Clear as Mud

I recently met with a potential client, who I’ll call “Marissa,” who had booked a discovery session to discuss getting some help marketing for her writing business. She wanted to replace her current income with her writing “job” for something more suited to her. Now let me give you a little back story here; she loves writing; it’s what she feels she is called to do, and she wakes up excited each day, ready to write. The problem with her current writing work is that she’s writing for others, and while the pay is good, the material she’s asked to write doesn’t light her up.
Clear as Mud Marissa knew that to grow a writing business or any business for that, she would need a platform and be the “go-to person” so that people interested in the things she offered would find her and want to work with her. However, what Marissa was struggling with was what did she really want to offer to the world. As a writer, she really wanted to write the books she’d had in her head, the projects she’d started, and the new ones that always seemed to come up. A fear of how she would be able to replace her job income crept in and to compensate for that; she’d started down another path that was taking her away from what she really wanted to do. Yet, before our call, she hadn’t seen that.

Marissa was spending time working on a program, which she didn’t have a real passion for, but felt that it could help her with her income. Okay, sounds good at first, but I asked her, is this what you REALLY, REALLY want to do? Her answer came without hesitation, NO! Okay, then why start something that you don’t want to do to get away from something you don’t like now, hoping that one day it will give you what you need to do what you really want to do?

Stunned a bit, she said, “I see that now; THANK YOU” after a brief pause!Thank You

Distractions, those shiny objects I like to call them, are what take us off course of what we really want and where we really wish to be. While many of them, such as the example I gave you with Marissa, sound like a good idea, they really are taking us away from our true desire; they are essentially dream robbers.

I gave her the following exercise, which I recommend you to also, to help her avoid distractions and give her a place to check back in before she makes any decisions on new business ventures or says yes to anything.

Grab a sheet of paper

Go ahead; I’ll wait while you do that

Okay, got one?

Excellent!

Write down how you want to feel, describe what it looks like, where you find it, how you look when you feel this way, etc.  Years ago, I did this, and one of the top feelings I wanted to feel was FREE. I wanted the freedom to work with the people I enjoyed working with, the clients I adored, and from anywhere in the world my heart desired.

Writing out what freedom felt like and then referencing it when I need to make a decision has helped me avoid many distractions. Checking back in with that feeling and its importance to me before I say yes or wander off to do something helps keep me more in a place I want to be, FREE.

In the end, I told Marissa now wasn’t the time to work on building her platform. While my team and I would have loved to help her freshen up her website, make a big splash on social media and grow her email list, she didn’t have a clear idea of what she wanted to offer to the world. We’ll be working together soon on that; for now, she’s working on getting clear on the feeling she wants to wake up excited about each day.

If you’re feeling like Marissa and would like some help with clarity, please click here to learn about coaching with me.  Let’s chat about going from Clear as Mud to Crystal Clear.

Here’s to feeling waking up each day excited about your work and knowing that it’s exactly what you should be doing to feel the way you most want to feel.