A belief many people have is that they must have a plan for everything in life. But sometimes life happens for itself, organically. Joining me on the podcast to discuss this belief is Angie Cole, creator of Untaming the Wild, a place for really gritty, creative, powerful women who want to create work that keeps them lit up and well-paid.
Angie’s clients come to her because they are interested in changing something about their work life. Many people want to start or grow their businesses. Some folks are changing careers or changing their positions. And the thing people come to her asking for is a plan. “I need a plan. I need to make more money and I need you to tell me how to do this thing!”
We believe everything has a blueprint and we must follow the steps, and then the thing is produced and for lots of us, that just doesn't work when it comes to creating a business we really love, that is part of who we are or something that we really love and care about.
Do you really love your business?
For many business owners, they have been running their businesses one way for a long time. Then they run to the end of being able to follow the rules and no longer find it fulfilling. And so it calls for something new. If you spend your life just following a plan that was working for you, then you wouldn't be feeling the way you're feeling. So you've got to throw out all those thoughts and come back to what really feels right. You need to ask yourself: What makes me happy? What makes me lit up?
This is especially important for myself, as well as Angie, who also struggles with ADHD. If we force ourselves to do something it comes at a cost. It’s not sustainable. So, working with a rigid plan doesn’t work for us.
Listen to what is happening in your business
An important part of enjoying your business is listening to what's happening. To notice what you're enjoying. Notice what's working and not feel like if it needs to change or pivot, but that you're following the path you're meant to be going down. It's not a failure. It's a success to be able to change and follow something that's even better.
Everybody wants to tell you the top 10 things you absolutely must do in order to not be a horrible failure. It makes for an overwhelming amount of noise.
Angie has found her business, for better or worse, has none of the things you're supposed to do. And yet she has grown a thriving coaching practice for the last seven years and paid all the bills and works with the most incredible humans. Not because she has followed a plan, but because she has followed her intuition. She listened to her clients, and she asked them what's important to them. She paid attention to where her energy wants to go.
Business shouldn’t be hard
Business shouldn't feel terrible and hard. It will have scary moments, especially when you go into something new that you haven't done before. When you're trying new things like that, stretching into something new, it generally feels scary.
There's also a kind of hard and terrible that comes from forcing yourself to do something that isn't right for you. Forcing yourself to follow some rule that you just know in your bones is not in alignment weighs you down and accumulates over time. The difference between a bad kind of terrible and a good one is that with a good terrible you will really want the outcome. Good fear is fruitful.
Follow your intuition
Beautiful things can come from following your intuition and seeing what's coming. You don't get that from always following the rules.
Creativity doesn't follow a blueprint. There's no plan. Trust that the little voice or that little pinch in your gut or that little glow in your chest is right. It isn’t just something you're making up. That's the hardest part of living this way. Stepping into the world of business this way is trusting your instincts, trusting yourself to know the right thing to do and not looking for that outside of you or the dominant culture.
Stop believing you need a plan for everything
Believing we need a plan started when we were kids. When we went to school, we were taught to sit down and listen. Somebody else was going to tell us how something worked and then we needed to remember what they told us and then tell it back to them. And that's how we believe we need to be in order to be successful.
Many business owners, including myself, learn by experiencing and learn by doing. That's how learning happens that I am able to integrate and use. By the time we finish school, there's a lot of years of being programmed that learning works a certain way. To throw that way of living out and say, you know what, I need to trust my instinct, can be hard, but it can also be rewarding.
The only way to begin to trust your instinct is to practice. Even if you’re skeptical. Try listening and see what happens. Lean a little further into your intuition and instinct and see what happens and when it works – keep doing it.
There's so much out there to explore and we need to try to learn how to trust ourselves more and more. Trust that you are on the right track and don’t assume that you’re not on the right track!
Learn more about following your intuition and get to know Angie better by checking out her website untamingthewild.com as well as following her on Facebook and Instagram.
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Podcast editing done by Eric Wellman