Tell me if you’ve ever been in this situation.
You’re in the early stages of building a full-time freelance business. Or maybe you’re trying to take your existing freelance business to a new level.
Either way, you have a big goal.
But you’re so far away from reaching it that you begin to question whether or not it’s even possible.
Maybe the income level you’re trying to reach sounds unbelievable.
Or perhaps the level of performance you’re trying to reach sounds impossible.
Or maybe you’re trying to maintain a high income but want to cut back on your hours by 30 percent.
It sounded like a good goal a few weeks ago when you wrote it down. But now that “reality” has set in, you’re wondering why you ever thought such a goal was possible.
So you either give up on the goal altogether. Or you shelve it for another time.
Sound familiar? I know I’ve done this countless times.
What’s the problem here? Why the self-sabotage? Why would we do this to ourselves?
Here’s my take: Most of us are obsessed with the “How.”
- HOW the heck am I going to reach that income level as a freelancer?
- HOW am I going to learn that new skill and promote it credibly to clients and prospects?
- HOW in the world am I going to sustain my current income level if I cut back my hours by 30 percent?
Well, I’m here to tell you that you need to chill out and forget about the “How.”
I don’t have all the answers. But here’s what I’ve learned over the last year:
Yes, you need goals. And yes, you need to craft a plan. That’s all critically important. But you need to be flexible. Because life doesn’t always work out exactly as you script it.
By setting a goal and drafting a plan for its accomplishment, you’re feeding your subconscious mind with a goal and a set of instructions. From there, your main job is simply to take “inspired action.”
Inspired Action is any action you take based on an inside nudge. In the words of marketing guru and coach Dr. Joe Vitale:
“…An Inspired Action is when you suddenly get a desire to drive to the store. You may have no idea why you need to go to the store right now. But something within you is urging you out the door. Follow that hunch. It may lead you to your goal. At the store, you may meet the right person. Or find the right product. Or pick up the right magazine that will lead you to completing your dream.”
Looking back at every major goal I’ve accomplished in life, I now realize that I achieved them using this very formula:
- I wrote down the goal
- I created a plan for its accomplishment
- I tried not to obsess too much about the plan’s details and instead…
- I took inspired action
For instance, I spent a little more than two years moonlighting as a freelancer before I finally quit my day job. I was earning a six-figure income as a sales professional, And I didn’t want to sacrifice that income when I went solo.
So I set a goal to earn at least $100,000 during my first year as a full-time freelancer. I had a plan. But frankly, that was a lofty goal. I had no idea what all the moving parts were going to look like. I just trusted that everything would all come together somehow.
And it did! Mostly in unexpected ways. For instance…
• A chance encounter with a friend led her to recommend me to a friend of hers…who then recommended me to her boss…who hired me on the spot for a series of projects (and who’s still a great client, 5 years later).
• An old boss got in touch with me and offered me a retainer agreement with his new company.
• I volunteered to be part of a judging panel for a marketing executive awards event — something I almost didn’t get involved in because I was so busy at the time. But I did it. And after it was all over, one of the executives I interviewed called me about my services and hired me to work on a series of projects for his company.
Looking back, most of this happened very differently from my initial vision. Everything from the way I’d get clients to the type of writing I’d be doing. All the way to the type of business I ended up creating.
But I still reached my goal.
I tell you all this for a couple of reasons. First, if you have a big goal for this year, you need to write it down and draft a plan. But accept the fact that it may not materialize exactly the way you envision it.
Also, if you become too obsessed with the “how,” you may end up thinking that your plan didn’t work…just because it didn’t exactly follow your imagined script. Ironically, you’ll feel that way even if you DO accomplish your goal.
Just remember: at the end of the day, it’s not about how accurately your plan worked out. It’s about reaching your goal…and growing personally and professionally in the process.
How about you? Have you set a big goal but still have no idea how it will happen?
Have you accomplished something worthwhile that materialized in a way you could have never conceived?
