which I say: Good point. We don't control the means of production. We can't make the New Yorker hire us.

Does that mean we shouldn't have business plans? I argue no, and I'll tell you why.

To use the words of business planning guru Tim Berry, whom I interviewed for a forthcoming blog post on this site, "If I'm a fisherman, I can't control how much fish I catch. But I sure as heck can control what stream I'm fishing in."

Having a business plan is not Secret-style fantasy. It isn't magic. You can't just "conceive it, believe it, receive it." You have to plan it, practice it and produce it. A business plan isn't about the end results but the steps you'll take to try to get there.

Want to write for The New Yorker? I can think of a few steps to get there:

• Figure out who writes for them now and what path they took to get there. Are there intermediary magazines you should try to break into on the way to getting to The New Yorker?
  
• Ask for an informational interview from one or two contributors. You really can. They're people just like you and me.
  
• Subscribe to the magazine and the intermediary magazines.
  
• Study their content to get a sense of which stories would be appropriate for them.
• Improve your craft to bring your writing to be up to The New Yorker's standards. That may mean taking a class. It may mean experimenting with different styles. It may mean reading books. Figure out what will work for you.
  

And most important:

• Query them. Every month. Even if you get a "no" every time--or worse, no response at all. I queried The New Yorker this year. They turned my story down. They were very polite about it. Nice people there at The New Yorker.

Those four steps? That's what goes on your business plan--not "write four stories for the New Yorker at $3/word." You can't control whether they buy the stories. But you can control how you act.

And there's evidence that it does work. This week I met a freelancer who said he queried a big-name magazine regularly for four years before he broke in. But he finally did. Now he writes for them regularly.

And it's true in my life. I'm close to breaking into one of my target markets because I followed the steps above. I increased my income. If the measure of your success is The New Yorker or Atlantic, you won't feel successful and a business plan will feel like a waste. But if your measure of success is progress, your business plan will help you accomplish your goals.

Monday's Mantra: Expectation vs. Reality

Every Monday, I propose a mantra for the week to help you focus your work and interrupt those self-defeating patterns that rob us of serenity. Need a mantra for something specific? Email me at Heather at heatherboerner.com--or post your thoughts below.

For this week, let's focus on this mantra:

Just because things aren't going as planned doesn't mean they're going haywire.

You set up an interview and the source never calls. You exchange a million emails and phone calls with a client only to have your latest marketing effort rejected. It can feel like everything is out of whack. But just because things aren't going the way you planned them doesn't mean they're going wrong.

What do I mean? Let me give you an example: I'm coming out of an extremely abundant, busy period that required a lot of balancing of projects. Often I woke in the morning feeling like the day had already gotten away from me and worried about the things from the day before that didn't go according to plan. There didn't seem to be enough time, enough talent and enough stamina to make it through.

Yet every day I did. Somehow--in a way that I didn't plan for, despite all my best efforts--I got exactly what I needed for the day. I got my projects done--and not just done but done well.

In these moments, it's not enough to plan: You have to choose your perspective. Are things out of control because my carefully planned to-do list flew out the window every day? Or is my Higher Power guiding me to a gentler and more surprising way of accomplishing my dreams? This is along the same lines as last week's mantra, but it's not the same thing. Whether you struggle over how your day is going is beside the point for our purposes this week.

The point this week is to focus on the positive: What is working? What is working out better than you had planned? Where are the little surprises and blessings coming from today? Is it more important for me to feel in control or for things to work out?

This gets back to what the Buddha says: Among other things, everything and everyone changes. We have to plan for the day but expect things to change. It's a dynamic. And it's also not personal. It's not a judgment of us if our greatest business plans don't happen as we expect. All we can do is make the effort.

Serenity Enemy: Recession Fears

If you read any portion of the news these days, you're hearing all about the iminent or current recession. It's enough to make anyone panic in their half-off shoes. And if you're self-employed, perhaps even moreso.

Yesterday, I posted to a freelance writers Web site seeking advice on how to cope with the recession, and here are the suggestions I got:

* Be choosy about which clients you take on: Stick with stable companies. Start-ups may not be the best option right now.
* Market yourself like crazy: Sales is always a numbers game, and even moreso now. Get those queries and marketing proposals out the door, and increase the number you do.
* Build relationships: You're more likely to get the jobs if you have a connection with the editor. Set aside time every week to meet with editors or other writers. Not only is this great support, but these are the folks who are going to offer you assignments.
* Don't be precious about assignments: Take what's offered. You can't always do your dream assignments.
* Build up your reserves: Now more than ever, it's important to have money saved to support yourself during down times that may be even more inevitable now. Some self-employed friends put 10 percent of every check into a prudent reserve. Can you afford that? I can't, not right now. But I am putting a smaller percentage aside.

