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?

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: Working Toward Sustainability

Sustainability is one of those words that's starting to get a bad rap. Read it now, and there's almost a Pavlovian response: eco, green, kitchen grease powering your car... (not that there's anything wrong with that).

But I want to talk about it from a different perspective. For something to be sustainable, it has to be sane, somewhat moderate and have the ability to be self-perpetuating. In a way, this is another definition of serenity.

Take a look at your work life: In this culture, most of us are encouraged to take part in behaviors that are not really self-perpetuating. I talked to a freelance friend the other day who goes through these cycles: Incredibly productive, working 10 hour days and taking a few hours off on the weekends, getting a lot done, making deadlines, making money. And then she crashes, and can't work for weeks.

Everything is big: Big work, big rest. As a self-employed person you may be familiar with this cycle. And there's something natural about boom and bust cycles, even when it comes to productivity and energy.

But. There is another way.

This gets to that other dreaded buzz word: "balance." Balance can be a bludgeon people use to harangue those of us who put work first. But instead, think about it this way:

* How do you really want to spend your time?
* How are you spending your time?
* What parts of your life give you the most joy?

It could be that the answers to those three things are all completely different. Or it could be that they're pretty well in line.

Then ask yourself:

* How can I sustain those things I love doing?

For work, that could be nurturing your relationship with clients you particularly enjoy working with or who assign you projects that are really fulfilling.

And then there's the other part of sustainability, which is financial:

* How much money do you need to support those values and sustain them?

That means money for trips to see far-flung loved ones, or money to support the volunteer work you love. Or it means attracting high-enough-paying clients to knock off work at 5 o'clock every night. Or taking a month off every six months to recharge your batteries.

What does sustainability look like for you?

The scary part of looking at this stuff is that it forces your to get clarity about what all your expenses actually are. It can be a shock: How much does it really cost, if you're Christian, to buy all those Christmas presents, to attend your loved ones' weddings, to go on that romantic vacation with your partner? And then how much time does it take to sustain friendships and love relationships?

Put those together and you have a new way of figuring your minimum hourly income: Divide the amount of money you need to support the life you want ongoing, by the time you need to set aside for work after you account for the time you need for things outside work.

Is that number realistic?

Before you run off and find a full time job, it's possible that it's more possible than you think. You don't need to achieve it right now, but it's a goal, just like your monthly income targets and your target clients. Let it be there, and see where you can make just a little more of it work in your real life.

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: Setting Priorities

The other day, a dear friend called feeling overwhelmed by all the things in front of her to do in the next three hours. In her jumbled mind, so filled was it with self-blame for not having gotten more done sooner that her tasks spread out in front of her infinitely. She couldn't fathom getting everything done, let alone getting that magic amount done: "Enough."

Time management is a complicated skill, and there are a million people out there ready to tell you how to do it. Like everything else, though, finding the tool that works for you depends on cherry-picking, to some extent.

Here are a few of the things that work for me: Perhaps they will work for you.

Write it down

In Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, author David Allen really encourages people to write stuff down. Until you do, you'll feel like my friend: stressed because you're trying to manage all those tasks in your head, instead of on paper, where they metamorphize into discrete and manageable tasks.

So with my friend, I asked her for each thing she needed to do, when they were due, and how long she estimated they would take.

I listed these out.

Prioritize

I love my Franklin Covey planner, mostly for the little to-do list it includes on each day. But the real brilliance of the Franklin Covey plan is its encouragement to divide things into three categories:

A-- essential; must get done today or the world ends.
B-- important but not essential.
C-- optional.

With my friend, I think asked her to rank each item--it turned out there were only five items, and only two turned out to be essential.

Then, Franklin Covey recommends numbering each item, according to when you'll do them, not how important they are. My to-do list usually starts this way:

A1: Written check in
A2: Meditate
A3: Call one of my support people
B4: Marketing. Sure, you could consider this "essential," as any business will die without it. But unless I'm plumb out of work, I consider this to be an important thing to do no matter what.

And then I get to the work that's attached to an actual paycheck.

Your "essential" items are probably different from yours. This is just what works for me.

After my friend and I talked for a bit about her work, she was able to differentiate between the things she felt like she had to do because otherwise she'd be embarassed and the things that were actually essential for meeting deadlines.

And that frantic anxiety abated.

Give it a try. Or even better: tell me what prioritization system works best for you.

