Finding a way to do business despite the fear

I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but one of the things slowing down my ultimate success is fear. Why don’t I want to admit that? Well, because while fear is a normal part of doing business on my own, my fear is based on issues a bit less ordinary.

There is a natural inclination towards being intimidated by people you don’t know. Call it an outgrowth of the survival instinct. Or an extension of living in the projects and treating everyone you meet with a healthy level of suspicion. You just never knew who was safe and who could be dangerous. The best route was to assume everyone was hazardous. There was nothing worse than trusting someone only to have them stab you in the back – several times. Literally – with a knife. Getting jittery was natural.

We tend to move away from situations that could possibly cause pain and contacting a complete stranger to ask them for work (or a date for that matter) is an open invitation to rejection. Rejection is something that humans handle in different ways. You can become used to it and convince yourself that you don’t feel anything. Or you will rebel against that rejection and fight it on every level. There really isn’t a middle ground with this one. Because of how we’re wired, you either fight it or you run away from it.

Some people are better at masking their feelings. They appear as if nothing or no one ever bothers them. They are the supermen or superwomen of the world who bulldoze through any obstacle or opponent that dares challenge them.

More power to those people. I, however, am not in their ranks.

I take a bit slower approach since my personality doesn’t include any bulldozer attachments. I began my company just after leaving a part time job at SunTrust. Everything I did was aimed at letting people know I was out there in a semi-passive way.

I created brochures and business cards. I built my own website. I let people know that I was out there during networking meetings and chamber of commerce events. I sent out sales letters to non-profit organizations offering pro-bono services for a short time (to build my portfolio). I made friends with a few other independent business owners and tried to learn some of the ins and outs from people who’ve been on their own for a while.

But – I did not get on the phone and start willy-nilly calling people. I didn’t walk up to business owners I didn’t know and start my spiel. I never found myself trapped in an elevator with the CEO of XYZ Company. I am not open to that sort of rejection.

Through word of mouth I did get my first assignment. Cool, right? It was a total disaster. Partly because I didn’t define who I was and what I did, and partly because the business owner wanted the world, but didn’t want to pay for it.

That failure and the lack of other initial leads intensified the fear and I found myself wondering if leaving my job had been such a hot idea. I got out the book of lists and tried again with the sales letters. Still kind of passive I know, but at least I was trying something.

Why not just get on the phone and call a lot of people? Let me explain my issue with the phone.

I have spent the last 19 years in jobs that feature heavy phone contact with the public or internal employees. I have been screamed at. Called out my name. Treated as though I weren’t human. Now, granted, having people scream at me probably shouldn’t have gotten to me. I should have just let it roll off my back like it didn’t matter. I should have let some of the acid comments, condemnations and pure hatred just run in one ear and out the other, right? That might have worked if I wasn’t the person I am. I love helping people. That’s all I’ve ever really done. Help others. I wouldn’t take customer service jobs if I didn’t like helping. So to have that thrown back in my face hurt. It’s never fun to be trying to solve a problem and have a person spit on you.

Customer service is a fascinating world full of ‘interesting’ people. Some are there to help and some are there for the paycheck. No matter the reason for taking the job I fully understand why folks on the other end of the line sometimes act like they don’t care when you call to get something taken care of or fixed. Humans aren’t very fond of being treated like dirt, and it only takes a little while to turn a caring, trusting person into a raging asshole. Clark Howard likes to complain about customer service people, I’d like to see him do the job for 18 years just to see if he’d get it…

When I left AT&T I swore to myself that before I ever got another customer service job, I would shoot myself in the face. My hatred of the telephone extends into my private life. The phone can ring in the house and I will only look at it.

I could be three inches away, but if I don’t recognize the number as a friend, family or client, I will let it go to voice mail. I always call right back, especially if it is a client. But the odds of getting me on the first ring are slim. I do a gut check every time the phone rings. It’s become an involuntary muscle response.

That’s why something like cold calling won’t work for me. Hell, I’m not even fond of being on the phone with people I know.

