Starting Over
Wiping the Slate Clean
I remember complaining to the corner store “bodega” in Rincon hill, San Francisco (or is it the “East Cut” now?) about the rain.
It was relentless, like a mini monsoon, for days. The owner looked at me and said, “it washes away all the stuff on the street and makes the grass green.”
He had a point. Clearly the day after the rain was, well, clear, and the grass at the makeshift dog park was lush and full. The rain made room for something new and beautiful.
Nature has its way of wiping the slate clean.
If you want to change your life and clear the slate it starts with one step forward.
It requires this step even when things are not perfectly planned because things change, plans go awry, your needs evolve. The analytics, as it were, can point to a different direction.”
Take One Step Forward Even If It’s a “Shitty First Draft”
The one piece of advice I’ve given that goes over the best, and is the most applicable to most people most of the time is:
Take one step forward every day. Crawl, walk, run.
And the next thing is, to trust yourself even if it means a complete redo, or starting over.
We get caught up in perfection or we nitpick the start of something.
My good ex, and Anne Lamont talk about a shitty first draft.
In Lamott’s book Bird by Bird (1994), she says we to let go and write those “shitty first drafts” that lead to the eventual brilliant piece. Everything starts somewhere.
She also said:
“E.L. Doctorow said once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”
I can tell you I have ZERO tolerance for people who critique the beginnings of something, that first draft, especially when they have not built something before.
It’s easy to tell others what to do or to assume you know best if you don’t know their situation and story. People project their own fears or inadequacies unto those who are doing because it is a mirror reflecting back on their inability to take action.
People who take action know that they have to start messy, start unsure, and start without a plan.
I once packed two suitcases and my dog and just started driving away from an abusive ex with no money, no plan, and no place to go. I checked into a hotel for two nights and knew I was safe for 48 hours and didn’t know much beyond that.
If someone had come up to me and shamed me for not having a “plan” I might very well not be alive. I knew that I HAD to leave my situation and that was all I knew. I needed to trust myself that something better was on the way. I had a mini “umbrella framework” (what I build for my consulting clients) of what I required from my life, but the details were not perfected before I took action.
Now–that’s an extreme example of taking a leap out of necessity, but the point is the same. If you want to change your life and clear the slate it starts with one step forward.
It requires this step even when things are not perfectly planned because things change, plans go awry, your needs evolve. The analytics, as it were, can point to a different direction.
Everything Went Wrong
I arrived in Bar Harbor last week, and instead of enjoying, I spent the first few days struggling with the idea that I somehow needed more experience, or more credentials or something to help women thrive in midlife, or help leaders and executives find focus.
For a few months now I’ve been listening to others telling me how I am not enough, or pointing to my failed startup as a way to make me feel like a failure (99% of startups fail and most successful businesses were founded after the founder failed a few times).
I’ve had interviews for consulting that have gone nowhere, changed my new idea a few times, licked my wounds from the January 13th dissolution of my company.
I have felt like I was not enough.
Abundance vs Scarcity Mindset
So I get here and have a few terrible pitch calls, have trouble sleeping, and the rain has been relentless.
So I did what I do when I require clarity, and I hiked a mountain. This time, I got a view of the ocean and all the little islands surrounding Mount Desert Island. I sat on rocks and I told myself what I have told many clients whether they are Fortune 500 leaders or midlife women:
“I have the answers, I just haven’t believed in myself enough to accept them.”
The answer is not more credentials or certifications or even time: it’s to trust that I can start over and I already have the skills and experience to do so.
I did a bunch of mini tests–my founder friends knew what I was up to–where I wrote different blogs to see what would resonate, tried a few webinars to gauge interest, polled people I knew. And ultimately, just like I teach clients, the way you go from zero to one and then 100 is a combination of your gut instinct and what lights you up with what your specific ideal audience seems to love.
That’s the magic. And it really doesn’t matter if some people don’t get it or love it. Not everyone wants the same thing. There are 3 dedicated italian restaurants within a quarter of a mile on Newbury street in Boston that cater to different crowds and they all thrive.
Scarcity mindset says “oh this already exists.”
Abundance mindset says not only is that ok, but it doesn’t actually exist, because there is only one you.
Give Up The Dead Weight
Starting over doesn’t require failure, it requires a desire to try something new. Sometimes that is forced upon us, and sometimes it begins with an inkling that your life could be different.
The lessons to takeaway are to trust yourself, surround yourself with other builders and believers, and as Toni Morrison says in her 1977 novel “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
