Serenity Tip: See your work clearly

It's so odd the veil between how I see the world and how the world actually is--especially in my freelance work.

Last year, I wrote a complicated story on the foreclosure crisis, focusing on people who were in a financial bind because of the healthcare costs associated with multiple sclerosis. Of course I worked hard on the story. I always try to keep in mind how my work can be of service to my clients and my readers, so I went beyond the sources the client gave me (it was a custom publication, where they often supply the people they want quoted) and sought out the best stories to illustrate the issue. I dug into the edits to illustrate the suggestions of experts with the lived experiences of people kind enough to share their struggles while they were in the middle of them.

But then, after the piece was done and I thought it was well received, I got an email from my editor, asking me why I hadn't responded to calls from another editor. Apparently, they'd been trying to reach me for weeks. I was mortified. I called back right away, gave them the information, but couldn't shake the feeling that I now appeared to them to be a flake.

I couldn't let go of the lapse--a lapse I didn't even realize had happened because I hadn't received any calls or emails. In fact, I still felt mortified yesterday, when I emailed the folks at the association for which the story had been written. At the suggestion of another freelancer, I contacted the association directly, seeking to reacquaint myself with them and, hopefully, get more work. As far as I could tell, that one lapse was the only dark spot in my record with them. I hoped they wouldn't remember it.

Well, I got an email back right away and the respose startled and elated me. It started with:

Of course we remember you.
You don't have to sell your talents to us!

That alone would have been enough to make my day. But then it continued to this startling revelation:

I’m not sure the message ever got to you that “Foreclosure and the Art of Saving Your Home” won a 2009 Apex Award of Excellence for Financial & Investment Writing.

For a second, I sat in stunned silence, staring at the computer screen. Then I grinned broadly and did a little jubilant dance in my office chair. This was the story: The story I thought of as a smudge on my otherwise stellar record with them. Not only did they not see me as a flake, but they were thrilled enough with my work to submit it for an award. And it won!

I tell this story not just to share my joy, but because my coaching clients are always trying to hedge their bets. They're always trying to be one step ahead of the mythical editors they imagine checking out their Web sites. They don't want an editor to see them as too much of this or not enough of that. They're convinced, in short, that their experience and their writing doesn't measure up.

But what my experience has taught me--and what this particular experience makes clear--is that as freelancers, we can't see our work clearly. If you're like me, you blow up the negative and shrink the positive. You see yourself through the skewed lens of your own self-doubt and insecurity. It's only natural. We're human. And we work alone, where we don't get to hear the plaudits of our editors unless they make the explicit effort to call us or email us with them.

I encourage you to do what you can to adjust your gaze--to see yourself as clearly as possible.

Chances are, if people are always telling you you're a good writer, you probably are.
If people tell you they like your work, they probably do.

They aren't being polite. They aren't sparing your feelings. They're trying to get you to see yourself clearly, too. Sometimes the obvious reason for their statement is the real one. Sometimes it really is that simple.

Where do you need to adjust your vision? Where is the fog of self-doubt still clouding your impression of your own work and worth?

Photo by terren in Virginia.

More on motivation

So yesterday we started a discussion on how to change a habit. Today, let's continue it by looking at someone else's take: Specifically, the brilliant blog Unclutterer's post on using brainwashing techniques to break a bad habit.

I know, creepy and crazy. But hear them out.

The post is based on the book How to Work the Competition Into the Ground, which studied how brainwashing techniques can be applied to workplace motivation. Some of the techniques Unclutterer points out are creepy, like subliminal thought (I don't know about you, but I'm unlikely to motivate to record short messages and put them between songs on iTunes--but that's just me). Others seem less cult-like and more about awareness and mindfulness to me. They don't have to be creepy.

And of course, the main difference between a cult and you is the purpose of these tools: You're not in a cult (as far as I know); you just want to be able to tear yourself away from email, clean off your desk, get better at marketing, etc. And of course, none of these tools, by themselves, are going to take all your money and separate you from your family. But losing your serenity and becoming a workaholic might...

Here are my favorites:

* "Repetitious self talk:" Hey, we know that one! That's a mantra!

* Spend time at events that get you motivated to do the thing you don't want to do: If your problem is office clutter, as they suggest, then "[a]ttending a conference on uncluttering, going to hear a motivational speaker, watching a show like Clean Sweep or even reading Unclutterer can help you to think about the subject in a positive way and believe that you are capable of being an uncluttered person."

