So many new steps, so few muscles
So, I've been spending considerable mental energy
lately trying to get myself oriented to a clear vision for Updraft Services,
for Second Grace Studio, for this blog, and for how it all fits together.
More than that, as the penny drops that I'm really, truly, doing this
"self-supporting entrepreneur" thing, like, for reals... I'm
challenging myself to step up and take consistent, decisive action in
the direction of my vision of success - business success.
This is, um, challenging. For one thing, it is putting
me hard up against all kinds of stuff I don't know how to do (yet). For
another, it is making glaringly apparent the imbalance between my skill at
imagining stuff (love it!) and my skill at taking effective action to make it
happen (not so much).
I'm seeing how this imbalance creates a kind of
manic/depressive see-saw in which periods of ecstatic frolicking in my imagined
fields of possibility are followed by desperation over the overwhelming number
of new skills I need to master and the agonizing slowness of step-by-step
activities like technical problem-solving, mailing-list building, accounting
system creation, and all the other hard core, real life stuff that I would much
prefer to believe I'm exempt from.
I can see how much I've relied (in my
first 40 years) on my ability to learn quickly through intuitive leaps (I get it!) and
how little I've exercised the muscles required to take an irreducible series of
action steps (I can do it!).
Every effort is the only effort that matters
I found a powerful source of inspiration for the patience of small actions in My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor (of
TED talk fame) in which she describes her process of
recovery from the stroke that damaged her left brain. She writes,
"I learned early that every effort I put forth was the
only effort that was important. On day one, for example, I had to rock
and rock and rock some more before I had enough oomph to roll upward.
While in this stage of rocking, I had to recognize that rocking was the
only activity that mattered. Focusing my success on the final goal of
sitting up was not wise because it was far beyond my current ability...I had to
completely inhabit the level of ability that I could achieve before it was time
to take the next step. In order to attain a new ability, I had to be able
to repeat that effort with grace and control before taking the next step."
In reading this, I realized that the patience and focus and discipline
required to scale the learning curve I'm on is no different. Looking
back, I can see I've spent years rocking back and forth just to get the oomph
up to sit at my own desk chair in my own office and do work that matches my own
gifts and talents. In retrospect, I can appreciate what a slow slow
process it has been getting to just the first stage of knowing how to stand up for
myself and what I have to offer.
And, I can see that when I've tried to jump over a stage
here or there (OK, constantly) without doing the work to gain "grace and
control" at the pre-requisite skill, I've fallen or crashed or succumbed
to hopelessness, desperate about not succeeding at the higher level fast
enough.
Just One Leaf
For a forest-focused brain like mine, the narrowing of focus that Bolte Taylor describes is also a
critical skill for me. I can imagine writing a blog post and telling
myself "writing this post is the only activity that matters. (Later I
can add the ability to get other people to re-post it or automatically link it
to facebook);"
or, when I'm creating my online shop I can remind myself "right now
getting this paypal link to work is the only thing that matters, (later I can
add affiliates)"
or, when I'm designing an e-book and panicking about what will come next, I can keep the wolves at bay with
the mantra "this is the only activity that matters right now. (Later
I can add the ability to do a high quality product launch.) etc. etc. etc.
Defining your learning edge
There was one other phrase that jumped out at me from
Bolte's story of recovery:
"If the boundary between what you can do and what you
cannot do is not clearly defined, then you don't know what to try next."
I take from this that in order to be clear on my right next
step, I need to be honest about where I really am today (this is harder than it
sounds for someone who lives largely in the world of imagined possibilities
with only a toehold in practical reality).
If I forget to celebrate what
I already can do, I'm missing critical information, and if my ego takes over
and I over-estimate what I already can do, I'm setting myself up to try the
wrong next thing and feel a sense of failure.
Listing what I can and cannot (yet) do in the realm of
building a business feels like a fine and worthwhile exercise. Getting a
clear picture of my learning edge is a much needed salve for my panicky sense
of being vaguely far from where I want to be. As soon as I look
at things objectively in this way, I can spot the learning edge much more clearly, while retaining a hopeful sense of all I have to build on. If you are up against a
ginormous learning curve in some area of your own growth, you might give it a
try, too.
And Now a Word with My Brain

After hearing and then reading Dr. Taylor's story, I am so grateful to my own sweet little left and right brain hemispheres which I now picture humming along up there, doing their brilliant work separately and
together. I have a special request of you, dear left hemisphere. I'm going to be asking you to give up some of your ego-certainty and learn some new tricks - OK? I'm also counting on you to help me put some order and schedule to the big dreams that old righty is endlessly dreaming. I know I've under-worked some parts of you in these last 40 years, but I know all about brain plasticity now and I know you can do it! So let's all work together on this, shall we?
Love ya, SS