Monday's Mantra: Struggling is Optional

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serenity Enemy: Illness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so the nattering brain starts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.