I'll add that you can also create the experience you want to have. This is actually a reason I started this blog. I wanted to spend time every day thinking about how I can apply my mindfulness and yogic techniques to my life as a freelancer.

* Get help: Having a guide in the particular area where you're trying to create a new practice--organizing your desk or emails, starting a yoga practice, sending more marketing ideas to potential clients--helps you get there. That shouldn't be any shock. The trick is finding the right guru for the job. As Unclutterer rightly points out, that can be a professional organizer. It can be a job coach. It can be carefully selected support people.

When is Enough Enough?

I've written about dealing with office clutter and email clutter before in this space. Today, let's talk about clutter as a symbol of all those intractable bad habits.

Here's the short version: You may hate your messy desk. You may hate that you get drawn away from work every time your email pings. But until the pain of continuing to do your bad habit surpasses the pain inherent in making a change--any change--you won't do it. Instead, you'll gnash your teeth, you'll complain a lot (in an effort to motivate yourself) and you'll keep right on doing it.

I've been in this situation plenty of times. Yoga is a great example, actually. I'm really interested in doing a daily yoga practice. But the discipline it takes to develop a daily practice is a muscle--one that hurt when I flexed it. I was unprepared for the pain: the nagging I did to myself for hours before my bedtime yoga practice, the berating I did when I found myself glued to my seat watching some horrible reality show or other, and the stiffness of my actual body. I knew I'd feel better if I did it. But I didn't want to. I'm naturally sedentary. It takes a lot to get me off the couch or out of bed.

I did it for a while and then when I got the killer flu in January, my practice all but ceased. Then last night I had a massage. I gave it to myself as a treat after a particularly abundant month last night and as a reward for the very busy week I have in front of me this week. But it had an odd effect: I tossed and turned all night and my back muscles were inflamed. After my morning meditation, I found myself on my mat, stretching those overworked muscles. Doing yoga.

For me, the "pain" was literal. But it doesn't have to be for you. What's important is that you finally find the motivation to let go of the habit that's no longer serving you. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean you're ready to let go of it.

So for today, ask yourself:

* What's the habit that's robbing me of serenity?
* How long have I had it?
* What is it doing to me?
* What is it doing for me?
* How much do I really want to change?

It's a dynamic. It's a dance, letting go of a bad habit. It's not going to happen overnight. But with awareness, you'll start to see how much it's costing you. And then slowly and gently, you'll be ready to let go of it once. Then twice, and then it becomes its own new habit. But you can't will yourself through it. You have to practice awareness before anything will change.

Serenity Tip: Serenity during personal crises

This is always a hard one: A loved one is sick, is in the hospital, and your mind is definitely not on the work in front of you.

How do you stay centered then? Impossible, right?

Well, it's not easy, I'll say that. A few years ago when my father was in the hospital, I didn't deal with it very well. I threw myself into work and barely acknowledged the pain I and the rest of my family was feeling. I was incredibly prolific, and I think I expected that accomplishment to blot out my fear, sadness and worry--to give me the serenity that I didn't have already.

Of course it didn't. All it did was make me feel guilty for not being there with my family.

I do think it's possible, however, to find a middle ground, but we have to look hard for it. This is not a culture that encourages moderation, and so I looked at it as extremes: Either I spend all my time with my family and fall into a deep depression (that was my fear, but yours may vary) or I completely ignore all my feelings and become super concentrated on work through the use of various numbing agents. My favorite at the time were coffee, Diet Coke, massive quantities of chocolate bars and giant slices of pizza the size of my head.

Today, I deal with personal crises a little different. Here's what I try to remember:

Welcome to my bad day

There's no getting around it (except through the use of the aforementioned drugs of choice). You're gonna have a bad day. Maybe lots of them. Maybe you'll start your day crying and end it the same way. Maybe you'll be embarrassed and ashamed and worried that work is suffering because you don't feel okay.

But worrying about it is not the same thing as that being true. What is true is that you don't have the same energy you did before for work. That's okay. Being aware of your limits is far better for you and your clients than denying them.

