Yesterday was a bad day.  We argued the night before about nothing really, and even before that things were not going well that day, so it was a real downer.  So yesterday lunchtime I found myself having to revisit my visualisation for my new life and trying to drag myself out of the doldrums and back to action.

How did I do it?

Well, given that I was so p****d off, it was not easy.  I started with my visualistion of my new life, which actually I have not written down in much detail.  I must do so, because I think this really helps in the hard times, that thing about dreaming and “seeing” the thing you are aiming at.  So I was visualising this and then I started thinking about what a huge mountain I have to climb in order to get to where I want to be.

I was reminded, apart from the need to think positively about it all, of an old Chinese proverb that says something like “every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.  I was also reminded of something I read when doing (trying to do) the internet marketing full-time, about the average person always overestimating what they can do in a day and underestimating what they can do in a year.  This means, for me, a tendency to berate myself at the end of the day – looking back and thinking “well, there goes another day, and you only did THAT”.  What I often forget is that the many “THAT”s all add up over a year; two years; five years – and if you just do something, whatever you can manage, each day to move you towards that vision, then it is progress.

What stops me dead in my tracks, like a rabbit in the headlights, is when I think of that huge mountain I have to climb, and always see myself at the bottom of it, looking up at the vast slopes above.  It just seems too much and I think I will never make it.  I think the key is not to look up, but to look down, at your next footstep, the thing in hand right now that is achievable and will take you to the next step.  That way, you don’t get overwhelmed by the vastness of that mountain.

So, in thinking all this, I brightened up no end and was able to get back to work and make a little more progress.  Which was nice.

Embryonic Ideas

Marketing, demonstrating and selling a product that I believe in:

Helping disadvantaged children or young adults

Making Machines

Immature?

Reading this, you may guess that I am far younger than I actually am.  The fact is, it has taken me a long time to reach this stage of personal development.  I am well into middle age, with decades of wasted working years behind me.  Compared to many people of my age, with well-defined working lives and senior posts in conventional careers, I am somewhat of a maverick, and I suppose that some would describe me as immature, or more kindly as a “late developer”.  Why do I feel the need to say this?  Well, I am not immune from the temptation of comparing myself with others.  But I am writing this to underline the importance of putting that all aside and pursuing YOUR life goals, relentlessly, irrespective of how it “looks” to anyone else or how the little people of this world will judge you for earning less; having a smaller house, car, whatever.  Let them get on with their thing and make sure it does not deflect you for a second from getting on with your thing.

Well, it’s been a while.  This is why:

The past three or four months have been life-changing for me.  I have been discovering more about my birth family (I was adopted) and it has been a real journey.  I have not only found my birth father, but I have also discovered who I am; my heritage; my roots.  For example, I now know that I am part-Norwegian and part-Polish.  Until three months ago, I had no idea about that.

Anyway, the above deserves more attention but is not really for this blog, which is about my search for a fulfilling vocation.

Coming out of the ups and downs of my adoption research, I have reviewed where my business plans were taking me and how this stacks up compared to “what I am living for” – my needs, wants, desires, passions.  What I realised is that, although some of my business activities are starting to show promising signs, other things that I have tried in the past year or so have just not “done it” for me and I urgently need to move on and try some new things.

With a pressing need to earn more money but a determination to continue to strive for a meaningful existence and not just a life of drudgery, I revisited a list of points that I compiled about two years ago, based on advice on the excellent StevePavlina.com website, and under the heading of “What am I living for?”.  Here it is (and yes folks, this really is me baring my soul to you now):

Now, I wrote this list from the heart, nearly two years ago, and reading it today brought a tear to my eye.  It all rings true, two years later.  This is reassuring!

Anyway, after writing the list at that time, I went on to try to crystallise this into an occupation or a vocation or a mix of business activities.  This led me to try internet marketing – actually not because I was “living for” internet marketing, but rather that it would give me enough passive income to pursue what I “am living for”.  Unfortunately, the income was not enough compared to the long hours of unenjoyable work – for me, that is – I know some people would be fine with it.