As always, I’d love to hear from you in the comments area below.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the insightful article! As a “Career Coach” this is exactly what I teach, only the career development theory it stems from is called “Planned Happenstance.” It is a hard sell for many people because we are taught to think in a very linear way: set a goal, then take steps 1, 2, and 3 and we will arrive. For most people it does not work out quite that way so I don’t really understand why so many of us insist on sticking so closely to that model! Thank you for giving me another way to communicate this message to people who may get an “aha!” moment from reading it from a slightly different perspective, and a voice that is not mine! I intend to pass your post around to everyone I can get it to. Cheers!
This was a great read for someone like myself who is delving full time into the world of freelancing. Thanks for sharing!
This is a great “inspirational” piece. Thanks! I think a plan is important, but I do think persistence is a part of the success formula!
Best,
Carolyn
Dave – Agreed! Seems as if the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I still feel strongly that you need goals and a plan. But when it comes to getting down to the minute details of the plan (the hour-by-hour stuff), that’s probably a bit too granular. I also agree that it’s interesting that most people still don’t buy into this. But then again, we’re a very process- and engineering-centric society, so I’m not surprised that 99% of the info on this topic promotes a very linear approach. Glad you enjoyed the article. Thanks for spreading the word!
Nikki – Congrats on working toward full-time freelancing! Glad to hear the ideas were helpful.
Carolyn – So true about persistence! Most people give up too early. And my fear is that the younger generation — especially those just now entering college or the workforce — are giving up (on any type of challenge) much earlier than other generations before them. Is it me, or is anyone else seeing this trend?
This is brilliant.
It’s so typical that before we think about and clarify the “What?”, we jump to the “How?” And even when we jump to the “How”, the “What” is still pretty vague and general.
Peter Block has written a great book about this “What” “How dilemma”: The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters.
He presents the psychology behind this interesting phenomenon.
I think this also makes a very good point on word of mouth marketing. People you have met, spoke to, remembered by, are all potential clients for your business. People you may have never thought of as a potential client, may know a friend of a friend who really needs you.
Tom – Thanks for the book suggestion! Just added it to my Amazon cart.
Penny – So true! I think most of us underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing, especially when starting out as a solo professional.
I love the concept of “inspired action.” One of the things I like most about being self-employed is that you can honor those bursts of inspiration or strong desires to do a particular activity in that moment without having to follow someone else’s schedule. And we can do that with our business plans as well – set our intention for the overall plan, then work on pieces as we are inspired to do so. Simply taking action – any action that moves us forward – is a great thing.
I did set some lofty goals for 2010 and when I read this post it felt like you were writing it directly for me! Thanks for the encouragment as well as the reminder to follow gut feeling.
Holly – I just picked up on something from Earl Nightingale’s “Strangest Secret.” He said, “Don’t worry about *how* you’ll accomplish your goal. Leave that to a power greater than yourself.”
What’s amazing to me is that this is a recording from the 1950s. WAY before the Law of Attraction had entered the mainstream via movies like “The Secret.”
Further proof that this is a timeless principle, not some fad.
Hope you rock the house in 2010!
Hi, Ed,
This chimes with my experience perfectly. I’m a freelance writer and editor, a sometime journalist, a publications manager, a script doctor: a wordsmith, in short. And my career has taken some funny and interesting turns after chance encounters.
I met a woman in a Greenwich Village coffee shop who mistook me for an old college classmate of hers, and became, subsequently, my writing mentor, and introduced me to her literary agent at William Morris (thereby hangs a tale).
A friend and colleague I had worked with at a business publishing house offered me my first freelance consulting job years later, as a publications manager for an NGO.
This led indirectly to another friend’s asking me to write a major United Nations report. That evolved into a gig that ran for six years, writing UN reports for some sweet money. As well as writing for other NGOs.
A chance acquaintance in the Tall Ship world (South Street Seaport Museum, NYC) asked if I would like to edit a newsletter for a bunch of rocket scientists: he didn’t have the time. I met and interviewed some of the most famous men in space, rocket scientists, physicists, cosmonauts/astronauts, and was an aerospace journalist for a while. That same fellow also got me an entree to the world of maritime journalism.
Another friend, a director (mostly music videos) over dinner one night really pushed me to call a TV development director I knew and to ask for a tryout as a story editor. I still work for that producer to this day.
I didn’t plan any of this! If anything, I think I need to do some more planning–but I can surely attest to the value of serendipity.
Love your blog.
Gail Cooper