On taking leaps
Even though I love almanacs and planning by the calendar, I don’t come out the gate with resolutions and round-ups at the beginning of the year. You’ll get no New Years’ hot takes from me. I like to take my time, let my thoughts simmer. Let the Lunar New Year roll in. Feel spring start doing its awakening thing, so I can see and feel what’s up, instead of making or following predictions based on past patterns. How will this year be as never before?
During some free-association time, this leap year reminded me that one of the names I'd been considering for my practice was "Big Leap Reiki," and that’s what got me thinking about a recent intake session I had with a professional writer.
My ideal client. The one I dreamed of whenever I’ve done those little exercises in workshops. I *love* her. She’s ambitious and confident, and six months ago, she started her own business. She did it with a household to run (twin boys!), and she did it as the family breadwinner, without the safety net of a dual-income.
She built a good-sized sturdy business boat and set sail, because somewhere inside she knew that this was the right direction—the one that would bring long-lasting balance to both her family and career. Fear be damned. Uncharted waters be conquered. Full steam ahead!
...
Yay! Or at least that’s what you might say to her face. But admit it, there’s a part of you that would like to tell this woman that she seriously needs to rethink her plan. And I’m sure you could probably find about 50 supporting articles that would tell her the same.
Fortunately, she didn’t ask you. And she didn’t ask Forbes, or The Muse, or LinkedIn, or any of the other places through which our business advice is filtered.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard to keep confident and on course when fear and doubt is all around us. And it’s natural that we then start looking for guidance and solutions—to programs or coaches or apps or to the all-knowing Internet. And all of these things are great, and I’m thrilled that they’re available. But a lot of times, those places are where we also find messages that tend to stir up our internal doubt and increase feelings of pressure, especially when we’re approaching from a place of confusion.
During one such overwhelmed and aimless moment, my client found herself halfway to the Internet’s core, researching “creative professional schedule with kids writing time oh please google send help” but that’s when a little light went on in her gut. That wasn’t where she should be looking. She needed to type that into the Google of her heart.
And as deeply goofy as that sounds, it’s still the right direction. She’d looked within to figure out that she needed to strike out on her own to create balance, and she realized that that was exactly where she should be looking now.
Then, in that clever way that this world has of working, she ended up finding her way here. Where I work with clients to ward off messages that may be tripping them up, and helping them design an environment that challenges the naysayers, both internally and externally.
We've all heard of yin and yang, whether we’ve studied it in depth to learn acupuncture or feng shui principles, or just thought of it in passing while watching Mulan II. Basically, the concept is that of balance—in vs out, up vs down, hot vs cold. Yin energy is internal, while yang heads outward. With business, we tend to go yang (and we can see on many different levels how this imbalance has shown up in our economy).
My whole mission is to help us get better in “yin business,” the more internal, go-with-your-gut way of doing things. Because all the yang business practices that we learn to gain success need yin's balance in order to be sustainable. It’s this balance that sets people up to take what appears to be big risks—like the one my client took six months ago. I love big leaps.