So now I have stepped back from this, and decided that I need to start from the above list again and try to make a better job of crystallising it into some practical ideas for “work” that I can implement out there in the world.

Now, the last time I tried to translate this list in this way, I ended up with a list of business ideas.  Re-reading them a short while ago, I was not at all happy with them, so I decided to have another go.  Here is a summary of what is on my new list:

Now, this list means more to me than it will to you.  There is real passion behind some of the words.  BUT, as you can see, the massive problem with this list is that it is about three million miles away from me actually making it happen in the real world, living the life and doing my thing.  I mean, can you imagine searching on a jobs website or a freelance website for “solving a problem for businesses” or “putting on a show for holidaymakers”?

So, my next hurdle is a familiar one, and one that I have fallen at several times over the years, yet it is a hurdle that I must once again approach, with confidence and commitment, so that I can one day say, “I Jumped” it!

The hurdle I am talking about is this – how to take my version of  “what I am living for” and translate it into activities that I can go out and do, so that I really can get closer to living MY life as ME.  It would also be good if enough of what I do generates enough money to pay the bills!

I could approach this from several angles.  For example, some would say that I should not over-analyse, but get out there, try a few things and see what works.  Others would say I need to identify things that are viable financially and then see if they fit my passions.  There are so many ways of approaching this that to be honest, as of now, I am a little bit “stuck”.

I will let you know how I get on.  Meanwhile, if anyone out there has been where I am now, and has any advice, PLEASE get in touch.  I need all the help I can get!

What the heck is Newology, I hear you ask.  Or maybe it’s just the voices again…

Well, Newology, since you or my inner voiced asked, is the science of the new.  More to the point, it’s the name of my brand new website, launched this very day, 1 August 2010!  Hip-hip horror! I have collected the services that I offer to industry under the umbrella of the new Newology brand.

The overall aim of the brand is to resolve a range of business problems, either in-house or by building a team of experts, project-managing the process so that it’s as easy and painless as possible for the customer.  I also intend to focus very sharply on making sure that there is a solid return on investment and that this can be illustrated easily to potential customers.

You can take a look at the first version of the site by clicking this link: Newology

Oh, and please leave comments and suggestions below because I am not too proud to learn from you!

Yesterday I had a major “wobble”.

I’m really moving out of my “comfort zone” and I can see that this is absolutely necessary so I can get nearer to the place I want to be in life.  The problem for us all, of course, is that moving out of our comfort zones is, well, uncomfortable!  Personally, I realised yesterday just how far out of my comfort zone I have to go when it comes to actually generating business out in the real world.

I have, during my entire life, never really faced these fears before even though I identified them many years ago – they have remained unresolved as I managed to “get by” and make a comfortable living as an employee in a field so narrow that I could avoid confronting these problem areas.  Being self-employed means we really do have to face a whole range of fears head-on – there is no “corporate shield” to hide behind now!  I know that only by practising those things I am afraid of will I lose the fear and “expand my comfort zone” – this much is accepted wisdom, but of course just knowing this does not make the process any less uncomfortable!

The thing is, when I face what I’m up against, it’s REALLY daunting – it seems that what I have to do to succeed in my new self-employed life is a bit like climbing a towering, vertical cliff without a rope!  Yesterday it was as if I approached that cliff, looked up at it and wondered how on earth I was ever going to climb it.  I made the mistake of looking at the whole daunting task instead of just working out where my next foothold is.

I think that’s something I need to remember.  Looking at the whole task – like looking up at that massive cliff – just caused me to freeze and think I would never be able to do it.  Finding the next foothold and planting my foot in it – almost a piece of cake!  So what I did yesterday was to really break down the big actions on my list into “footholds” – baby steps that will take me a little bit outside my comfort zone – things that I can JUST DO without thinking about the whole daunting task of “generating business”.  The key to these little steps, for me, is to define them clearly and in such as way that they are small enough for “doing” without any deep strategic thinking.

