If you focus on being right or wrong, you can’t “get it right.”
Q: I’m developing a creative new project I’m really excited by, but I keep getting stuck.
The reasons seem so complicated that I’m not at all sure you can help. But let me share. One is that the new stuff isn’t earning much money. I am working in a partnership, and we rev-share profits. That team really likes me, and I love what we create together. For a long time, though, they wouldn’t even cover basic expenses. So my % came after expenses. At one point, I canceled a meeting from my car as I parked outside their offices because of how much it hurt to have to ask for those costs to be covered. An advisor was able to coach me through it (the negotiation moved to text), but it was so painfully hard. I mean I know intellectually just how good the product is. And how well regarded it is. But, the economics of the situation are such that it’s demoralizing when I think about how little I earn. I worry about it a lot.
I should share that I don’t have any real financial concerns, as I do have an existing, older business. Despite the uncertainty around COVID, the “old” business—my prior passion—still has good clients and there’s no reason to believe (given our reputation) that we won’t continue to make it. I can do the business dev and structure projects so client goals are met, and my staff is all now quite trained up. It can work great with relatively few hours from me. Yet, I feel overwhelmed with guilt when I think about how little I’m doing for that business.
Despite loads of things working, I feel stuck. And worried. It’s just all a lot. Sometimes, I just sit and spin out on some combination of guilt and worry. I’ll just say it… I’m constantly torn, constantly struggling. And I also know I am an asshole to feel so torn and struggling.
Dear Torn One,
I have sat with your tangled yarn ball of an issue for a few weeks now. And I want to start by pulling on the one yarn—that self-judgmental one—that, if left to fester, stalls any and all future progress.
“I’m an asshole”, you wrote to me.
Oh, hon.
At Chez Merbeck, we have a “House Rule” that I’m going to invoke here. We say, “No one is allowed to talk that way to one of my friends”, because how we talk to ourselves matters, So please, cut it out.
You are struggling, yes. But why? Because you seek expansiveness. To claim for yourself your next dream, to live into your aspirations. You want to create at your next level, the value that only you can. This is, by the way, everything. To become more of who we each are. To manifest oneself. To grow.
So judging yourself? Helps not at all.
Judging oneself while you are trying to change and grow makes the issue about being right or wrong, even before you start. When we’re judging, we aren’t experimenting to see what works, learning how to do it better, or asking for help. To judge oneself is to spend your limited and valuable energy beating yourself up for … what? For not already knowing.
Don’t aim to be right, but to get it right.
That’s how change happens. Not because you decide you want a great big thing, but because you’re willing to do one thing differently than you did before. In this case, to start by being compassionate with yourself.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY OUT AND IT’S THROUGH
There’s so much in your note, but one gives me hope.
It’s the story of you asking to be valued—for those basic expenses to be covered, It’s a sign of progress, the thing to build on. It showed that you were willing to stop an old habit of underselling yourself, push through the discomfort of asking, leaning on an advisor to get support, to practice something new. Even if the story hadn’t ended up well, it is worth celebrating. You practiced a new thing, to show up for yourself.
And that’s what you want to do more of. It’ll get you to where you want to go.
You might already know the psychological construct on “competence”, describing the four stages of learning? I typically draw it like this:
- First, you don’t even notice an issue. The technical term is “unconscious incompetence”, since you don’t even see anything amiss.
- Then, you see that something’s wrong, but no idea how to fix it. It’s called “conscious incompetence” because at this stage you see the problem, the brokenness, and feel the pain of not knowing.
- Then you start practicing new things, to be made whole. This stage is called “conscious competence” because you work (!) at new things and slowly but surely you pull yourself out of that hole and into the future. You “get it right” by practice and the rate of going up the curve (faster or slower) is based on your capacity to take actions, to do the work.
- Until, one day you totally know what you once struggled to know. “Unconscious Competence”; you’ve learned to do it automatically.
The visual characterizes how growth actually feels.
You faaaaaaaalllll down into despair when you see what’s broken.
Which puts you in that trough of change. This is where you are. You want something new for yourself. But you’ve not yet learned the skills to get there. It’s a low point. It’s P-A-I-N-F-U-L because how you get out is unknown. It’s worrisome because sometimes you question if you can. But there is no going back, the only way is through that trough to the other side.
TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE
So how do you get unstuck? You ‘turn to face the strange’, as the lyrics go.
You do the work.
You might start by asking Worry to move from its full-time occupation of your bed, where it’s stealing all your covers. Move it down the hall, to the couch. Get medical/mental help if you need it. Get a healthier relationship with it.
Next, give yourself permission to profit from prior work instead of believing you need to always be hustling to prove your worth. Update your team that you will be working “on” the business, but no longer “in” the business.
That will let you invest time into the new thing, to show up fully to it. You will remember that the old-to-you business wasn’t always as viable as it is now. It takes time to grow fledgling new ideas (which all ideas start out as) into robust businesses.
If you get frustrated, you’ll remind yourself why you want the change. What happens down the road, or what lifestyle does it get you? Name it. Claim it. You have tons-O agency. It’s your choice to do it, you’re not the victim here.
After that, you identify folks who have done what you want (or similar) to ask, hey how did you make it financially viable. And, then work with experts in designing business models to design what comes next.
And so on. Do one thing at a time, to make progress. (This is, BTW, why I assign homework in my consultations, so we identify and practice stuff.)
As you do the work, some x months from now, you climb out of this trough.
BE WILLING TO BECOME MORE OF YOURSELF
The choice before you isn’t really between the old business and the new one, or being stuck and unstuck. These are each a false dichotomy.
There is really only growth.
To be willing to be the caterpillar building the cocoon so you can become pure goop is its own act of bravery. To become the person you are called to be is the same. Step by step, you expand and fully inhabit that singular spot in the world where only you stand, onlyness.
So, Torn One, can you be this willing? Can you choose you? Can you choose to grow? If yes, then, get started.
Do the work. That’s how you go from wanting to change to ch-ch-changing.