And I would add to all of this:

* Be mindful of how *your* business is doing, not what the news says.

The last four months have been the most abundant of my short career as a freelancer. It's not hitting me yet. What is hitting me is the fear of recession and what it can do to me. There are lots of reasons for this but one of them is experiential.

My first memory of a recession affecting me was in 1987. Black Monday didn't just conjure images of the Depression, which I was studying in school, but brought real worries to bear: My dad owned his own business and it didn't take long for all his clients to dry up and for the business, funded by his retirement savings, to go under. It was a bleak moment in our family, but we recovered from it.

The important thing for me is to let go of that body memory and focus on my 1 percent: What can I control in this situation? How many queries I send, how much contact I make and how much money I save. The rest, unfortunately, isn't up to me. And the more I focus on what I can't control--the U.S. economy, my clients' freelance budngets, etc.--the less serenity I have and the less energy I have for doing my part.

What's your worry about the recession, and what's the one thing you can do today to help yourself?

Monday's Mantra: Struggling is Optional

In this blog, I've written about mantras before, but now I'm starting a new Monday-only feature that gives you a chance to start the week off right. Please let me know if this feature is helpful to you or for what issue youneed a mantra. Email me at Heather at heatherboerner.com--or post your thoughts below.

You've probably heard the old axiom, "Pain is mandatory; suffering is optional." It's usually uttered by those pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap drill sargeant types--the "quit yer whining" variety of motivational speaker.

Let's take this out of that context for a moment, though.

If you're a perfectionist, you probably have a tendency to put yourself down pretty harshly in an effort to meet your very high expectations. It can be effective: Maybe you wouldn't reach your unrealistic goals if you hadn't have pushed yourself out of your comfort zone. Maybe your business plan or income goals would have been an esoteric exercise if you weren't willing to push yourself hard to get there. There's something to be said for pushing.

But sometimes, if you use self-condemnation to motivate yourself, that pushing can turn into shoving and leave you feeling (pardon the extension of this analogy) beaten up.

In other words, your mantra, without realizing it, may be:

You're not doing enough. Nothing you do is enough.

How'd you like to meet that bully in a dark alley? I wouldn't.

How do you know if you're suffering for your work? The best barometer is self-pity: Why is this happening to me? Why is everything so hard? First of all, pushing yourself is hard, of course. It's a good sign that you're reaching and stretching yourself. But it may also be so hard because it has to be in that worldview. It can't be regularly fun and exciting. If it were, you might not feel like you're working hard enough.

So for this week, consider taking on the mantra that you can accomplish your goals without suffering for them. Work hard, feel that stretch and the fears associated with going after your dreams. But you don't need to pay a pound of flesh to have the life you want. What's more, if you do feel like you have to punish yourself to achieve your goals, you're unlikely to enjoy them anyway.

So take a moment when you're stressed this week, breath deeply into your stomach, imagine a golden light filling you. And then say to yourself:

I love my job and I don't have to suffer to achieve my dreams.

Is Your Email Obsession Something Bigger?

This week, I've been writing about the scourge of email obsession and how to cope. I'd like to bring this around today to the bigger picture.

That is, procrastination.

I've written about this before but I want to spend more time on it because it's a big part of losing your serenity at work: You delay delay delay, you focus on what you can't control instead of what you can, and you end up feeling powerless, victimized and frustrated with yourself.

For a brutally honest look at this condition, let's check in with Psychology Today. In a 2003 story, the magazine looks at 10 facts about procrastination. The most interesting for the purpose of this post is this one:

Procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don't take a lot of commitment on their part. Checking e-mail is almost perfect for this purpose. They distract themselves as a way of regulating their emotions such as fear of failure.

Ouch. And true.

The magazine goes on to identify three flavors of procrastinator:

* arousal types, or thrill-seekers, who wait to the last minute for the euphoric rush.
* avoiders, who may be avoiding fear of failure or even fear of success, but in either case are very concerned with what others think of them; they would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.
* decisional procrastinators, who cannot make a decision. Not making a decision absolves procrastinators of responsibility for the outcome of events.

Any of these sound familiar to you?

It makes sense: Want to avoid big, hard feeling? Feeling particularly vulnerable or insecure about your capacity to make it as a self-employed person? If you have even a little bit of an impulse towards self-sabotage (and who doesn't, at one time or another?), spending all your time answering email or sending email instead of dealing with your underlying fears is a great way to do it.