My methods are going to have to remain what bulldozer people would call ‘passive’ for now. Networking meetings, sales pitches via letter or email, chamber of commerce business events, word of mouth, my web site and the HC newsletter. That sort of thing. Until I develop those muscles that allow me to do it the other way, it’s all I have to work with.

What I risk

Because I’ve chosen the task of being honest with myself this year, I have to admit that there are some disturbing aspects to my decision.

The single greatest one is the possibility that I might discover my core values and desires don’t match that of my wife or the people I currently know. It’s frightening to think that I might realize who I am inside is not in alignment with the life I’ve been living for the last 20 odd years.
I’m deliberately not going back any further because 17 years ago when I met my current wife, I was another person on a completely different path in life. It’s almost like my old life truly ended and I was reborn as the man I am now. That’s how I had to treat it to survive my divorce with some sense of myself still intact.

So for purposes of this thought experiment, I am not going to worry about anything that happened before 1990. With the exception of thinking about my oldest son, I try very hard not to revisit that period of time anyway.

Since 1990 I’ve been married to a wonderful woman. We have been compared to mirrors of each other on more occasions than I care to remember. And although I think the glass of the mirror sometimes reflects darkly, I don’t think there’s anything more or less remarkable about our relationship. I love her and she loves me and that’s good enough.

My concern comes from the fact that a lot of my goals in life require me to examine aspects of my desires and wishes that are not even close to matching hers. And one of my greatest goals in life has always been to sail around the world. I have read dozens of books about sailors both past and present who have inspired in me. But my wife has stated that she is uninterested in stepping foot on a boat. I also have a strong desire to move to South East Alaska. I would not have a single problem spending the rest of my life in Ketchikan. It’s been a dream of mine for almost 15 years. Again it’s another thing that my wife is not interested in.

There are other personal aspects and goals that I won’t talk about here, but they have the same set of issues involved.

Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. My wife is a wonderful person and I love her more every day. It’s just that her personal desires for what she wants from her life are different than mine. This is partly the fault of me taking so long to figure out the things I want. If we’d discussed this sort of thing at the beginning of our relationship, it wouldn’t be an issue now. I just wish I’d been smarter back then.

As to the reasons that I feel this way now - life in the last 10 years has taken on a static hue. Things don’t change much from one day to the next and after a while it gets stale. Going to work, paying bills, watching the grass grow… man. After a while it gets maddening. Some people wait until they retire to try to fit this kind of searching into their lives. But since retirement is at least 30 years away (should I choose to have a career to retire from instead of just holding jobs) it makes no sense to wait. At this point all I really want is a job that helps pay for the lifestyle I want to live. Or to build up my businesses to the point where I can do them no matter where I am.

It’s one of the reasons that I am so drawn to writing. All I really need is a pencil and piece of paper. This laptop is nice, but it’s just a tool. If I can pull my head out of my ass long enough to get back in touch with the part of me that knows how to tell cool stories then I know I will be fine. But I really think that its going to take something drastic like a trip around the world to wake that part of me up again.

Daily, everyday life puts the best part of us to sleep. Think I’m wrong? How often do you go after your goals now compared to how you were 10 years ago? 15 years ago? I’ll bet that it’s less now than it was then. Life tends to get in the way. You get buried in just trying to survive and goals or dreams go right out the window.

I do know a few people who are going after their goals and winning awards in the process. But they are in the MINORITY. The great mass of humanity never gets to achieve even 10% of their dreams. It’s sad to contemplate.

But it’s also very motivational.

When you stare into the mirror, the only one looking back is the real you. The part you can’t lie to. It see’s all of the darkness and light that exists inside you. I don’t care how fast you run; you will NEVER outrun the littlest voice inside. The one that only accepts the truth about the life you live. You can’t bullshit that voice. It knows better. It doesn’t fall for the crap coming from your ego. It doesn’t accept the ‘facts’ pushed on you by people from outside your own mind. If you are overweight, you know it. If you are cheating on your spouse, you know it. If your life is less than what you want, you know it. And that little voice will beat you half to death with the truth until you either do something about it, or jump out a window.