When I’ve taken one of these baby steps, I’m no longer stuck – I just made a little bit of PROGRESS and it feels nice.  I may have only done a little thing, but at least I did it, and it’s another little step up that cliff!

If you have your own tips that you found useful when “facing the fear” in self-employment, please leave a comment!

I’m writing this pretty much off the top of my head.  I’ve literally just got out of bed and switched on the laptop.

I awoke this morning having had a bad dream.  In it I dreamt that I was being bullied and ridiculed by a man who had hired me into a full-time sales job with slick words and promises of how great it would be to work for him, only to find myself on day two of my job in an office meeting, surrounded by about 30 men, many of them decades younger than I, jeering as my boss humiliated me in front of them all, saying that he always suspected I would never make the grade and my first day had proved him right.  He then suddenly grabbed me and said he would show me what he did to people like me, at which point he gave me a “dead leg” and caused me to fall to the ground as everyone laughed.

The reason for me writing this is firstly to break the dream and stop it clouding my day, but also to acknowledge that really this is an embodiment of one of my irrational fears, a fear that I need to overcome.  Since I did a telesales job about 20 years ago, I have a real “thing” about what I think of as “selling”.  Unconsciously I think of selling in terms of cold calling against a daily regime of targets and a threat of job loss if I fail – this describes that job from 20 years ago.  Really, I KNOW that sales need not be like that.  I know that every businessman has to sell to succeed, but my unconscious, narrow view of selling is preventing me from getting into the process and engaging with prospects on MY terms, in MY own inimitable way.

Recognising this problem is a great help, and my dream last night was another prod that reminds me I really need to get some positive sales experience and overcome this problem that really is hindering my business.  Sales for me is really about setting out my wares, showing people how they can benefit from them and bringing about a successful trade in an almost natural way, a win-win way in which both parties walk away happy.  This, I have absolutely no problem with and I know I would actually come to like it, because I genuinely love “trading”.  The pressured sell, when you make enough cold calls to get some of them to stick with some unfortunates whom you happen to catch at a weak moment, that completely turns me off.

So I need to work towards looking at the sales process as the thing I think of as “trading” and not the thing I think of as “selling”, because one conjures up horrors for me and the other I genuinely love.

I know I am not alone in having some sort of block about “selling”.  I would be interested to hear your comments – go on – write one below while you’re here..

I was reflecting on my self employment and how it compares with having a “job” in the “real world”.

I came to the conclusion that when I had a full-time job, it was as if every day was a grey-sky day, when that uniform blanket of dark grey cloud keeps the sun out, forever.  There is a dull normality about it all.  There may not be any thunder-claps or heavy downpours, but there is never any bright sunshine to warm the soul either.

By contrast, for me self-employment has been like an extended period of unpredictable, unseasonal and very unsettled weather.  When I look at my affiliate marketing website stats and see that my latest precious new website has captured no more than 10 visitors in a month; when I write a carefully considered comment on someone’s blog only to press submit and get the magic word “discarded” in big black letters; when I carefully apply to an affiliate scheme only to log into my Commission Junction account  and see my application in the “rejected” list – these things are like bad-weather days, cold, rainy, windy, stormy days.

Conversely, when I make a big sale (as I just did today), it’s as if the sun of affiliate marketing has suddenly come out from behind those black SEO clouds  and all is well in my little self-employed world for a few moments as I bask in the warmth of my little successes.

So which do I prefer?  Oh come on, you know me by now.  I would HATE to go back to the grey life; a life of endless sun-less days with no hope of a sunny spell.  Give me the turbulent, changeable climate of self-employment any day.

The last few days it seems that am reaching new depths of despair in my efforts.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean I am about to throw in the towel or do something stupid.  I think it’s just that sometimes a combination of factors seems to conspire against me, undermining my best attempts at remaining cheerful and positive.  One of the hardest things is that, with this Internet Marketing, I just don’t know for sure that it will work.  After, what, four months of doing it in earnest, my income from it is absolutely nowhere near where I need to be and the daily unique website visitors I am getting remains subbornly around 150 to all sites.  OK, you will probably think that from a standing start four months ago, that’s not bad – but it’s not good enough for me, that’s the problem.  It’s 5% of what I estimate I need in order to pay the bills from this.