I don't say any of this to be shaming or judgmental. I love writing this blog but there are plenty of other things I could be doing with my business hours. And I love the email as much as anyone else. I say this to underline the fact that clarity about your motives for doing things that you don't like about yourself at work goes a long way toward deactivating them.

So spend some time today just observing and becoming mindful of where you procrastinate and what feelings are underneath it. As a friend of mine says, "It's not about the email." So if it's not about the email for you, what is it about?

Serenity Enemy: Email Encroachment

Every so often, I get questions on ways to make work life more serene. Have one? Send it to heather (at) heatherboerner.com.

Today's question is:

My chronic work problem as a self-employed writer is compulsively reading and responding to emails like this. If that sounds snide, the snideness is directed at me and at no one else!

I hear you. As I've said before, I definitely know the allure of the email siren song. There's something so gratifying about the ding!, isn't there?

Tomorrow, I'll write about a new management technique that's allowed me to feel less beholden to my email. But before I share it, I think it's important to talk about motivation--that is, why are you obsessed with your email? Ask yourself:

* What should I be doing instead?
* Do I want to do it?
* What are my feelings about my assigned task?
* What am I afraid of?
* What am I ashamed of?
* What do I really want to be doing?

Email procrastination can arise from a number of sources, and to figure out how to squelch this serenity enemy, you have to know what yours is. Some of the reasons I hang on every single email are because I don't have enough information to start writing, I want to go to the gym but I feel guilty for leaving work, I'm stressed about money, I'm resentful or deflated that a marketing effort got rebuffed.

Each of these requires a different treatment. It may be that going to the gym will actually make me more productive than sitting at the computer and trying to talk myself out of going to the gym. It may be that I need to get honest aobut why I can't write and figure out who else I need to call. It may be that I need to call a work support person and get consoled about my flagging marketing efforts. Maybe I need to make a to-do list so I feel less overwhelmed. Maybe I need to look at my expectations of myself and see if I'm being too rigid.

But before I can do any of that, I have to be willing to tear myself away from my email and figure out what it is. Sometimes, it's easier to sit with email--and feel bad about it--than it is to face the thing you're avoiding. Indeed, email procrastination may be an attempt to avoid dealing with my 1 percent.

Think about that and tomorrow I'll bring you a few tips.

Serenity Tools: The Sounds of Serenity

Until I became self-employed, the sounds around me were irrrelevant. I had no control over them so mostly ignored them. It wasn't until I was in a quiet room that I realized the constant screaming across the newsroom, the static-y police scanner and the hum of the computer did nothing but make me tense. Add to that my general propensity at the time to overwork and not set boundaries and what you had was the sound of stress.

So I wondered: How can you create the sound of serenity in your office?

There's actual research behind this. For nurses, for instance, researchers have found that abnormal sound levels contribute to stress and may even impede healing in the sick.

Another study found that the opposite may also be true: Pleasant sounds may mimic positive experiences:

We suggest that music specifically induces an emotional response similar to a pleasant experience or happiness. Moreover, we demonstrated the typical asymmetrical pattern of stress responses in upper temporal cortex areas, and suggested that happiness/sadness emotional processing might be related to stress reduction by music.

Having said that, I'm not much of a classical music gal. I much more favor wacky girl rock or emo rock on a regular basis. But when I have to work, none of that is very helpful. And one of the joys of self-employment is the ability to listen to music while I work.

So here is some music that helps me concentrate, get today's work done and remain calm:

Essential Beethoven
The Essential Tchaikovsky
Relaxing Vibes, Slavic Kulpowicz

What music gets you in a productive frame of mind?

Preparing Yourself for a Hard Week

We all have them: We're staring down the barrel of a stressful, productivity-required week. What do you do?

* A massive to-do list?
* A flowchart of when to do everything?
* Plan on working nights and weekends until the stress is over?

Those are all good options, as they give you clarity about what's in front of you to do. But it's also the time to invite your Higher Power (whatever that looks like) into the situation. If you don't believe in one, consider your support network your higher power. The point is not to walk into the dark forest of your fears and stress alone.

Just like recovering from overwhelm, planning for a busy week can leave you feeling not good enough and compulsively overworking with the hope that that will solve your problems.

Hey, I've been there. As the charter member of of the workaholic's club, I've had more than a few obsessive weeks where I've done nothing but work and gone to sleep panicky and had bad dreams full of what I forgot to do.