Lean in to your support system

I don't just mean family. At a time like this, you need people to lean on who have no emotional investment in the current crisis. You need friends and loved ones who can give you five minutes of love and support. And for your business's sake, you need to call in your work support system. Ask them:

* How do they cope with crises on work time?
* How much should you tell your clients and how did you phrase it?
* How long did it take before you got back to full speed?
* Did you feel ashamed, guilty and scared that you're business would never recover if you weren't at full capacity at all times?

That last question is perhaps the hardest to ask, but as therapist William Horstman told me for a story on how people shut down when they're under stress, most of our first instincts are to isolate. But the best thing we can do is invite other trusted business people into our world and ask for help.

(Caveat: the key word here is "trusted." This is not a conversation for just any coworker. It needs to be someone who's not competitive, not a gossip and who knows you pretty well.)

Meditate

A good friend often tells me when I'm under stress, "You should meditate every day, except when you're stressed. Then, you should meditate twice a day."

Don't meditate regularly? Well, then starting now will be an extra treat. You won't believe how much better you'll feel.

And you don't have to do it alone. There are plenty of CDs on meditation and if you bring your laptop to the hospital, you can even do a short guided meditation distributed by some Web sites.

If you can just sit for five minutes and breath, you'll recover faster from your family crisis and be more centered.

ANd finally, remember to have faith. If you work hard at your business, you've created a network of clients who know your value. Think and write about how to approach them and then keep them updated as you ease back into work. They're people, after all. They want to help and are looking forward to you being back at full speed because I'm sure you can help them.

Serenity Tip: Diversifying

To follow up on yesterday's post, let's talk a little more about how to set up your work to make cash flow more serene.

We've already covered how to create a cushion for your self with spending.

Now, let's talk about how to create a mix of clients to address cashflow and sustainability of your self-employed career. If you've been doing this for any length of time, you may already know this stuff. I hope this can be helpful, though.

When I started freelancing, I set out a plan:

* Find clients that pay quickly

In Six Figure Freelancing, Kelly James-Enger suggests finding clients who will pay you quickly to shore up any holes in your cash flow. Often, these are low paying clients. But if you can form a regular relationship with them, you'll have money to pull you through. And you'll have a guaranteed base of income, at least for a while.

* Find clients that pay well:

Ideally, these would be the same as the first, but many clients, I find, pay slowly if they pay well. But if you've got a balance, it won't matter much. The important thing here is to find several of these.

When you're starting out, it's easy to feel relieved when you've found a client that pays you a livable wage, but sadly one is not enough. If something happens to that one client, you're left scrambling and feeling, perhaps, like you're not being a good steward to yourself and your business.

One person I talked to recommended having no one client represent more than a quarter of your income in any month. The reasoning? A quarter of your income is easier to make up or cope with in a month than 3/4th of your income.

* Try trial and error:

Having said all this, I've found that experiencing the ebbs and flow of business naturally guide me to what I need to do to shore up cash flow. So be proud of that Big Fish client, and if for some reason it doesn't pay as expected, feel what it's like to scramble to replace most of your feelings. Create awareness by doing a written check in, meditate or at least take a day to experience what it feels like in your body, and then take the next step: seek out other abundant clients, follow up on pay, figure out what happened and add it to your list of situations that can--and will--happen in your professional life. And then accept it.

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.

Where's your willingness?

I've been thinking a lot about willingness lately. What I mean is this: There are things we value and things we do. Willingness is where those two overlap.

So, I can say I'm willing to have a serene business, but if I then work 20 hours a day, then what I'm showing with my actions is that I'm really willing to put work before serenity.

Conversely, if I say work is the most important thing in my life today, and I spend the day goofing off at the computer, then my willingness to live that isn't all there.

So look at your to-do list today and ask yourself if it reflects your values:

* Does it include enough time for work?
* Does it include time for family or loved ones?
* Is it a schedule that supports serenity instead of perfectionism?
* Are you allocating time to serenity practices, whatever those may be for you (facials, sports, meditation, anything that calms you is serenity)?

It's a hard list to find balance with and that's exactly where the willingness to have a serene day comes in. Serenity, unfortunately, means choices. So in order not to beat yourself up, you're going to have to privilege one thing over the other. That's okay. What is your most important value for today?

Choose it, and then stick with it.

If, for instance, you value calm but you know you have a confrontation coming with work today, you'll need to set something up with your support system to help you get back to calm before and after the event. And you'll have to set aside time for it.