Serenity Tip: The Mid-Day Check-In

If you're anything like me, you power through your days, clicking through the items on your to-do list until you retire at night with a jumbled brain. Meditation helps with this, of course. But a friend constantly reminds me that I have another option. Now I'll pass that option on to you:

The Mid-Day Check-In

When you hit Frazzled on your daily stress meter, stop what you're doing. Move away from the computer or the office. Sit somewhere quiet (if possible) and get out a pad and a pen. Then make a list of the following:

* What you resent and why (this can be people--including you--and they don't have to be rational).
* What you're afraid of (those nagging fears that get louder in your head the more you ignore them? Write them down.)
* What things are out of your control (I call this my acceptance list--as in, "I accept that I'm powerless over the future and worrying about it won't change it.")
* What you're grateful for at this moment (it might be having a minute to think, or maybe you just landed a big fish client or maybe you're grateful for the flexibility of your self-employed life.)

Whatever those things are, write them down. Then take a minute to breath deep and imagine each one dropping into the ether.

After taking that break, you may find you're more centered and more ready to tackle the next thing on your list with compassion and poise.

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?

Finding Serenity with Income Goals

If you have a business plan, then chances are you have income goals. And if you're like a lot of self-employed people, your income goals are probably a whole lot higher than your income history. Either you're new to self-employment and growing your business or you're experiencing a slowing of income increases that a 2004 study documented in the journal Science.

When considering my income goals for this year, some self employed friends gave me the following advice:

"If you're the type of person who can handle it when you don't meet your goals, then shoot for the moon. If, on the other hand, you feel like a failure and spend a lot of energy beating yourself up when you don't reach a goal, then you should set more modest goals.

Now, I've always fallen into the latter category. I'm very goal oriented, very Type A--but the unintended consequence of being so oriented towards outcomes is that inevitably you don't reach your goals at some point and not reaching those goals can send you into a spin of self-loathing and self-pity. Ans serenity? Right out the window.

So you're coming to the end of the first month of the year and it's a good time to reflect back on those goals you created at the end of 2007. How are you doing?

To assess, consider the following questions:

Are you close to your goal for the month?
What's the margin of difference between your goal and the reality for the month?
How does that goal feel in your body as you are putting it into action? What I mean is, when you think about that goal and how your income is actually flowing in comparison, do you feel panicky?
Do you feel proud?
Do you feel hopeless?
Do you feel like a failure?
Do you feel secure?

You get the point. A business plan isn't some dusty thing you put on a shelf. It's a living thing that--and here's the important part--you can adjust to match your needs. The important thing about a business plan is that it motivates and supports your business and your serenity as a self-employed person. If you're in the panicky category, you may be tempted to tone down those goals. That's allowed after all. But before you do that, consider this:

Wait a few months.

I know, it can feel excruciating. But you need to see where the gap between your earnings and your goals is the result of an unrealistic goal or if it's the result of some oversight in your marketing efforts.

So before you scale back, see where you can increase your income next month to balance your earning from this month. It's less important what you make this month than what you make on average over the next six months.

So don't be precipitous with your goal fiddling. But do be aware. Just do one small thing to increase your company's profile today. If after a few months, you're continuing to feel terrible, consider changing your goal.

Until then, consider it a practice of setting your intention with the universe.

If, at the end of those few months--let's say, at the end of the first quarter--you find you're not okay with falling short of your goals, then it's possible that you need to revise it--and then revise your expectations for spending, too.

And it's possible that you need to look at your mix of clients and marketing to see what's most effective for you.

The point is not the goal. The point is whether it motivates you in a positive way.

Serenity in business, I feel, comes from sustainability more than anything else.

So did I reach my goal for this month? Nope.

But I'm oddly fine with it. I don't know if it's the meditation, the support or the planning, but I can see my income stream projected for the next two months and it's outstripping this month several times over. Part of that, I'm finding, is seasonal. Last year, January was a tough month, too. The difference this year is that I'm better targeting my marketing and doing more work I love with better reward (both intellectually and financially) than I was last year.

Having a plan, more than anything, makes it so I find it easier to bounce back after a stressful or short month. Let's face it--cash flow will always be an issue for us self-employed people. That's out of our control.

What we can focus on, then, is how we plan for and react to our circumstances.

Serenity Tip: Track Your Time

As a self-employed person, you probably feel like you spend every spare minute of your time thinking about work if not actually doing work. There's that invoice to send, that marketing effort you are waiting for a response on, the work in progress and the work recently submitted. It's a lot to deal with and it can feel exhausting.

Recently I was telling some self-employed friends how much I felt I was working--all the time. And they suggested I try tracking my time. I hesitated.

After all, do I need to add something else to my to-do list?

Well, it turned out to be a valuable exercise and one that didn't take more than a few seconds of my time.

First, a word about how to do it: There are lots of programs to help you track your time, including MyHours.com, TaskTime, Tick for Mac and Clocking It, TimeTrax, among others, for PC.