Today, happily, we all have more choices. Ask yourself the following:

* What is absolutely necessary today?
* What's ONE thing I can do today to make tomorrow go smoother? (Limit yourself to one or two things. Making a list of 10 means you're trying to do today's work and tomorrow's work at the same time. It doesn't work.)
* What's one thing you can do to take care of yourself today so that you're calmer tomorrow?
* What will your work hours be today? Set them and then stick to them, except in an emergency (and by emergency I don't mean that worried feeling you have. I mean an emergency that's be verified as such by someone objective).
* What do you need to ask for help on?
* Where can you get this help?

Start your day with these simple questions and you'll be more likely to finish the day happy. I always try to remember this objective:

By the end of the week, the work will be done one way or another; how much do you want to suffer in the process?

This is a shift in thinking: It isn't just about the product; it's about the process. One of my favorite lines in the wonderful book Eat Pray Love comes from the Balinese medicine man. When asked to describe Hell and Heaven, he explains that both end up in the same spot; it's just that you go through hell to get to it or you go through bliss to get to it.

The choice is up to you, to some extent. You can't control others, but you can control how you treat yourself and others in the meantime.

Serenity Tip: Recovering from Overwhelm

It's Friday. Are you more relaxed, looking forward to the weekend? Or maybe you feel your throat closing ever so slightly as you stare down a long list of things to do, and recognize several as things you didn't get to yesterday, the day before or the day before that. And don't forget that deadline coming up today and early next week.

Welcome to overwhelm.

A friend of mine called me last night with the following symptoms:

* Obsessive worry about confrontations and projects he'll have to handle next month.
* Regret that he didn't get to some projects earlier this week and that they were building up.
* Sadness and shame around some stuff in his personal life.
* A general sense that it was impossible to catch up, that there was too much to do and it all needed to be done right now.

Sould familiar?

Yeah, me too.

I so know this feeling. I'm the queen of overwhelm, with a habit of being very dramatic about it. And since I also work hard at being productive and professional, I've also come up with some ways of coping with it. Here are my favorites:

* Focus on these 24 hours: That project due in a month? That confrontation you're dreading? If it's not happening today, shelve it. I don't know about you, but I often use worry as a replacement for planning, so I end up working myself into a tizzy because I think it's somehow protecting me from that thing I'm dreading doing next week or tomorrow. The truth is all it does is steal precious energy I need for today's looming deadlines and the hard work in front of me right now. Don't do it to yourself. Just focus on today.

* Trust the future: If you have a spiritual practice and believe in some kind of Higher Power, now's the time to focus on inviting that power into your life. I know it sounds hokey and/or frighteningly religious if you're not, but bear with me. The point is this: You don't need to worry about how you'll handle projects in the future. You can trust that the Higher Power of your choosing/tradition/understanding will help you make the right decisions when the time comes. It's not all in your hands and never was. Relaaaax.

* Get clear: Remember that worry-as-a-replacement-for-planning? Now that you've let go of the biggest weight of overwhelm, you can focus on just those things on your to-do list that are important today. These can be personal deadlines, client deadlines or anything else. Really take a look at your to-do list today and set some realistic priorities. You may find that you don't have all that much that absolutely positively has to be done today. Weed out the things you're doing out of pride instead of necessity and focus your considerable energy and skill towards those things that are helpful to your clients.

Do these tips work for you? What are the other things that overwhelm you in your business?

Serenity Tip: Radio Silence

Recently, several self-employed people have told me that the biggest block to their serenity during the day is compulsive checking of email.

Boy, do I hear you. I love the little "ding!" of my email program to tell me that something new has arrived. Whether it's a coupon from Staples or an email offering me work, I seem to have the same Pavlovian response. And boy does it make it hard for me to complete tasks.

The worst is when I get an email that unnerves me or angers me in some way--and then I'm off and running, and the smooth progression of my day grinds to a halt.

But I had an inspiration on Friday that I thought I'd share.

I've heard several people say that it's OK to turn off your email while you're hard at work. I've also heard people say it's okay to relegate your email time to a certain part of the day, but I've never been able to do it. Like I said, there's something gratifying and compulsive about that little ding.

On Friday, though, I was on deadline with two stories. Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of time for that kind of compulsivity. So when I meditated that morning, a gentle thought drifted into my mind. For some reason, I was willing to listen to it.

I set up the away message on my email for three hours--just till noon--saying that I was on deadline and would not check email until after that time. I urged them, if it was an emergency, to call me.

And guess what? No one called. No crisis broke out that I had to deal with.