But I don’t want to get distracted into talking about Internet Marketing, because a specific business activity is not what this post is about.  This post is about how it feels to be me, here, right now, struggling to get going as a self-employed businessman, hitting wave after wave of despair, like a series of roadblocks.  I cannot be the only small businessman facing this kind of despair – it must surely be a common occurrence, only maybe some of them don’t call it despair, maybe for some it’s just a few down days, a few failures, a series of blips that just have to be endured, got over, got through.  But for me, this is a new feeling, and yet something else I have hit that makes me think, even aged 46 that, “I really don’t know life at all”, to quote the beautiful Joni Mitchell song.  Now, this to me is not a bad thing.  My whole adult life has been filled with learning.  It’s just that, well – I never thought that starting out in business would test me so much psychologically.  I thought I was more “ready” for it than I am.  So, now that I find myself facing these setbacks, what can I do?

I think that the difference between those who succeed and those that fail when it comes to hitting these roadblocks is not that the successful don’t hit them, but that they have a successful strategy for dealing with them when they come along.  Almost week by week, as I seem to hit one bad day after another, I’m starting to think that this is just a series of ever-bigger tests that I must pass if I am ever to succeed in self employment.  I need a strategy for dealing with these down days, with a smile on my face even if there’s not exactly a song in my heart.  I need to accept these days, get through them without damaging myself; my business; and most importantly without lashing out at the ones I love.

It is without doubt one of the biggest psychological tests I have ever faced.  I have no support network apart from my partner who, yes, is very supportive, but sometimes I think I would be prepared to go all out and take more risks if I were alone – but that’s for another day.  So, yes, I am very fortunate to have a great partner who is indeed supportive, but during the day I am really alone, and boy do I feel that.

So, I was thinking that maybe for me, one of the ways of coping with the roadblocks of business is to get away from the computer for a while and into the real world of people – a suggestion that I have often read.   The problem I have with this strategy is that the roadblock will still be there when I get back.  It’s as if I can’t rest until I have got over it or round it, and just having a cup of coffee and a piece of cake while the dam of black water is towering above me will not make me feel much better – a bit like fiddling while Rome burns, or playing in the orchestra on the Titanic.  I need a better way, and I haven’t got one yet.

For now, I just have to keep going in the face of these continual and ever-growing tests of my character and of the strength of my resolve to make it in business one way or another.  Each one seems like a life-level test for me, because I can’t help feeling that if, one day, one of them causes me to turn around, I will be turning around and facing the world of employment; the world of careers and appraisals; as a broken man, never again to be self employed, never to succeed in business.

Given that all my self-analysis, all my getting to know myself over the last decade or two has pointed to “being my own boss” as being the obvious choice for me, the stakes are high.  If I fail this test, if I find that I cannot do self-employment after all, what then?  There is no plan B.

I had a tough week last week.

I was facing a dire lack of progress on my internet marketing efforts, with my older sites sinking down the rankings and getting less traffic, despite having more and more links, and my newer site not breaking through.

I was once again questioning the whole thing – should I be doing this internet marketing at all or should I do what my Dad would have advised and get a “proper job”?  Things were really getting on top of me.  I think that, working alone at home, this period of utter slog, when there is no little to show in return, and yet of course the bills have to be paid etc – this drudgery got me down.  I over-reacted, I started once more to think about bottling out, quitting.  I started worrying away about money and getting old and having achieved so little by age 46 (which is BO***CKS by the way) went into a proper black mood.

