The “Sticking” Point
Know Thyself and be Freed!
The Set Up: I teach a 15 module class @ 1 module per week to business owners and entrepreneurs. This 15 module class on average takes me 20 weeks to take an entire class through. I know your next question is “why does a weekly 15 module class take 20 weeks to finish?” and it’s a question I began asking myself the first couple of weeks I taught it. The “sticking point” is a question I ask in the first module, in fact it’s the first question in the first module. The question is “Why do you do what it is you do for a living?” This question tends to completely hang the class up for some time until we work ourselves through it.
Now before you judge, I’ll admit it does seem like an easy question to answer until it becomes clear that I’m not asking for you to tell me the lifestyle you are looking looking to develop, or how much you want to travel, or what kind of car you want to buy when you “get successful”. Nope, I’m looking for a level of transparency in communication most people are not comfortable with. I’m seeking to develop a safe enough space for people to begin to share the story of how they ended up in the business they are currently in. My thinking, is that many people believe that they have just “stumbled” or “backed into” into their job or business or they are in it because they love speaking, or selling. I’m attempting to help my participants discover their authentic story of how and why they chose their business. This process takes a bit of diving, introspection, and digging around in our memories, psyches and in ourselves. This is an important process to begin to communicate our unique message and voice in the noisy market place.
As long as we continue to default to the same old tag lines everyone else in our industries use, we will continue to fail to communicate our unique passions, creativity, and gifts to the market place. “Why do you do what you do?” can really be translated to “Who are you really…at your core?” and that seems to be met with quite a bit of resistance and push back.
The Revelation: For some time now I have been aware of this resistance, I discuss it in class and even “coach” participants through it. Recently I heard another coach friend of mine Phil Lloyd of the Growth Coach speak about getting clients to understand their “identity” in the market place. This identity Phil is after, is in essense, the same question I am asking with my “Why” question.
Phil spoke about meeting similar resistance, and even came to the same conclusion…it requires a considerable amount of self discovery which is uncomfortable...but why is it so difficult? Just being aware of this phenomenom has not been good enough lately and I have continued to wrestle with why this process meets with such push back. As Phil continued with his presentation, I believe I stumbled on to a significant part of the answer.
It’s important at this point for me to mention that, in my experience most business owners, entrepreneurs and creatives aren’t more successful because they struggle with one simple thing I call the “sticking point”. What is this one thing? It’s simply the next action. If business owners were to simply embark on a journey to take the next action, or next step, if they stayed in the hunt taking consistent action on the most important task every hour everyday they would never find themselves bewildered as to why the revenue is at a stand still. The truth of the matter is that business owners on most days are simply “STUCK”! Follow me here, IF you took the time to do the important work and discover “Who” you truly authentically are in the market place. IF you took the time to dig around and discover your true “Why”, then you would forever after be 100% responsible for your life and everything in it. IF you did this, you would NEVER again be able to blame your failures on the economy, the market place, the seasons, holidays, bad clients, fickle clients…NO! IF you really took the time to discover who you are, you’d find your authentic voice and the only one responsible for your success and / or failure is YOU! I believe most people realize this at some gut level and resist the process.
Here’s an analogy I use with my classes; You are traveling down a mountain road. On one side heavy traffic, on the other side a treacherous incline. Suddenly a vehicle swerves into your lane and in order to avoid the collision you swerve off the road and onto the incline. Now, if you take your hands completely off the wheel as you careen down the mountainside you will certainly bounce around, and slide, maybe even tumble end over end, but one thing is for sure…you have zero responsibility and sero control over the outcome. However IF you keep your hands on the steering wheel, you can counter the slide, cut wheels this way or that, or even apply the brakes and the difference is that you have accepted total responsibility..you have an opportunity to change the outcome! I know many business owners in both cars and you can imagine, I’ve seen businesses fail and those that sky rocket to success. The business owners in the “driverless” car are the ones who are stuck in one spot day after day, going to the same meetings, just earning enough to be able to say they still own a business but blaming outside circumstances all along the way. See, even as entreprenuers some of us still like to hedge our bets and keep a losing card in our hand “just in case”. There is this thing in us that wants to say “I could be really successful if it weren’t for ______________ (you fill in the blank). I believe in order to win big…we must take our foot off the brake by being willing to do the difficult work up front…discover who you really are. Who are you? What is your personal mission statement? What’s important to you? What ideals will you die for? Do the work, stop hedging your bets, stake your claim, get rid of your sticking points…know yourself and be freed!