Turn on the news for a few minutes. I’ll wait…

See what I mean? It doesn’t matter where you live. There are thousands of unhappy people all over. They get Andy Warhol’s famous 15 minutes in the worst possible way. And of course the media is there to completely glamorize the event in sparking light and HD sound.

So, facing that alternative, why not make some decisions that are just for you? Decide to be happy, follow your own path. It may cost some things or relationships in the short run. But since you only get to live once, the risk is worth it.

The voice or the echo?

When you are a child, the adults in your life control your every move.

You are told what to do, what not to do, what to think and what to believe is true about the world around you.

Your opinion matters only in how closely aligned it is with the caregivers needs. Don't believe me? Look at the children that might be in your life (or your friends’ children if you don't have any). How often does a parent truly pay attention to what that child is saying? And, even more telling, how often does that parent take to heart or act on the information?

Now, granted, you might be thinking that the parent doesn't act on it since the words are coming from an unformed, immature and undisciplined mind. But think this through - how often have you seen a child spend hours on a task that doesn't make sense to you? And yet that child has the discipline to see the project through. (It doesn't matter what it is or if it even works, that's not the point) I can't count the number of adults who don't have 1/10th that discipline.

As a result of all that parental control one of two things will happen. The child will eventually rebel against the perceived lack of internal control of their life. They will then begin to distrust everything that comes out of the mouth of any 'adult'. This includes family members, teachers, bosses, friends, police, or any other authority figure. People who take this path tend to lead lives that do not include a load of circumscribed rules. They will follow their own internal voices to whatever destiny awaits. Hopefully it is one that is in alignment with who they are inside and therefore beneficial.

The other outcome is actually less desirable. The child will fall into a pattern of seeking out authority figures to help run their lives because they never feel like adults. They will gravitate to the strongest person they can find and become mired in subservient dogma. You see this time and again in people who don’t seem to have personalities of their own. They follow behind another person agreeing with everything that occurs, bad or good. You will also see this in people who don’t seem to have a style of their own. They are chameleons that morph and change according to the group they are currently with. It’s almost impossible to discern who the real person is because it’s so deeply hidden, or completely non-existent. People like this have no opinion that isn’t part of the group opinion. Get them alone and question them and it’s like talking to a wall or an advocate for someone else.

The above is one of the things that I am trying to change in my own life. I’ve caught myself doing the chameleon thing. Changing from one personality to the next depending on the group I am with.

Some of it comes from being black, but not having a lot of ‘black’ attributes. I don’t speak in slang or Ebonics. I love to read and listen to other types of music besides hip-hop or rap. I am a huge science fiction and fantasy fan. Some of my favorite characters include the X-Men, SpongeBob, and hobbits.

When I am in a group of black males I bury all of this. I don’t let any of it show. My vocal intonations change. I use slang or cuss a lot. I drink too much. Everything that makes up the real me is completely submerged in order to either fit in or avoid being judged. My sense of humor becomes cruder and even what I think is on a different level. I do this because I am tired of being told that I ‘act white’.

When I am around a white or educated crowd, I am much more reserved and quiet. My encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek trivia rolls off my tongue. My speech patterns contain no slang, no Ebonics, and no deliberately mispronounced words. I talk about music and technology and writing. Of course, I do a bit more nodding my head. This is because I know that I am not the sharpest knife in the block and I usually need a moment or two to formulate a witty response. I do this because I am then thought of as ‘well spoken.’

In a mixed crowd, I sort of combine the two. I use more slang and my humor becomes kind of crude again. But it’s more controlled. I watch what I say carefully, gauging my response to the type of crowd. I talk about the weather and taking care of my house and other safe subjects. I do this because I am then thought of as a ‘good host’.