Towards the end of last week, once I reached the depths of despair, something strange happened.  I found something within me, a reserve of will-power, a hidden fountain of strength. I started to pull myself together.  I realised that actually a lot of what I am going through is one of the biggest tests of character I have ever faced.  I realised that, now, aged 46, I’m breaking down barriers, smashing through ingrained behaviour patterns that have been there probably since I was a toddler.  I can feel myself changing.  I can feel myself taking control of my life – REALLY taking control of my destiny in a way that I have never actually done before – even though previously I THOUGHT I had.  It really is a great dawning of a new era for me, and it’s going to stand me in good stead in my self-employment, whether that be in affiliate marketing, online, offline, whatever.  Wow, I just thought to myself – people pay for weeks of THERAPY to get here!

This realisation that I was breaking through some of my life’s oldest psychological barriers, changing myself, helped me to understand why it’s such hard going.  Some of those barriers have been resolutely in place since the 1960s, after all.  It gave me a new impetus, this realisation, and then a dose of serious admonishment – I started to beat myself up big-time.  I started to give myself a few home truths.  I reminded myself once more that getting started in internet marketing or whatever flavour of online business I end up with, well, it’s not so different from starting a business in the offline world, and not so different from starting any new enterprise even away from the world of business, for example deciding that you want to, I don’t know, get in training and run the marathon or swim the channel.

It takes work, of course – but more than that – as the late Roy Castle used to sing at the start of Record Breakers on the BBC, “If you want to be the best… you gotta have dedication”.  And lasting, undying dedication at that.  Setting up a business online or offline often requires a period when you will see NOTHING in return – no money, no satisfaction, no sense of achievement, no recognition, NOTHING.  There is nobody to ask for advice, nobody to cross-check decisions with, nobody to go for a coffee with, no financial return let alone financial independence, and constant hard graft.  And if it’s a business that’s new to you, you will be blundering about making a right mess of it all and wasting a load of time, money and energy aswell.

Having reacquainted myself with these home-truths, I very soon had reaffirmed by wholehearted commitment to self employment.  I mean, if I don’t use all my skill and experience and intelligence to make this work, what else am I going to do?  I already know, from detailed self-analysis, repeated several times over a period of many years, that I am in no way whatsoever suited to a career, dedicated to someone else’s business.  I have forced myself into this role time and time again and my heart has NEVER been in it and I have wasted over TWENTY YEARS of my life on this.  So, if I cannot work for someone else, at least not for a full-time career anyway, what alternative is there but to build my own business, to work on my own account?

There really isn’t any viable alternative for me – I have wasted enough time as it is, and now, aged 46, I just HAVE to make a go of working for myself, in whatever business, in whatever field, in whatever niche or niches that I decide or to some extent that the market dictates.  There is no choice if I want a fulfilled working life, and I need to work and act from now, from this minute, as if there are NEVER going be to ANY career openings for me ANYWHERE.  I need to forget about “job hunting”.  I need to pretend that there are no vacancies for me.  Ever.

I need to do this because in the past the biggest distraction for me has been the lure of money, easy money, to be gained by taking a salaried career-style job, or more lately by taking contract work that, in reality, looks and quacks like the dead duck of a pseudo-job that in day-to-day reality it actually is.

So, with a new resolve I started work yesterday, Monday, morning – determined that I would do ANYTHING to make this work, anything in line with my ethics that is.  And I kicked myself into action and told myself off for doubting myself, and gave myself a good talking to as my mother might, saying things along the lines of, well – you just have to do the work, you just have to do it, there is NO choice.  Wasting time on doubts is pointless.  Just get on with it, mechanically; forget about strategy for a while; just to the work, and eventually, maybe when you least expect it, and maybe in some way you never thought of, things will start to pay off.

I have learned something else from this episode.  I need to have a survival strategy for when I hit a black-spot.  Maybe I need to have a big red psychological “emergency stop” button, and when I “hit” it, maybe I need to break away from the desk and the laptop for a while, go for a walk, do something voluntary with kids, go out there and then for the rest of the day.  This “emergency stop button” would require me to sacrifice a few hours or even a whole day, but that sacrifice of a day could save a life doing my own thing, instead losing that life to some mindless employer.