Something about setting the away message on my email made me comfortable clicking off the email program. I think I often feel scared to turn it off because I'm afraid clients will think that I'm not responsive enough. And in this world on immediate accessiblity 24 hours a day, we have to work very hard to not be available, and there's a strange pressure to never set any boundaries around communication. But to do so is also to keep ourselves chained to others' needs instead of acting on our own.

It's not selfish, though. When I turned off my email, I was doing it so I could give my full attention to my client's project. It was the furthest thing from selfish. It was completely professional.

At the same time, I also turned off the ringer on my office phone so I could work without distractions. I turned off my Web browser also, except for things I needed for work.

In two short hours, I had written both stories. And I had done so calmly and happily.

It doesn't have to be a struggle. Others will understand if we give them a chance.

Does this answer your question? If not, fill me in on what I've missed and I'll answer that, too.

Serenity Tip: One hard thing a day

If serenity is about accepting what you can't change and acting on what you can, then this blog has spent a lot of time discussing how to let go and less about how to act when acting is called for.

Here's my suggestion of the day:

Make a list of all the hard things that make you seize up when you think of doing them--and then just try one step towards one today.

Such a list has the potential to cause more suffering than it alleviates--at least at first. Getting clear about what is stopping you, and looking at each big scary thing in its face, can feel torturous. It can look like a mountain or the Grand Canyon, depending on your sensibility. Either way, it seems like something you can't conquer.

The good think is you don't have to conquer everything at once.

If you have a business plan you may have your list of what Franklin Covey calls "big rocks" already written down: Make $X this year, break into certain publications, etc. That's a great thing. That plan should also give you steps to make those things happen: If you want to increase your income significantly, what mix of clients/projects will bring you to that income level? How much work is required?

Take one of those big things and break off a small piece to start on. Today. Don't hold back. Don't block out the business plan because it seems more like a pipe dream.

Just start, with the faith that something will shift, even if you don't get the results you want in the timeline you've determined.

If you don't have a business plan, chances are your list of scary Big Rocks may seem like a wish list instead of an action plan. So maybe your first big hard thing on the list is to finish or start your business plan. It's not too late. Gather a friend in your field and meet once a week for an hour until you get it all down. It doesn't matter if it doesn't get done till June. That just means the second half of the year will be that much more serene and prosperous for you.

The key here is to remember that mountain doesn't have to scaled today. Just make a start on it, some small bit. And then show up for it--and your business--again tomorrow.

Dealing with a bad day

We all have them: A client strings you along and then drops a project he or she promised. You do a lot of work on a project and then the higher-ups decide to go a different direction, etc. It's enough to make a self-employed person tear her hair out.

The key is a few things:

1. Adapt the mantra: It's not personal.

It can feel very personal: It effects your work, sometimes it effects your wallet and often it effects your serenity. The only way to make it worse on yourself if you take that moment and use it to feed your monkey mind, the part of you that's always looking for a place to stash your most corrosive negative thoughts.

Now, of course it's normal for it to feel personal, but take good care of yourself by not wallowing in that thought. Every time it comes up again as a personal attack on you or your business, just repeat the mantra: "It's not personal."

2. Check in with yourself.

When I have a bad day, sometimes I'm not capable of checking in with myself until the end of the day, by which time I am so worked up and so reactionary that I'm no fun to be with, even for me. My brain is not a safe place to be in those instances.

The venerable yogi B.K.S. Iyengar in his seminal modern yoga book Light On Yoga writes about his two kinds of anger:

There are two types of anger (krodha), on of which debases the mind while the other leads to spiritual growth. The root of the first is pride, which makes one angry when slighted. The prevents the mind from seeing things in perspective and makes one's judgment defective. The yogi, on the other hand, is angry with himself when his mind stoops low or when all his learning an experience fail to stop him from folly. He is stern with himself when he deals with his own faults, but gentle witht eh faults of others. Gentleness of mind is an attribute of a yoga, whose heart melts at all suffering. In him gentleness for others and firmness for himself goes hand in hand, and in his presence all hostilities are given up.

Sound like a tall order?

It is, if you try to simply will yourself into that state of mind. I'm sure there are many ways of getting to that kind of clarity: prayer, yoga, meditation, etc. But one of the ways that work for me, because I'm a writer, is to write it all down.

The key in Mr. Iyengar's concept of yogic response to anger seems to me to be a few things:

* When you're reacting to others our of pride (i.e., taking things personally) you aren't seeing clearly. So any business decisions you make in the face of such a reactive mind are bound to need correcting later--and bound to send your serenity ricocheting all over the room.