This is all just a process of getting to know yourself. So for today, don't judge. Just observe. And then ask Whatever You Believe In (even if it's the doorknob) to give you the willingness to live out your value today.

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: Facing Procrastination

We've all done it: We've cruised around our favorite message boards and silly Web sites, organized our desk, done laundry--anything but the task in front of us.

And then, if you're the least bit conscientious, you spend another few hours beating yourself for your lost productivity. Obviously, this can kill your serenity, and become an endless cycle.

So my gentle nudge of the day is to embrace your procrastination.

There are a few reasons to do this: First, if you're in a creative field, chances are your procrastination is part of your process. I have to constantly remind myself can also be another way of saying that I'm working out fine points or organizing thoughts subconsciously. It'll pass.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, if you don't accept it, your resistance will be worse than the procrastination itself.

So how do you get comfortable with it--and then overcome it? Start by getting to know why you're resisting in the first place. What's the fear? What's the anxiety?

Face it. And then assess what's realistic. It may also help to track your time to see what's taking you the longest and how you're really spending your time. You may find that what feels like procrastination to you is actually a reasonable amount of time to spend taking care of other, important items, like your spirituality or admin work.

If you find you still can't get yourself to work, procrastination might be a serious problem for you. In that case, consider these tips care of Procrastinators Anonymous:

Break It Down: Break down projects into specific action steps; include preparation tasks in the breakdown.

Visualization: Plan what to do, then imagine yourself doing it. The more specific and vivid your visualization, the better. See yourself doing the task, and doing it well.

Focus on Long-Term Consequences: Procrastinators have a tendency to focus on short-term pleasure, and shut out awareness of long-term consequences. Remind yourself how panicked and awful you'll feel if the task isn't done, then imagine how good it will feel when the task is finished.

Avoid Time Bingeing: One reason procrastinators dread starting is that once they start they don't let themselves stop. Plan to work on a task for a defined period of time, then set a timer. When the timer goes off, you're done.

Use Small Blocks of Time: Procrastinators often have trouble doing tasks in incremental steps, and wait for big blocks of time that never come. When you have small blocks of time, use them to work on the task at hand.

Avoid Perfectionism: Procrastinators have a tendency to spend more time on a task than it warrants, so tasks that should be quick to do take an agonizingly long time. Notice this tendency and stop yourself. Some things require completion, not perfection.

Develop Routines: To help structure your day and make a habit of things you always need to do, develop routines for what you do when you wake up, regular tasks of your workday, and what you need to do before going to bed.

Bookend Tasks and Time: Use the Bookending board on the P.A. Web site to check in throughout the day, or at the beginning or end of specific tasks you are dreading.

Cultivating Strengths, Nurturing Skills

If you really want to freak yourself out about your ability to create a self-employed life for yourself, read a lot of advice from experts about the skills required. For instance, according to Texas A & M University's Dr. Pam Brown, it takes:

- Entrepreneurship: "You've got to have the drive, that risk-taking attitude."

- Managerial skills: "What do you know about planning, marketing, financing?"

- Technical skills: "This is usually what people are passionate about," such as that love of cooking.

- Support: "How does it fit in with how your family operates, your family management style? Will your family accept" the new business?

You also have to consider, she says:

- You will not have benefits, such as medical insurance, paid vacations or retirement plans, unless you establish them yourself. "Nobody else is going to do it but you," Brown said.

- Networking with others is vital. "Establish a network you want to be in," she said, with professionals and others whose expertise you value.

- Motivation is also of vital importance. "You need internal motivation to keep you going or it's not going to work," Brown said.

- And, she added, "You have to plan ahead."

Skills, drive, motivation – all are required for a successful home-based business.

Now, it's not that any of this is false. It's all true. All that stuff--invoicing, insurance, passion, long hours, etc.--is absolutely a part of self-employment.

But let's face it. Almost none of us were born with this. The good news is you don't have to be. What you do have to do is tackle each of these skills one at a time.

It starts, like so much else about the self-employment learning curve, with awareness. Ask yourself first and foremost: What are your skills?

This question is deceptively simple. See, you may know the nuts and bolts of the creative side of the business, but I bet a bunch of those skills can be applied to the admin, marketing and entrepreneurship side of the job as well.

