Dare to Begin by happydeliveries

Beginner’s Luck. It’s been haunting me. I mean, here I am, less than a full year into being a Woman of the World (which is what I call being an entrepreneur, for some unknown reason), and things are going, in a word, amazeballs. I’ve coached over 100 people. I’m on a consistent 4-6 week waitlist and have been for months. I signed with a literary agent. I’ve been asked to lead a workshop at the Etsy Success Symposium. I mean, I can go on. And despite my fairly recent conversion from pessimistic optimist/optimistic pessimist to full-on optimist, and despite my fairly recent decision to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, and despite the real, true, honest gut feeling that this all won’t disappear (I really do trust it), I can’t help but hear those very quiet Vampire whispers, saying “You’ve been here before.”

My first full year as a real estate agent, from 2003-2004, I was the #1 agent in the office 5 or 6 times. It was a commission-only job and I worked my butt off 6-7 days/week, but I remember having lunch with a friend that year and saying, “I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner!” At one point the Vice President of the company I worked for started a sentence with, “When you have your own real estate company…” And even though I wrinkled my nose up, knowing that didn’t sound at all appealing, I kept at it, climbing the ladder. I was given my own account to be in charge of, I was asked to train new agents, and I eventually received the largest split in that company at that time (or so I was told).

My second year of real estate? Well, I landed on my face with a big thud. No need for the details, but I made something like a quarter of what I made my first year, which was enough to get me into a lot of debt and have to continually ask my parents for help. Not good. Not fun.

I’ve thought often as to whether I had beginner’s luck that first year in real estate, and now, 3 months away from going into my second year as a Woman of the World, I’m stressing a bit over the same thing. Is all my success as a coach gonna end up being beginner’s luck? And what the heck is so lucky about being a beginner, anyways? So many of my clients disparage themselves for not being experienced at something, and want to blow right past the beginner stage to the Know What I’m Doing stage. Of course, as a life coach and a fairly recent optimist, I started thinking about all the awesome things that come from being a beginner. Things like:

• Being totally open to experimentation without major repercussions, and learning the process that works best for you. At the start of a new idea/project/business, your biggest investment is time and energy (usually). The space is wide open to figure out what works for you, whether we’re talking about advertising or time management or your work process. Yes, it sucks if you pour your heart and soul into something that doesn’t take off (like the first time I announced a group coaching program and had 1 person sign-up, which does not a group coaching program make), but you’re able to dust yourself off pretty quickly and tweak what might be broken or move onto the next thing (yes, I have a new and improved way of launching my group coaching sessions, and soon!). Now that my business is growing and I’m investing real money back into it, I definitely feel like there’s more at stake.
• You have more excitement and enthusiasm now than you probably ever will again. Not to say I’m jaded on lethargic or empathetic. Not at all. But man, when I look at pictures of my Freedom From Corporate America Party, I don’t see a single one where it doesn’t look like I’m drunk on happiness (and margaritas). I was ready to take on the world! Now..well, I’m still ready to take on the world, but in a more one-foot-in-front-of-the-other way, not a toss-my-hat-up-in-the-air-a-la-Marlo-Thomas way.
• You have to work harder to keep things new and fresh. I mean sure, I could keep doing what I’m doing and do nothing but private client sessions and The Declaration of You for the next 10 years & probably do pretty well for myself. But seriously – where’s the fun in that?! Not that working with new clients and a new round of Declarers isn’t exciting – it absolutely is! – but I have a feeling you know what I mean. The career change workbook I just wrote that totally rhymes? Exciting. The book proposal I’m in the middle of? Super funness. The silly new promotion we have up our sleeve for The Declaration of You? Amazeballs. 8 months ago, all I had to do was not commute to make it feel like a party!
• There are little to no expectations, and you accept that making mistakes is part of the process. Isn’t it so nice to be nice to yourself? By being a beginner, you usually tell that Perfectionist Vampire to shut up, and don’t beat yourself up when something goes wrong or looks ugly. But after we’ve been doing something for a while? Whoa nelly – that’s when one wrong move has us saying to ourselves, “What happened there, idiot?” or “You thought you could do this for a living?! Yeah right!” Enough, please.

What have I learned from my own path? That it’s nice to feel all confident and experienced, but don’t be in rush to get there. Take your time and revel in the excitement, the openness, the awesomeosity that’s being a newbie. And when you cross the beginner threshold, take the benefits with you: being nice to yourself, working on new/exciting things, being accepting (even enthusiastic!) of experimenting, and keeping your eyes open for the lessons that you’re always gonna be learning. Only then can you create your own Old, Experienced Expert “Luck”!

Thanks to @christinajacobs, @maggieroseblog, @meggywang, @ukraidersfan, @deannamullican, @MetaCookbook, @commonreaders & @thinkblotcom for helping me shape this post via twitter. Come follow me @WhenIGroUpCoach so we can scratch each other’s backs!

Tags: Meaningful Mindsets, Michelle's Memoirs

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 1:36 am and is filed under Creative Career Charge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.