* The yogi's heart "melts at all suffering." What that means to me is that it melts at *your* suffering as well. So his charge to you, I believe, is to find a way to be "firm" with yourself/take responsibility for your part without subjecting yourself to suffering. If you're prone to perfectionism, it's easy to take this edict as a sign that you need to beat yourself up. That's not yogic in my mind because it's full of pride. It's all about you.

So how do you separate pride from firmness? Write it all down: Your fears, your resentments, your beliefs about yourself, and what you can learn from the situation.

Then just sit with it for a bit. The thing about having a bad day is that you can't right it in an hour--at least not in my experience. If something rocks your core or your bottom line, it's going to take time to go through the feelings and feel steady again. Let it be, and continue to work on the work in front of you.

3. Reach out for support.

I write a lot about support in this blog--for good reason. There's nothing worse than gritting your teeth through a bad day and then vomitting all your fear and anxiety and resentments all over your mate when he or she returns home.

We've all been guilty of this, but here's a promise: You don't have to wait till the end of the day to get the support you need. If you set up a system of people who support the sane and serene operation of your business, you can call through that roster until you start to feel a little better. That way, if your partner gets home and he or she had had a bad day, too, you aren't adding to your own or anyone else's stress by forcing that person to be everything for you.

One warning about support, though: It's important to clear out what's your side of the street and what's out of your control before you pick up the phone. Otherwise, you run the risk of simply ramping yourself up and feeling more anxious, fearful and caught by the monkey mind.

Serenity Tip: Patience

First, an expansion on yesterday's post on income goals:

Erik Sherman has a great post on when not to focus on monthly goals. His basic advice for finding serenity with your income is to look at the long haul:

Ultimately, the important thing is what you average over a quarter and, then, the year, and not every single month taken absolutely on its own. One reason is that it's difficult to turn around a significant amount that drops out of a month, as by the time you make the sale and start work, generally you will find your deadline into at least the next month. And if the amount is small, it's probably not worth diverting your attention from where your business is going overall.

What I love about Erik's suggestion here is that you need to have a balance between short-term cash flow and long-term goals.

This is where vision comes in. As you're growing your business, I've found it helpful to be mindful of both--but to focus on the latter. My mantra starting in about February of last year was "Focus on November."

What that meant was--sure, I could worry about my income this month. But if I wanted to really change my income picture in the long run, I needed to focus on increasing my income significantly in the next nine months. That meant changing my whole approach to work. I needed to privilege time working on marketing over some of my quick-paying but low-income assignments, and I needed to just hold tight and stomach the slow months.

And guess what happened? In November, my income doubled.

It was a gift. And I continue to be grateful for it. I show that gratitude by being a good steward of my cashflow by continuing that focus.

So if you're stressed about your income, and not meeting your income goals, try to practice patience. Income changes can come with glacial speed--and it may seem that way especially because your electric bill is due, like, today. But they will come, if you continue to do the work.

How do you practice patience? My best attempts include calling my fellow self-employed friends, being honest, meditating and exercising. You know, do the work and then practice the 1 percent rule.

Serenity Tip: Resiliency

A word about illness and my last post: I was, of course, being sarcastic when I said that illness itself is the enemy of serenity. It can feel that way: You've got work to do and you can't move and that can be a recipe for obsessive worrying and self-condemnation (why didn't I plan for this? Why didn't I wash my hands more, the way they tell you to?).

But the reality is that illness is part of life and part of that 99 percent we can't control.

But what we can foster is resiliency--that is, the ability to bounce back quickly after a challenge or illness leaves us down for the count.

If you want to foster resiliency, the key is to focus on the future instead of the past. Sure, I could spend today gnashing my teeth over the fact that I lost a few days of work last week, or I can think about how to proceed with this week.

I once read something (and I'm sorry I can't now recall the source) that said that the difference between successful people and people who can never quite get there is that the successful people treat obstacles as a chance to change their behavior in the future (for instance, "Now that I've been sick I'll know how to approach clients about deadlines and how to manage my time better. I'll know to let myself rest earlier and not to take certain medicines that made me sicker this time."). People who struggle with success spend all their time looking at the past (for instance, "WHY did I do that? Why? I must know before I can move on." Or, "See? The fact that I 'failed' this time is proof that I'm a failure.").

But don't fear. You can have a little of both and still be successful. The Life and Work Connection at the University of Arizona reminds us of something very important:

Resiliency occurs on a continuum (it's not an either/or proposition)

In other words, feel free to wallow and beat your self up for a few minutes. Then think about how you can use this experience to make you successful the next time you experience it.

