Posted Question: Favorite Quotes

The good humor and deep wisdom that is dispensed at Inner Circle meetings is worth capturing and revisiting occasionally. Where else would you hear a great tidbits like this? “Top line revenue is crack to an entrepreneur.” Share your own favorites.

What’s your favorite quote from an Inner Circle meeting?

Walking Off the Cliff

There are a lot of things they don’t tell you in business school about running your own business. Probably because they don’t want to scare you off.

There’s a lot of talk about needing to have marketing talent, financial savvy, an analytical mind and brilliant negotiation skills. What they don’t tell you is that most of all, you’re going to need a bottomless supply of courage.

When you start a company, if you’re like most, you feel like you’re walking off a cliff. You’re doing something you believe in, but that you’ve never done before. The unknown is scary, deep and, well, unknown. After a while, you get more comfortable as you successfully overcome obstacles and grow. Then, you hit a situation that is new — a transition to the next step of the business — like hiring a management team, opening a new location, or entering a new markets.

Then you realize, “walking off the cliff” the first time was only the beginning. There are many more stomach-in-your-throat moments to face.

Standing on the edge of a cliff, especially after you’ve survived the original leap, can be a very dangerous time. You might shy away from taking new risks because, unlike the situation at the beginning, you may have much more to lose now if you are wrong. Or, you know how to run the business as it is, but not how to run it as it will be.

Most companies cannot stay where they are; the force to grow is pulls at them like the tide pulls out the moon. So, the new “walk off the cliff” has to be taken at each transition point.

Author Barry J. Moltz sums it up in the title of his book, You Need to Be a Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Own Business. He says, you not only need courage, you actually need to be a lunatic. “You need to be a lunatic who has a steadfast long-term belief in her vision — a lunatic who will try anything, ask anyone for everything, and see everyone as a source of help. You also need to be comfortable being alone in your beliefs because the only thing others will agree with you on is that you are indeed crazy.”

Only someone who is crazy, and courageous, and an occasional cliff jumper can survive the challenges and transitions that a business brings.

Stop Being Wilfull

So much exhaustion, pain and resentment can come from wishing things to be different than they are. You want your spouse to do things exactly as you think they should be done. You want your work/career to always follow a specifically defined path that you have created in your mind. You want your children or your employees to be a certain way, behave a certain way.

It is critical that you watch your attempts to will something to happen or to will someone to fit a specific mold of your design. This version of your will comes from your head. It does not come from a heart-connected vision. It’s an idea you made up in your mind; a way you think it should be. You are driving the idea willfully – “I’m in charge. It will happen according to my time line; according to the specific way I think it should be. I know my way is right.”

When effort enters it should become a big red alert with flashing lights that you are trying to push through an idea instead of following energy and flow. Willful is a push; following energy is a dance. Willful involves struggle, effort, and exhaustion. Following energy involves fun, grace and ease.

If you are expelling effort every day toward some ideal goal you have set, or toward having your spouse act according to your ideal plans, and it drains you, exhausts you, then each day can be a temperamental attack on your self and those you love. This willful push to direct your life is-self defeating and it doesn’t work.

Abraham Hicks says, “Tell everyone you know: ‘My happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.’ Then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they are doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel – and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love them, is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.”

When you find yourself efforting, it is important to change your focus to more energizing actions and behaviors, not should-do, exhausting, cranky-making chores. Give up control and find something to focus on that brings energy and flow into the moment. It can be anything that fires your heart, tickles your fancy, makes you laugh, and attracts flow into this moment.

Energetic flow equals joy. Willful struggle equals cranky. Your choice.