But I'm old school. There's a reason I worked at newspapers for years and that I still plan my day with an old-fashioned paper planner. I like to be able to hold it in my hands. So I bought a tiny notebook at Walgreens and every day, I just write the time spent in this way:

1.5 hrs. spirituality
.5 food
3 non-income work
1.5 income work
.25 personal
.5 income
.75 non-income work

Those are just examples, of course. You'll notice a few things right up front:

I'm not specific about time breakdowns--like "9-9:45: marketing; 9:45-10:30 a.m.: Client X."

The reason for this is that I didn't want to make it so onerous that I didn't do it. Remember, I'm just starting. I may eventually get to that level of specificity and I see the value in it. But for right now, I just wanted to start with something manageable.

I divide work into "income" and "nonincome" work.

Recently a friend asked me if I felt I was devaluing my marketing, admin, IT and other projects by calling it "nonincome." The answer is that I don't. For me it's a matter of getting clarity about what's work that's got a formal assignment and contract (income) and what's work that supports the income-generating work, such as admin, IT and most importantly marketing (nonincome).

I wanted to see how much time I was spending on income and non-income work for two reasons:

1. I want to know my hourly rate.
Knowing my hourly rate requires me to know exactly how much time I spend earning income.

2. I wanted to see how much time I'm working overall.
One of my goals for this year is to increase marketing efforts to select clients and to increase my proportion of marketing-to-income work. My theory is that it will increase my income overall without substantially increasing my income work time. Why? Because it will create steady work over time instead of the boom and bust cycle that's so common for self-employed people.

You'll also notice that I put space for "spirituality," "food" and "personal." I also include categories like "health" (for gym and doctors' visits). I do this because I want to see how much time I'm spending away from work. This isn't to berate myself for not working but to see on paper where my boundaries are. I find that taking breaks for meals, taking time for the gym and for meditation and other spiritual work improves my concentration and work. But looking at it, I definitely see how my priorities show up in my work. It's more balanced than it once was.

Now my work is to figure out how to create more high-quality work time while keeping my serenity.

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?

What's Your 1 Percent?

The Buddha may remember that our actions are our only possessions, what should we do when we forget?

Here's another rule that works for me: The 1% Rule.

Basically, the 1% rule holds that only 1% of anything that happens in your life is within your control. Everything else you have to just accept. But that 1 percnet... That's a powerful single digit.

When I'm frustrated with the way things are going--either because they're getting better but aren't where I want them to be yet, or because I'm judging something in my life as inadequate, I ask myself:

Okay, what's my 1 percent here?

If I can't control 99 percent of what's happening in my life, I have to hand over all that stuff to the deity of my choice. But that 1 percent... It's a relief. It's so nice to remember that it's not actually my job to mind-meld someone into picking up the phone and calling me, or to force my brain into being ready to spill a story onto my computer screen.

Instead, I focus all that energy I was spending being frustrated on controlling that 1 percent. I do more marketing. I work on projects where I'm not blocked. I organize my desk. I shred the junk mail.

It's so much more fulfilling than fighting with that other 99 percent--because, I'll tell you, that other 99 percent? It always wins when I fight it.

So what's your 1 percent right now?

Now, go do it.

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.

De-stressing on the Job

Dr. Herbert Benson is a very smart man. So smart, in fact, that he's founded his own mind-body medicine center at Mass General Hospital in Boston.

There are some great resources here for mini relaxation techniques and exercises that can loosen up your body on the job. But what I was most interested in was his list of ways to avoid job stress.

Among them are some concrete tips that no doubt help:

* Eat breakfast every morning.
* Ocassionally mix up your breakfast routine by starting the day with a leisurely breakfast with a coworker.
* Organize your work priorities.
* Speak up about petty annoyances.
* Optimize your health with good nutrition, sleep and rest.
* Don't try to do 2 or 3 things at a time.

Others are more metaphysical, like:

* Look at unavoidable stress as an avenue for growth and change.

I love that one because it reminds me that stress is inevitable. In fact, stress can be good. The challenge there, and the work, is to figure out what's avoidable stress and what's not--and then letting go of resisting the unavoidable. It's a paradigm shift that requires regular attention.

There are many others, and you should check them out for yourself. See which ones you're good at and which you'd like to add to your serenity toolbox.

But then there is at least one of the easier-said-than-done variety.

* Don't try to be perfect. Don't feel like you have to do everything.

This, I think, is the crux of avoidable--and toxic--stress. At least for me. How do we do that, though? Perhaps some of the other tips will help:

* Develop a coworker support network: If you have friends in your industry with whom you can share your frustrations or, hey, if you can create a blog about it, you're less likely to be alone with that crazy voice in your head that tells you that you aren't doing enough and so you aren't enough.