And have no doubt: You will experience whatever it was again. As the Buddha says, you have to remember that bad things will happen. And you have to remember that the only thing you possess are your actions around it.

So what actions should you take to develop the resiliency muscle? According to the University of Arizona, these are the keys:

1. Self-soothing: This is essentially anything that interrupts your stress response. A lot of the techniques are in the letting go toolkit. Meditation, yoga, support and prayer are all great ways to soothe your rattled mind. But it can also include cardio exercise and affirmations that contradict the anxiety building in your body.

2. Self-confronting: Essentially, this is challenging those self-doubts and negative thoughts that belong to you and pop up over and over again. For me, those are usually fatalistic beliefs about my ability to sustain self-employment and the belief that I will starve no matter what I do. Your mileage may vary, but please don't doubt that you have these grubby monkey-mind thoughts. Your job is to soothe yourself enough to contradict those old beliefs that are steealing your serenity.

The key here is to do both together:

Focusing on building your resiliency does NOT mean that whatever is going on around you is okay or that you should accept it, because maybe your growth issue involves saying no or setting a boundary where you've been afraid to in the past.

Self-soothing without the self-confronting leads to avoidance. Typical examples of avoidant behavior include withdrawing, being demanding, emotionally-driven eating, substance abuse, etc.

Conversely, self-confronting without self-soothing can lead to you beating yourself up (not good). Everybody walks a different road. For you, growing may involve backing off and letting go of control of a situation. For someone else, it may mean that they need to take more charge of the situation. Don't judge yourself by comparing yourself to others.

Serenity Enemy: Illness

Look up "illness" and "self-employed" on Google, and most of what you'll find is the conundrum of how to afford health insurance in the U.S. if you aren't part of a large company. What it doesn't tell you is how to deal with your work when you come down with a bad cold, or when you get pheumonia or bronchitis or any of the other cold-weather illnesses that abound right now.

Unluckily for me, I seem to be a guinea pig. Last week I picked up some horrible virus that left me unable to sleep, stay awake or form a coherent sentence. Writing the posts on this blog took hours. And finishing my work? Last week, it took some Herculean will to get it all done.

I was proud of myself that I had, and then I went to the doctor.

"Don't talk," said my physician. "And don't work. Do you need a note?"

"No thanks," I croaked. "I'm self-employed."

But see, that's the crux. Sometimes I like to say, "I'm self-employed, and my boss is a slave driver."

But what to do when the reality of your health butts up against the reality of your work life. If you're even moderately successful in your work, you come up with a schedule that keeps you steadily busy. Illness is never factored into that. And unlike staff employees, you can't get sick and call in, assuming someone else will pick up the slack.

And so the nattering brain starts:

You're weak.
If you don't finish that assignment, that client will never hire you again.
But what if you finish it, and it's terrible because you can't focus?
Why did I ever leave my cushy full-time gig?

Aside from whatever naturally comes up for you when you get sick (self-pity, depression, etc., seem pretty common among my self- and outside-employed friends alike when illness strikes), you have to cope with what to do about maintaining the momentum of your business.

Here's where you really have to put your 1 percent into action. In other words, ask yourself:

* What can you control here?
* What actions are your responsibility?
* What are your limits?

This last question is the most important one. For me when I'm sick, I go into deep denial about my limits. Heck, someone with a realistic sense of limits might not become self-employed in the first place. If I had thought about the intense learning curve involved in self-employment when I began, I might not have pursured it. I simply thought, "I like to learn. And I can do it. Let's go!"

So one of the new mantras I have for myself right now, as I convalesce, is "I accept that I have limits."

So I finished the work I could get done, was honest with my clients about the work I hadn't finished, told them how long I'd be out of comission and asked for direction. I've always found that clients want to collaborate. So I swallow my pride, and I invite them in. In some cases, my rigid determination to meet a certain deadline softened when the client told me the deadline wasn't so firm after all. In other cases, I was invited to complete the work when I was well.

And, most important, the world did not collapse on me. I continue to have relationships with my clients. And those emails from clients that I didn't respond to immediately because I was too tired and ill and fuzzy-headed to do so? I got to them. And the clients weren't enraged at the delay.

Now I'm going to sleep. You'll probably see me again next week, after I'm better.

Serenity Insurance: Being a Good Steward

Self-employment is a tightrope between abundance and scarcity, and sometimes it can feel like that image in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion of the girl walking the tightrope over a pit of alligators. It's easy to feel that you're just barely keeping your head above water. Sometimes it's true.