Where does all this come from? Perhaps as part of a childhood that included being shuttled back and forth between parents. Maybe it’s from going between the hood and the subdivision. Or maybe it’s from the lessons learned moving from an urban area, to a rural area to the suburban area of central California. I don’t know and at this point it really doesn’t matter. I’m not a child anymore. But there are times that I still feel myself slipping into that long ago role.

The voice or the echo? Every time I get into a conversation with a new person I wonder which one I am.

Still working on focus

I promised myself that this year would be about focus. The theme and the goal for the whole year were to finally gain some sort of focus and clarity in my life.

I’ve become aware of death stalking me like a black panther in the jungle. It waits and watches and pulls no punches when it’s time to gather you up. The only solace I can draw from this short life is that I tried to live it the way I wanted to.

The trick is to figure out exactly what that means. Since focus is the key, I have to know how I want to live my life. What do I want to do? What experiences matter most?

When I was a kid I wanted adventure. Exploration and discovery around every corner. It didn’t matter if the venue was the depths of space or the deepest ocean trenches. I wanted to experience the world like the great names of the past – Magellan, Cortez, Pizzaro, Lewis & Clark, Marco Polo, Peary, and Byrd. I used to think of the world as a big, mysterious place full of danger and excitement. And I believed that it was all for the taking. Nothing was impossible for the man or woman who believed.

And then I grew up and discovered that all life really seems to consist of is replaying the same shit that your parents went through, or your friends. You get older, finish high school, go to college, get married, have kids, buy a house, get buried in credit card debt and car payments. The only real adventure that most adult Americans ever experience is keeping ahead of the tax man and the lease company. I can’t speak on how it is in other countries around the world. I did live in Germany and Korea for a while, but since I am really well versed in the ways of my American life, the experience was slightly tainted.

When I was in Germany I did try to hang out with the natives more than some of my friends. I went to German bars and hangouts where no one spoke English. As a result I learned German fairly quickly and I got to know people on a personal level. But that was over 20 years ago. I’m sure the things I did learn were only a tiny portion of the reality of their lives. One thing I did learn and hold on to was that the Germans I met weren’t all that different from me. Yeah, they spoke a different language and had different favorite foods. But they had the same worries about money and family and nuclear war.

As I’ve grown older the meaning of ‘living it my way’ has come to mean finding a path that’s mine. Not one someone told me about or suggested I try. I’ve had a lot of wonderful people in my life who are convinced that I want them to tell me what I should do. That’s partly my fault. I’ve asked questions when I should have just been doing. I guess they just figured that since I was asking questions it was okay to tell me what to do instead of giving me the advise I was really looking for.

At first I didn’t see any reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to avoiding mistakes. Now I see that a bit of reinventing is required in order to have a life that is strictly unique. I look at what some of my former heroes have done and I can see that they followed a path that usually led to them being laughed at or talked about. People with true courage don’t follow ANYONE. They do what their heart tells them is right and eventually, that ends up being the case. My heroes include:

Captain Bill Pinkney - the first black man in history to circumnavigate the globe alone in a sailboat.

Captain Jacques Yves Cousteau – a pioneer of exploration and invention involving the ocean.

Albert Einstein – just the name says it all.

Charles Darwin – the English naturalist that gave us the basis for the evolution of the species and challenged purely religious way of thinking.

Sam Cooke – the incredible voice behind my favorite song of all time ‘A change is gonna come’

This isn’t the entire list, but they are the ones who flash through my head most often. I don’t want to be any of them, but I want to live my life with the same conviction that they did. I think that’s the real reason I started this blog in the first place.

Everyone is searching for the same thing. I think everyone is born into that sense of wonder about the huge thing around them called the world. Some differences are to be expected, but since all humans live and die - sometimes at the most basic of circumstances - we are really more alike than we are different. So it doesn’t matter if you are from Pulaski, Arkansas or Bangladesh. Our worries and needs are the same.

So since none of us are all that different, why is it that the mysterious, magical world has become such a dangerous thing? Doesn’t everyone want the same feeling of freedom and safety? I would think that at this point in our evolution as a species we would get that we all live together or we all die together.