For instance, if you're a writer, you probably have some kind of organizational system. It may be strewn across your desk at this very moment, but it's there. How can you apply it to keeping track of when checks are due?

Or, if you're a creative person, how can you let your imagination rip when it comes to marketing? It can be a creative exercise; it doesn't have to be an exercise in selling people things they don't want.

So for today, make a list of all those things you do well in your job and look at how they apply to the less fun parts of self-employment. What comes up for you?

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.

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.

Serenity Tip: Positive Performance

If you're the least bit Type A, you probably are a whiz with to-do lists. You probably already know the joy of getting your tasks down in a list instead of floating around in your head. And if you're Type A you may suffer from something I wrote about recently: That is, the impostor syndrome.

That is, you may not be able to see the progress you're making or the good work you've done today.

Use your listing skills to combat that monkey mind.

Make an accomplishment list

When my inner critic is having a ball tying me up in knots I make a very hokey but useful list. At the end of the day--or any time I forget what I've accomplished--I make a list titled "What I did well today."

Try it, answering these questions:

* What difficult task did you finally start, finish or make progress on?
* What stress were you able to let go of today?
* How did you take care of yourself? Did you take breaks, eat healthily or exercise?
* When were you brave?
* When were you helpful?
* When did you share your joy with someone else?
* When did you act professionally?
* What steps--tiny or large--did you take toward marketing yourself today?

Serenity Tip: Create a New Mantra

On the heels of the most recent discussion on this blog about how to identify serenity when you've got it, I'd like to add a mantra:

I am not my work.

I know, it chafes. As self-employed people, we pour so much of our hearts and souls and intellects and emotions into the job that at some point it becomes tempting to merge with it. It isn't just a fulfilling, and sometimes erratic, part of our lives, it is our lives. It isn't just part of our identity. It becomes the whole thing.

If you're like me, there's even a bit of a swagger to it: Yeah, I run my own business. What do you do? Oh--sit behind a desk every day doing someone else's bidding? That must feel... safe.

Yikes. Just like there's a difference between pride in making self-employment in a field you love actually support you and arrogance, there's a difference between your job and you.

I had a hard time with this one at first: My job is basically my thoughts. I'm a sole proprietorship. In a very real sense, Iam my job, right?

Not really. Even the IRS recognizes a difference between you and work--you can't deduct everything, after all. And my job is my thoughts--it's creative. But I'm not just my thoughts, am I? This gets very philosophical very fast. But it's a good question to ask. What else am I? I'm the things I love, I'm how I treat the people I love, I'm how I treat the people I hate, I'm my feelings, I'm my spirituality. I just am.

But most important, when it comes to serenity, this is one of those techniques for practicing nongrasping. When I was a newspaper reporter, my job was my entire identity. I was a workaholic, as I've already said. So when I left, I went into crisis. I didn't have a life outside work. I didn't have anything that gave me a sense of wellbeing or self-esteem. It very quickly became clear how unmanageable my approach to my self-concept had become.

Nongrasping frees us from suffering. So when a client rejects a marketing effort, when the work is draining, when the checks aren't flowing, remembering that you're not your job can free you from feeling like this is something you have to fix. And remembering that you're not your job when everything is fabulous and everyone lovbes you and you're rolling in dough can free you from the delusion that it will always be this way. Neither is a reflection of you. It's just business. Both of those are part of the job. But they aren't a reflection of who you are as a person.

When you're off work, whenever you're obsessing about things you can't control and that are keeping you from enjoying family and friends, practice saying to yourself:

I am not my job.

What Serenity Is

Now that we know what serenity is not, let's talk about what it is.

At its heart, I think, serenity is about living in reality and accepting what comes to us--and then doing our part to care for ourselves, regardless of what's going on around us. Serenity comes from developing a strong center that can weather or quickly recover from big emotional blows or reversals of fortune.

I remember when this realization changed my thinking. I was on public transportation, heading to my last full-time job before starting my business. I hated that job--or rather, I loved what I was doing and many of my coworkers, but something about it wasn't right for me. I was in agony over it every day. So, on the way to work, I entertained myself with an issue of Yoga Journal. Here's what it said:

Ignorance, or avidya, is a root cause of suffering, according to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. But the ignorance Patanjali refers to is less a lack of knowledge than an almost willful ignoring of reality. Today we call it denial. For instance, we may intellectually know that all things change, yet we desperately deny this truth--a denial that leads to anxiety, fear and confusion.