* Don't be afraid to ask questions or ask for help: The more you try to do it alone, the more you're likely to believe you have to--and that whatever you do has to be perfect.

* Take deep breaths when you're feeling stressed.

How do you tackle the easier-said-than-done stress-busting axioms?

Serenity Tip: Estimate your taxes

I did something this weekend that I've never done before:

I asked my accountant to estimate how much, if any, taxes I should expect to pay in April.

I've been paying my quarterly taxes faithfully, but since my income went up this year, I'm unclear if I may need to pay more come April.

This estimate is especially important right now, in the waning days of FY 2007. There's office equipment I want to buy. I have fantasies of new software, hardware and some fun things, like that flat-screen cinema display I don't really need but would be awful sweet to look at every day. And then there's the health necessities: ergonomic desk and chair. In other words, I could spend all the money I have saved or taxes and still want more.

For me to do this office equipment spending sanely, I need to avoid using a credit card. I know--fiscal blasphemy! How ever will I survive?!--Well, I'll tell you: I haven't used a credit card for more than a year now and I haven't had any calamities that have required plastic. So as I consider stocking my office with all the newest and greatest, I know that serenity will come from doing so in a sane, manageable way that doesn't increase my debt burden next year.

That's where my accountant comes in:

I send him my estimated income for the year. (Which I have, happily, because I've been working hard this year on maintaining clarity about every penny that comes in.)

I sent him my estimated spending for the year. (Actually, except for the spending I have yet to do at the end of this month, it's more like actual because I use a little Walgreens notebook to record my spending daily, personal and professional.)

And now I wait to find out: Should I save more? Is there money for office equipment? And if so, how much is available?

This is very exciting for me. In the past, I would have spent blindly and hoped that money would appear to cover it. I'd be scrimping and saving next year for this year's taxes, and then worry about being able to pay my quarterlies. I'm hopping off that merry-go-round.

Not trying to guess not only keeps me current with our friends at the IRS, but keeps me much, much more serene.

Serenity Tip: Invoice Tracking

If you're anything like me, by about the 15th of the month you start getting nervous about money. Since my income comes in in drips and drabs, my daily trip to the mailbox can feel like scaling the Andes. By the time I get there, I'm exhausted from my mental machinations: If I get this check in today, all is right with the world. I'm making it! I'm doing it! If not: Oh my god, I'm going to starve! Who am I fooling thinking I can do this for years on end?

Now, as someone who has been doing this for a few years now, I have to say: Jump off that treadmill, and fast.

There is one thing I've found that relieves this particularly tenacious brand of crazy:

Clarity
I can't overstate how important clarity is to my serenity. It gives me a sense of whether what I'm feeling is something I should really be worrying about or whether it's just a way I rob myself of serenity in the name of preparing for the worst.

For me, clarity in this case means keeping a Microsoft Word doc of my monthly income, expenses, etc. (I just re-save the same document with a different name every month.) Here's what' most important for keeping me clear about whether I need to be worrying about money. I keep a section that's called "Expected vs. Actual income." In it, I include the following categories:

* Client from whom I'm expecting a check this month
* Expected income
* Actual income
I keep this category blank till the check arrives, obviously; this category is helpful in showing me how often clients meeet payment deadlines and how often they don't. It's good info to have when I work on my business plan for the next year. If they don't pay on time, that's a factor I take into account when I decide which clients to keep and which to forgo in the coming year.
* Expected date the check will arrive
This estimate is based on past payment performance--that is, how quickly has this client paid in the past?--and what's stated in my contract. Actual performance always carries more weight.
* Actual date the check arrived.
This one is useful in the same way that "Actual income" is useful in my future business planning.

So when I woke up this morning and felt the anxiety rising in my chest about my income, I clicked open that document and took a gander. Here's what I found:

* I'm only missing three checks.
* One will arrive next week, so don't worry about that.
* One, I called the client already to inquire about it and if it doesn't arrive today, I'll call to check in again.
* The other is outstanding for two months.

Instead of feeling like a victim of my freelance life, I picked up the phone. I called Accounts Payable for that company and asked about it.

"Email me your invoice," said the very nice lady on the other end of the line. "I'm cutting checks today and I'll cut one for you, too."

Well, thank you.

See? How hard was that? I tell myself.

The answer: It's both harder and easier to pick up the phone and get clarity than it is to sit here and complain about how beleaguered I am. Harder, because it requires me to face the music. I might have to face the fact that it won't come in this month, either. Easier because once I did that, I released a tremendous amount of energy, that I can now spend on my work instead of on worrying.

Try it and see how it works for you.