Two Ways to Change Focus from the Economy to Your Economy

I'm hearing from more and more people the state of the freelance landscape today:

"Since January, I've had three assignments (not high paying) and have sold two essays. My financial situation is far from good, and I'm the only breadwinner in the house."

"I have a large project pending but the client's counsel doesn't seem to be in any hurry to review my contract revisions. I am counting on this project to break my slump. "

"I'm only now seeing positive results, with two assignments I'm working on this week and potentially two more coming in this week. I've been at this almost full time each week since December 15. Getting out queries, LOIs, followups, etc. I can't give you an exact count right now, but I've gotten out at least 100 queries (new, revised or tweaked), more than 100 followups, and dozens of very targeted (with ideas) LOIs."

Still, sometimes, isn't it tempting to think it's YOU? In a way, it's almost comforting: If there really is a cabal of editors out there talking smack about that one article that took tons of revisions, then there's something you can do. You can try to change minds.

Whereas, if it's just the economy and the only answer is to stay vigilant and stay persistent and deepen your patience, then you've got nothing. There's nothing you can do but wait. And entrepreneurs? We're not known for our patience. Especially when the mortgage is due.

I talk a lot about the serenity hypothesis: That serenity isn't being happy all the time or getting everything you want (ask most lottery winners and they'll tell you the same). Serenity is focusing on what you can control and moving away from that which you can't.

And this economy? It's the epitome of what you can't control.

So how do you keep focused and sane and serene right now? Here are two techniques:

Look for role models
If you're a lone freelancer, staring at your barren inbox in frustration and worried about bare cupboards, it's easy to think that something has gone terribly wrong in your business. But if you hear, as I have recently, about tons of other freelancers going through the same thing--and getting through it, surviving and actually thriving--you have a road map.

Ask them:
How did you get through the slow times?
What did you do to keep yourself motivated?
How long did it take for the slump to pass?
How did you occupy your time?
How did you develop patience?

Especially those who say they've been through the slump a million times before--grab them. They're the ones whose resilience you want to learn from.

Pull a switcheroo
Serenity is all about switching focus from the uncontrollable to the controllable. So:

• Instead of focusing on editors not responding, work on a new query.
• Instead of focusing on two months from now when you're sure you'll be destitute and on the street, start teaching yourself a new skill.
• Instead of obsessively crunching numbers, revisit your business plan.
• Instead of replaying every stressful interaction you've had with a suddenly MIA client, send a thank-you card to an editor with whom you've always enjoyed working.

Can you think of more?

Photo by tomsaint11.

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.

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 Enemy: Email Encroachment

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

Today's question is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serenity Enemy: Clutter

Recently a self-employed person came to me with this block to her serenity:

During the week, I'm too busy to clean my office, and just can't seen to be able to justify taking the time to organize it all. On the weekends, I don't feel like going in my office and doing work stuff. So, cleaning my office seems to fit in no where. It's a great space, really the best in my condo, and where I spend the majority of my time. But it's so disorganized and undecorated (aside from matching furniture I bought at IKEA when I moved in) that I don't enjoy being in here at all. I'm embarrassed when others see it, and I complain about it all the time.

This is such a common problem. Is this about serenity? I'm not sure. I do know that being unable to find things (especially bills) can lead to tremendous stress, discontent and worry. And if you don't like what you look at every day in your office, chances are you aren't enjoying your work as much as you could be. (And as I've said before, if you're happy and grateful, you are much more likely to pay it forward.)

So what to do?

First, I'll suggest something that I do once a month:

Sit in a comfortable position, before the stress of the workday is upon you (you can do this in bed as you're waking). Close your eyes and breathe deeply. As you settle in, ask yourself this question: "What do you want your office to look like?"

You can get more specific, and I often do:

* What would be most abundant and serene for you?
* What do you see when you look at your office in your mind's eye?
* What's one thing you can do to make your office more like this today?

This is, as my friends call it, a visions meditation. Create a vision for yourself, something that excites you and gets you enthusiastic about making the change in your office.

