The moment it doesn't work is the moment the work starts
Starting something new isn’t easy, otherwise we’d all be doing it, right? So you have to take the knocks with the gains, and do the work to help you navigate the highs and the lows.
I’d love to say it all just works out in the end, but sometimes life isn’t like that. We live in an instant hit world where we need it all now or never, it’s either a success today or it’s a failure, it’s either amazing right now or it’s terrible.
But mostly life is a combination of some good things happening, some bad things happening, some meh things going on, and then muddling by in-between.
And when you start something new this is exactly how it will probably go.
Is that a reason not to do it? Hell no!
Of course there are a few people who have ‘overnight’ success but then they always have their own stories of the ups and downs. And what is success anyway? It’s all relative. You might’ve just had your own overnight success, where you’ve woken up to suddenly remember where the TV remote got put in a safe space, and now your life can be back to endless choice of channels - success!
Success is your definition. And on your terms.
So when things go wrong, they are also on your terms and your definition.
For me, not hitting revenue targets has been my success navigation tool. And I never realised this until recently. I have felt incredibly miserable at missing targets, some months missing any revenue at all and therefore labelled it ‘not working’ and unsuccessful. And it was, on my terms.
And I let ‘this isn’t working’ grow and grow until it became a fail.
However I’ve done the Work. I know failure is a lesson. I’ve written about it. I coach it. I have workshops on it. I get it. But sometimes it’s hard to hold on to that knowing. Knowing something is one thing, doing something with it is a whole different thing.
It’s like exercise, you know what you have to do, you know the reward, but sometimes you choose to lie on the sofa instead. And you know what’s going to happen. It’s not a surprise your fitness spirals downwards.
So when things go wrong, you know you can learn, you know there is nothing wrong with a failure (on your terms). But you have to do the work to do something with it.
And that can be hard work.
So it’s easier to unravel, feel fed up, feel tired.
It’s hard work keeping in a good place all the time. Especially when you are having to do things you might not want to. And the instant hit, the instant success hasn’t come along yet.
It’s easy to feel like giving up.
Sometimes it’s good just to have a Nope day.
The work comes in enjoying your Nope day. Not letting your Nope day be full of self pity, sulking, despair and overwhelm. I mean sure, its quite fun to sulk for a while, but 30 minutes max, then it’s time to get over yourself. It’s time to remember this is ‘your time you are wasting’. So don’t keep pushing, enjoy the nothing.
Check in with what you need to do right now, and remember what you want to do in the future.
If you need money coming in, focus on getting a job to bring in the money, but don’t let go of the long term wants and the dreams. They are still coming. It’s just not overnight.
It’s hard when you see posts of people who seemed to have just had a business idea and now are suddenly flying. We feel like we’ve got it wrong.
Envy is a normal feeling, especially if you are working so hard on something and it’s not working. But also envy isn’t the moment it changes for you. It isn’t what helps you through.
It’s normal to start thinking you maybe just aren’t cut out for all this, and revert to your comfort zone. You wanted to move away from there for a reason, remember why. Hold the goal. Work on it. Slowly.
It’s not the failing or mistakes or things that go wrong that matter. It’s what you do with them.
The moment things don’t work, get to work. Work on what you need right now, what you want in future, what can you do right now. Be ok with everything you are doing.
The best lesson from school is the lesson of not wasting our own time.
Do what you got to do.
Be who you have to be.
And keep working towards what you want to do.
It’s not easy to start something new - but what’s the alternative? Do nothing? Well that’s a fail already!