And the desire to control your life is the same.

Happiness...for real??

How do you gauge happiness? It’s one thing that I’ve always had problems defining in my own life.

Is how much money you have or who you sleep with a measure of happiness? In my experience - no. The buzz wears off fairly quickly with both of those. Money is just a tool. Once you get what you want with the tool, it’s served its purpose. And sex is the ultimate transitory delight. The glow lasts only as long as it takes to get to a shower.

So those two biggies aren’t capstones. They matter, but long term they aren’t everything.

Okay, how about health? Health is important on so many levels. How you treat yourself is tantamount to how you will treat everyone that you meet in your life. If your health doesn’t matter to you, chances are you don’t care about others either. Health includes a strong body and clear mind. Definite hallmarks of happiness. So there’s one.

What else is left? A high paying job. Really?

A job as a way to happiness seems like an oxymoron. Jobs are defined as –

1. a piece of work, esp. a specific task done as part of the routine of one's occupation or for an agreed price

2. a post of employment; full-time or part-time position

3. anything a person is expected or obliged to do; duty; responsibility

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never found duties or tasks to be particularly happy endeavors. While they can be fulfilling, they generally aren’t much fun. There are exceptions, like everything else in life. But the average tasks involved in holding a job are as far from fun as the sun is from the Earth. Not to mention that the average ‘high paying job’ also comes with high stress, long hours, skipped family events, perhaps long travel and the ever present potential for loneliness. If I have to choose between a 6 figure income that keeps me from seeing my children and wife, and a 5 figure income that has me coming home every night, well it’s plain to me. People have made due on less for thousands of years.

And I think that’s one of the best things about this current economic crisis. People are once again realizing that the simple things in life are usually the best. Being able to hold a barbeque for close friends and family on your deck during a sunny Saturday afternoon beats chasing after any amount of money.

Perhaps it’s naïve of me to think this way, but I really mean it. The ability to enjoy what I have instead of constantly running after more is probably the closest to a definition of happiness that makes sense. I’ve known a few people who are in the $200 - $300K earnings range, and though they have a lot of things, they always seem stressed out to me.

So jobs fall into the NO category. But just working through that knot brought up something useful. The ability to share time with friends and family can produce happiness. Even if your family is sometimes obnoxious. Heck, the last time I checked, I wasn’t perfect either.

How about things? Acquisitions, goodies, purchases, whatever you want to call them. Getting things seems to make some people really happy, right? New houses, multiple cars, trips all over the world, private jets and being able to rent out an entire club for the night. The essence of life portrayed in the Dirty South. I’m sure it makes people really happy all the time.

Whoops. I guess I forgot about the rap stars that are facing 30 years for gun charges. Oh, and I forgot about the sports stars who have incurable deadly diseases. Then there are the music superstars who put loaded shotguns in their mouths while high and pull the trigger with their toes. And not to be left out are the company CEO’s facing federal indictment for fraud. But, why wouldn’t they be happy? They have every material thing that a human (or any group of humans) would want. Surely they are happy. These are people who can buy and sell entire countries. They wipe their asses with $100 bills and spend my mortgage in the VIP room in less than 20 minutes. I’m sure I’ve missed something. These people must to be happy.

Right?

Okay, so I’ve covered money, sex, jobs and material wealth. What’s left?

How about family?

Yes it’s true; your family can help make you happy. I am usually most content when my children and my wife are at home getting on each other’s nerves, playing games, eating or otherwise interacting with each other. Despite all of my faults and empty spaces, I do truly love my little family. My kids have all of the sibling rivalry bells and whistles and the attendant drama. Arguments about food, clothes, the phone, the computers, more food, who left the mess in the kitchen, (and then more food), are common and to be honest - very welcome.

My household is alive and vibrant. Energy flows freely from these young adults who are finding their way in the world and I am very proud of all of them. My wife and I have a full relationship, laughing, loving, arguing, making up, cooking dinner and sitting on the couch together enjoying a movie. We travel a lot as a family and have managed to ‘collect’ quite a few state parks in the 7 years we’ve been in Georgia. We enjoy being outdoors just as much as in. So in the scheme of things we are pretty typical.

