Where Does Your Happiness Come From?

The May issue of Yoga Journal just arrived in my mailbox this week (May? In March? Really. I don't know why, either.) and with it a great story on happiness. What writer Phillip Moffitt says is that there are three kinds of happiness:

1. Happiness when things go your way
2. A sense of well-being even when things go horribly awry
3. Joy that comes from "no longer being identified with your ego sense of self. You become liberated from the fear and suffering that inevitably comes when you're identified with the ego, which is always coping with the fragility, uncertainly and unavoidable losses of physical life."

Fragility. Uncertainty. Unavoidable losses.

Sound familiar? As a self-employed person this is part of every single day. We can't know what's going to happen next. What Moffitt offers is that we don't have to be a slave to this fact.

Let's apply this way of thinking to rejection:

Of course we're happiest when our marketing efforts are accepted, celebrated and our every email is given a ticker-tape parade down 5th Avenue. But the cold, dim reality of my daily life is that only 10 percent of any of my queries sell.

Yes, it's true. I've been tracking in on a handy-dandy spreadsheet.

There are lots of things I can do with this fact. One of them is invest in becoming better at querying. But the other is cultivating what Moffitt calls a sense of mindfulness over the joy and happiness in our lives.

Here's what I want you to do:

* Make a list of all the ways in which you've been taken care of in the past when you're marketing efforts have been rejected.
* Take a look at your list of regular clients and think about how they've sustained you.
* Scan through your list of queries that are out there right now.

I don't know what this does for you, but what it does for me is put rejection in context. Yes, that great query I'm in love with didn't fit with the publication for which I thought it would be perfect. That's sad. But I can look at the ways in which I'm still getting to write about the things I love. And I'll look at the query and prepare to send it out again.

This is not to say I'm perfect at this. Far from it. Freelancers in San Francisco will know that one of the hardest things for me is to turn around and resend a query after a rejection. I lose steam.

But one of the things I'm working on is drafting more than one angle for a query at a time so that if it gets rejected, I don't have to labor over a new version. It's a way of keeping my marketing--and my business--vital.

This practice, of remembering that we're taken care of when those rejections come pouring in, is the second kind of happiness Moffitt describes. Sure we'd all love to get to a point where we don't invest in the ego's fears, worries, resentments and regrets. But what's most helpful to me in the face of rejection is the memory and experience of being okay every other time this has happened.

So when I get rejections and take it personally--as I inevitably do--I remember that feeling of being taken care of, of continued well-being despite circumstances.

Serenity Tool: Time is of the Essence

I bought this cute little strawberry timer the other week with the intention of timing my oatmeal on the stove. But this week I found another use for it:

Setting it to give my body a break. Here's what Dr. Davis Liu, author of Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely recommended to me this week:

1. Get yourself a timer.
2. Set it for one hour.
3. At the end of the hour, do some shoulder shrugs, exercise your wrists, shoulders chest and back.
4. Practice a minute of deep breathing
5. Get back to work.

As he put it, "Is anything really going to fall apart if you leave your desk for five minutes?"

My answer was no.

I discovered that that small, antiquated piece of machinery could make my body happier and make my job less dangerous to my health.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, writers and editors reported 220 injuries on the job severe enough to miss at least one day of work in 2006, the most recent date for which statistics are available. None of them, oddly, were in the repetitive strain category (which tells me, more than anything, that writers aren't reporting them to their bosses, or, like us, they're self-employed). What I know from my own experience, though, is that when I sit for a long time and then stand up, my body feels welded in place, and my stress level grows.

I don't know much about Chinese medicine, but is sure feels like my qi is blocked. Just saying.

I did this yesterday--imperfectly--and it was a relief. Oddly, it served another purpose: It helped me be mindful of how I was spending my time and helped me track how I was spending my time.

Give it a shot today and see how it feels.

Mantra Check-in: So How'd You Do?

This week's mantra was:

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

How'd you do with it?

I have to say that, ironically, I struggled mightily with it. This week is the culmination of one of the most abundant periods in my freelance life so far. But I also notice I feel run-down and, by yesterday morning, I woke up dreading everything I had in front of me for the day. Not surprisingly, I needed get everything done off my to-do list.

Today I woke up with a new motivation. An addendum to this mantra might be:

I accept that struggling has never made my work better.

Desperation is another matter. Sometimes I have to be desperate--for serenity, work, money, etc.--to be willing to make the changes necessary to my behavior.

So my intention for the day is just to notice the joy I get in my work. I'm likely to enjoy it more that way--and, I'm hoping, struggle less.

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.

Is Your Email Obsession Something Bigger?

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

That is, procrastination.

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

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

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

Ouch. And true.

The magazine goes on to identify three flavors of procrastinator:

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

Any of these sound familiar to you?

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

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

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

Serenity 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.

Serenity Tip: Patience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serenity Tip: 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.

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.