What he's working up to is a discussion of the Buddha's Five Rembembrances. They go something like this:

I will grow old.

This body will know sickness.

There is no escape from death.

Everything and everyone change.

All I have are my actions.

The writer, Frank Jude Boccio, recommends repeating these remembrances--these reality checks--every day to interrupt the machinations of denial.

As I think about serenity in my business, I need to adapt these remembrances for the workplace. For instance, I will get sick and not be able to work some days. Pretending like I can work nonstop and never set aside money or time or compassion for myself for those days I'm struck with illness creates in me--what did he say?--"anxiety, fear and confusion."

Yeah, that.

Or, pretending that the kind I work I enjoy won't change or that I can keep the same clients forever does nothing but leave me waiting impotently for the other shoe to drop. It creates a kind of self-satisfied, hazy denial where I refuse to think about what I would do if my biggest client dropped me.

That's why the last remembrance is key (from Thich Nhat Hanh's The Plum Village Chanting Book):

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

So again, the antidote to stress, anxiety and fear is to focus on your behavior today. How much marketing are you doing? How much are you relying on one client to make ends meet? What would make you feel more secure, like you could weather any storms? Think about it and then take one small step today to achieve it.

What Serenity Isn't

Serenity, like "me time," is a much overused word. In the wrong hands (say, advertisers), it's a buzz word, devoid of meaning and used like a sledge hammer to bully you into buying the latest aromatherapy kits. So I think it's important, before we go too far down this path, to remember what serenity isn't:

* It isn't blissful happiness.
Serenity doesn't promise you a rose garden, it doesn't bring you flowers, or any other torch song cliche. Feeling good and feeling serene aren't the same thing, but it's nice when they intersect.

* It isn't getting everything you want.
Sure, you may feel great (see above) when you get everything you want. But remember when you were a child? If you're Christian and if you grew up in a middle-class family, you may recall the high you got from getting everything you wanted on Christmas morning. But after that high, what happened? First, you took a nap because your adrenaline crashed and zapped your energy. And then you wanted more. You'll always want more. Getting what you want doesn't create calm or centeredness. And yes, I'll add that cautionary cliche: Sometimes getting everything you want can rob you of serenity.

* It isn't having a day where everything goes smoothly.
If you're juggling kids and work, you can be forgiven for thinking that serenity is a day when the kid doesn't throw up on his new outfit on the way to see out-of-town relatives, dinner doesn't burn and at midnight you're not attached to your computer, answering a million emails. Still, that's not really serenity. That's reduced stress--which is great all on its own.

I once read something that went something like this:

Our lives became unmanageable when the car wouldn't start, our spouse wouldn't do what we said or the computer broke.

Get the sarcasm? The point is that that stuff happens. That's life. Serenity doesn't give you a get-out-of-life-free card. In fact, it's that misconception that makes serenity seem so unattainable. If that's your definition, then serenity can only be achieved by cloistered nuns or yogis on a hilltop.

And that brings me to the most important thing that serenity isn't:

* Serenity isn't an action item.
Serenity was never meant to be another item on your to-do list. It's a means to accomplishing the things on your list because it clears away the clutter of fear and anxiety.

You can do that by creating a serenity practice, by practicing breathing techniques and by getting clarity about your personal and business needs through your business plan. And you can learn to let go, among other things. In tomorrow's post, I'll write about another way to find serenity.

Recovering from Rejection

If you're running any kind of successful business at all, you're getting rejections. Because you're trying.

Still, sometimes nothing is harder to stomach than that most recent 'not at this time,' or simple silence. The obvious question--Why didn't they like it?--can quickly spin into How will I be able to pay my bills next month? (Because despite my general financial abundance, in my mind I'm always one check away from a spot in a homeless shelter.) Or it can easily become, This client has clearly seen into my soul and knows it's tarnished. (Because I think all creative people harbor some fear that we are can't hack it.)

Recently I got a one-two punch of rejections: one of a query and one with constructive criticism of a recent assignment. Both came from clients I love and with whom I have a steady, friendly relationship. Still, those emails bruised.

After my night of self-pity in front of some god-awful reality show, I knew that letting myself stay in that place will debilitate me.