Every time I start to wonder if I will ever be happy, an image pops into my mind. We will sometimes eat dinner on a spread sheet in the living room. We’ve been doing this on and off since the kids were little. Usually this occurs when we are watching some sort of family movie. And then, after dinner is done, we all place bets on how long it will be before my wife falls asleep and misses the end of the movie. This little tableau always brings a smile to my face.

It’s at these moments when I feel closest to being happy. Of course, like everything else, the moment is transitory. Still, family gets a huge nod.

So let’s tally up:

Money, sex, jobs, things – 0
Wife & Kids, good health – 1

Seems like kind of a no brainer, eh?

The enemy...sleep

I've been getting back into meditation in a big way. Sleep has become a true enemy for me and I’m learning that’s not natural.

The issues with sleep go back to my teens. As far back as I can remember, my brain has been busy. I am ALWAYS thinking about something. Usually something that I can’t fix or isn’t really my problem. I sometimes obsess over the past. I will argue with my demons and try to work out deals with my inner self. I worry about money and my wife and kids. I run through conversations from weeks back. I wonder about the people who say they care about me but don’t show it. I think about my stories, the characters that populate them and ways to get it all down on paper. All of this is on a speed 8 track in my head and it runs at full sonic blast - all the time.

It wasn’t quite so bad in Utica. It still happened, but not quite on the scale it did once we moved to California. There was always so much going on and eventually I began to feel that time spent sleeping was wasted time.

Joining the Army only reinforced that way of thinking. There were many times when I was awake and moving for more than 36 hours at a stretch. I would grab three or four hours where I could, wake refreshed (or at least not groggy) and then continue on with my day.

Holding lots of jobs that required shift work from 1983 to now completed the equation. What started out as a voluntary reduction in my sleep hours has now become chronic. Even my body has gotten into the act. If I sleep more than 5 hours in a single stretch, I wake up with some pretty bad back pain. The pain doesn’t seem to be caused by anything physical. Two doctors on two different coasts have told me that my body is doing just fine. But the sleep deprivation goes on.

I only got concerned with it and began to think of it as a problem because of my wife’s reaction to me not sleeping. I did some reading and found that sleeping only 4 to 5 hours a night isn’t average and might not be healthy.

Severe prolonged lack of restful sleep can cause problems with the brain. It can adversely affect the body’s ability to metabolize glucose leading to adult onset diabetes. Not sleeping causes exacerbation of problems like:

· Depression
· Improper digestion
· Mood swings
· Decreased mental activity
· Memory loss
· Slowed reaction time
· Irritability
· Headaches
· Slow wound healing

So here I am, not thinking much of it and it’s a real problem.

That’s where meditation comes in. The meditation helps quiet my mind long enough for me to actually fall asleep. Now, if I stay asleep all night it’s sort of a miracle and I count myself lucky. What usually ends up happening is I will sleep about two or three hours and then wake up. I can sometimes get back to sleep, but any chance at actually getting rest is gone.

I’m working on a solution, but I think that I am quite a long way off. This didn’t develop overnight, so its going to take more than a few meditation sessions to make it go away.

The point of me saying all this was to warn you to guard your nights rest. Turn off your phones. Bolt the door. Play some soft ambient music in the background. (Whales singing works the best for me.) Find ways to quiet the voices in your head that are screaming at you about everything you didn’t do today. If it didn’t get done, there’s not much you can do at this point so let it go.

One trick I learned from another writer was to have a small notebook that you can commit all of the shouting too. Just before you crash for the night, write everything down that’s still working in your head. Get it all out. Yep, that’s right. All of it.

Eh? Yeah, even that…

All done? Okay, now close the book. Let it go. No, I mean it. Let it go. It’s in the book now. Safe.

Yesterday is over, tomorrow is a new day.

Sleep tight!