I do this once a month and I often have the same vision: Cherry wood desk with tempered glass top, lots of plants, free of clutter, overlooking a big window with a view of trees or a garden.

When I look around my office this very second, I don't have that view. But what I do see is a big window, a bookshelf with cherry wood and tempered glass shelves and a small bouquet of dazzlingly yellow freesia. It's a small thing, but it makes me happy. And I'm aware that it's a process.

Now, there are lots of ways you can bring this vision into being. The way I do it is to do one hard thing toward cleaning your office a day.

But professional organizer and former freelance writer Janine Adams uses an online motivational tool To help her clean off her desk at the end of every workday. Here's what she says:

"My big obstacle when I was freelancing and until recently as a professional organizer was as messy desk. I couldn't get myself to clear it at the end of the workday, even though I knew I was much more productive on the rare occasions that I had a clean desk when I arrived at work in the morning. But this year, it's changed. I cleaned my desk off thoroughly on January 5 and, with the help of www.dontbreakthechain.com to build the habit, I've cleared it off every single day, save one Saturday when I left my knitting on it. That habit alone has really, truly affected my work serenity."

There are still other ways you can do it. You can set a timer and do 5 minutes of cleaning every day. I even have friends who have "clutter buddies" who come over and sit with them as they clean their offices, because they can't seem to motivate without that kind of support.

The point is, of course, not to do this the One Right Way, but to make a start.

What do you do to bring serenity back to your office?

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 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.

Serenity Enemy: Deprivation

As I go into planning my business's year in 2008, I am experiencing a familiar feeling:

Deprivation

Recently, I did a story for the San Francisco Chronicle on homeowners feelings of deprivation as the housing market implodes. Though I'm not in that situation, I think the way therapist Bill Horstman describes deprivation's effects apply to business owners, too.

Do you have any of these symptoms?

1. Sleep disturbances: "If you find yourself trying to go to sleep or waking up (thinking about finances), that's usually one of the first signs" of stress. Horstman recommends sleeping pills, but I'll share my own recommendation: meditation.

I've heard it said that you should meditate every day, except when you're stressed. Then you should meditate twice a day. When I've been in a particularly rough patch with work or waiting for checks to come in, I meditate in the morning and at night. Especially the nighttime meditation seems to ease me into sleep. While I'm meditating, I imagine opening my fist and letting all my concerns drop into the ether. I do this as often and as long as I need to to relax.

2. Overworking: "If folks are constantly in a state of financial woes, they will skip the activities that have historically been their own private mental, spiritual and social way of relaxing," he said. "Instead, they step on the gas of more work. Although this may atone their sense of guilt, it causes burn out and actually decreases work productivity. Thus, the more hours worked, the less accomplished."

Sound familiar? He doesn't offer solutions here, but this is exactly why I put "gym" and "meditation" and "yoga" on my to-do list every single day. I have to create artificial boundaries around work, lest I allow myself to sink into the mire of my own worry. This is where, I think, you develop that serenity muscle to which I'm so fond of referring.

3. Isolating: All small-business owners fret over cash flow. It's an occupational hazard. But when was the last time you sat down with a group of similarly-employed people and vented about that check that's late or your own poor planning? Turns out, that's normal, too--especially for stressed people worried about others' opinions.

"If people have seen you as upper-middle class or being able to do just fine and suddenly you feel in trouble financially, you may not want to break what you think is others' image of you," advised Horstman. "So people withdraw from their social group. It's a shame because if they went to friends and said, 'I feel god-awful, what are you feeling?' they're likely to find that people aren't that judgmental."

So lay it on me: What's your work stress? What's your money stress? Don't hold it in!

4. Canceling vacations: Are you cutting out your holiday vacation for fear that spending money now will mean less money later? Don't do it, warned Horstman.

"People think it's a good idea to cut back on vacations but the real thing to do is cut back on the way you vacation--not the vacation itself," said Horstman. "It's stress reduction and a type of self-care, but it's also getting your mind off things. If you go on a camping trip, you'll feel great and you'll be refreshed. Generally, the less it costs, the more relaxing and fun it is, and then you won't have to pay for it with future guilt and worry."