As you work on growing your business, consider a bit of serenity insurance: Think about the things you value most in your business. That's your health, your equipment, your means of communication, etc.

Now imagine if any one of those became unavailable. Feel that burning in your chest and boulder in your stomach? That's the feeling of coming lack of serenity.

If you don't plan for those unexpected but predictible changes--the computer will break, you will get sick--you're actually planning to lose your serenity.

Now imagine how good it will feel to know with certainty that you could support the things that support you.

I say this because there are things that I love that I don't necessarily take good care of. In my younger years, I loved and relied upon my car but didn't do anything to keep it running short of regular oil changes. When I started my business, I needed my computer but had no means to care for it. When it broke, I was in a panic, until I could buy a new one.

What I'm talking about is becoming a good steward of those things you love--including yourself. So serenity insurance can mean the obvious--health insurance (which is a post for another day) and homeowners or renters insurance--but it can also mean having a fund for other unpredictable but inevitable changes.

One of my intentions for this year is to set aside a tiny bit of money each month for a repair fund. After all, if my actions are all I possess then I want to support my values by taking an action that's in alignment with them.

When I was finally able to buy another computer, the gratitude that I felt was immense. I want to remember and honor that feeling by caring for it the way I'd care for anything I valued. And I include this intention in my business plan.

Of course, the cold, hard business side of this practice is discovering just how much it really costs to run a business. If you're a sole proprietor, it's tempting to think you only need to make enough to pay your bills every month. But think larger, because the truth is that the goal of business planning to keep you self-employed in the long run, not just this month. Being a good steward allows you to do that.

What are your list of unpredictable but inevitable expenses you need to plan for?

Answer: The Letting Go Tool Kit

Recently someone asked a follow up question to my post on The 1 Percent Rule. Namely:

Aside from focusing on the 1%, how do you "hand over all that stuff to the
deity of my choice"?

First, I don't want to discount focusing on that 1 percent. Just like curbing cravings, don't underestimate the power of distraction. Just focusing your attention away from the maddening drone of Things You Can't Control can do wonders.

But once you've done that, I'll add that letting go of the uncontrollable 99 percent of my work and life isn't easy. It's one of the hardest things I do every day--harder even than marketing.

It takes vigilance and awareness, as well as clarity about what's my 1 percent and what's the rest. To wit, the things that help me most:

Meditation

It's often said and I experience regularly: Don't like what you're feeling? Don't worry. It'll pass. That aphorism becomes concrete in meditation or other mindful traditions, like prayer.

Anytime I notice my mind drifting in meditation, I note it and bring myself back, gently, to my breath or to the image on which I'm meditating.

That practice is priceless when I'm simply walking around my office and feeling that tight anxiety of things I can't control. Just like in meditation, I notice when my mind is back to asking Why hasn't that prospective client called/emailed?, for example. Then I notice it, practice detachment and remind myself, "None of my business. Let it go."

I've heard it said that "Why?" is not a spiritual question--but it's still a good one to ask if you're self-employed. If my question is, "Why hasn't that check arrived? It was supposed to be here last week," you better believe that my job is to call the client and inquire. But if the question is "Why isn't she calling me?" I have two choices: I can either call her myself, or I can let it go. I try to do both. I call, and then, no matter the outcome, I accept that I can't make things happen the way I always want and I let it go.

Support

Remember all those people I have in my life to support my business? This is one of the things I use them for. If meditation and mindfulness doesn't work, I call them so I can have someone outside my brain tell me to let it go. Sometimes just by talking to them, and by getting the reassurance that I'm doing everything I can (or by getting a new action step to take), I feel better. I'm back to my 1 percent.

Prayer

At some point, I have to say, those tenacious little worries just aren't going away on their own. That's when I call in the big guns. If I'm suffering something having to do with work--or my personal life--I try to interrupt my anxiety and my obsession by praying to whatever I believe in to have it removed. I will do this as many times as necessary throughout the day if it's really bothering me.

Yoga

It almost always helps if I can get myself out of my mind and into my body. When I'm worrying about something, or ruminating on that 99 percent, I'm almost always shrugging in my shoulders, holding my breath or breathing shallowly or contracting my chest wall. It helps me to go into a pose like legs-up-the-wall pose, fish pose supported by a bolster or blanket under my back, bridge pose or reclining bound angle pose.

Your mileage may vary. For you, it could just be a good run on a treadmill or some quality time with your elliptical machine. Clear your head. And then come back and see if it's any easier to focus on your 1 percent.