When clients first call, or retain me, they want to know “the plan” or a complete strategy. As a small business, how do we plan, run our businesses, market ourselves AND actually DO our work or produce our product? It’s overwhelming, and often we need to un-plan, and start to work with what we have right now, doing the best we can by investing where there will be return, and where we can feel grounded and confident.
Alternatively, we can do the planning, the strategizing, and the thorough analysis of every scenario, which are all costly in our two most valuable resources – our time and our money. But even after all that, we will still be met with unexpected obstacles, failures and mistakes (lessons), shifts, new opportunities and other twists and turns.
Focusing your energy on creating a strong foundation that will enable you to grow and evolve is the best strategy. It allows you to embrace the journey, and approach everything with brighter eyes, and open ears. Instead of spending your time and money (life) making a plan, embrace what is, enjoy it, be vulnerable, struggle through it, learn, and apply the life lessons to allow your business (and yourself) to build and grow.
This essay by Emily Perl Kinsley called Welcome to Holland really sheds light on why [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”via @bordenteam”]we need to let go of our collective urge to plan everything[/inlinetweet] – in life and in work:
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this……
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.
Thanks to Our-Kids.org for originally posting.