So how to cope?

Well, one way is to consider the yogic concept of aparigraha--that is, nongrasping. In a past issue of Yoga Journal, Sally Kempton retells Ram Das's great story about this concept:

[Das] was telling a famous anecdote about the way you catch a monkey in India. You drop a handful of nuts into a jar with a small opening, he explained. The monkey puts his hand into the jar, grabs the nuts, and then finds that he can't get his fist out through the opening. If the monkey would just let go of the nuts, he could escape. But he won't.

Attachment leads to suffering, Ram Dass concluded. It's as simple as that: Detachment leads to freedom.

So the logical conclusion would be to separate the facts in those emails from those other bigger fears:

My financial serenity doesn't actually depend on that one assignment. That's what my business plan is for.

And one email from a client with constructive criticism of one story doesn't mean I can't hack this job. Those bigger fears, about financial security, talent and self-confidence are always there because they belong to me. They'll grasp onto any transient event to make themselves known to me--and to make me suffer.

My job is to pry their grubby little fingers off my worry-sick heart.

Simple clarity gets me half-way there, if I can let it in. The pry bar I use to separate fact from fear is meditation, which calms the mind, and deep breathing exercises that soothe the nervous system. My favorite goes this way:

Sit upright in a chair, bed, etc., and breath in deeply through your nose. Fill your chest with air.
At the top of the inhale, pause for three seconds.
Exhale deeply through your mouth. Try to make your exhale longer than your inhale.
At the bottom of the exhale, pause for three seconds.
Repeat.

Then I write about those fears. I talk to other business owners about it and remind myself that I'm not the only one who feels that way.

The next thing, always, is to take action.

I can't use this rejection, real or imagined, to opt out of my business plan, which calls for three queries a week. So I send my third for the week and let the rest go.

Now that we've detached from the crazy associations between innocuous rejections and the big monkeys of fear and self-doubt, I think it's time to tackle that first question again:

Why didn't they like it?

For my own sanity and serenity, I need to make an honest appraisal of why my marketing effort didn't fly. Has the publication done something similar recently? Is it not timely enough? Does it need to be tweaked or finessed somehow?

Mostly, the reasons queries sell are mysterious to me. I often think that the sun has to be aligned with the stars just so, and the light has to be hitting the editor at just the right time, after just the right amount of coffee, for a query to sell. So, who knows? Really, unless the editor tells you, it's best not to assume it's you.

The key here is to ask yourself a different question: What can I learn from this situation?

And then move on.

And enjoy your holiday.

Righting the Resistance

Yesterday, I wrote about how having a business plan can create serenity. But anyone who's ever contemplated actually putting a business plan into action knows it's not that simple.

The first lesson in getting to serenity is that it doesn't feel serene at first. Far from it.

After creating my business plan--which includes amazingly abundant things like an income goal beyond what I've ever earned, treating myself to ergonomic office equipment and moving in with my beloved--my body pushed back. I felt fluish. My throat swelled. I was sleepy. I couldn't concentrate. Worst of all, my work suffered.

I fretted: Can I really do it? Can I pull this off long-term? What if I fail? What if I'm humiliated? What if this proves that I've been a fraud all along?

Now, if I simply reacted to this distress, I might think I was pushing too hard, too fast. I might think, "Let's not set such an ambitious income goal. Let's leave it up to the freelancing gods." I might take care of myself by not taking care of my true needs.

Luckily, I'm working on a story about how the impostor syndrome can cripple one's career. Thank you, freelance gods.

So I didn't take it too seriously, but I did take my anxiety seriously enough to ask:

* Where do these fears originate?
* Is there anything I can learn from them?
* Are they realistic?
* What will happen if I "fail" to reach my income and other goals?

The answer? My fears aren't realistic. Sure, I could fail, but I'd be no worse off than I am right now--and I'm doing pretty well right now. And most important, I relaxed into this knowledge:

Guess what? Whatever it is that you've been longing for? This is how you get it.

That pain? That feeling of coming out of your skin, that dramatic, "I couldn't possibly do that!" feeling?

Well, have your Norma Desmond moment, and then remember: This is what it feels like to stretch the serenity muscle, making it stronger and more flexible for the next time you want to grow your business.

How do you deal with resistance to growing your business?