I’m leading my first teleclass series at the moment. My experience before the first class was decidedly uncomfortable; I was full of nerves and a torrent of concerns; Would the conference line work? Had I given everyone the right number? What if my phone battery died? What if my printer ink cartridge ran out and I couldn’t print my notes? What if… What if… ?

After the first call, I ran around my house, shrieking with euphoric relief. I loved it and could hardly bear that I had to wait a whole week until I got to do it again. I’d broken the seal on a brand new bottle of delights: a new experience, a new territory I’d opened up for myself.

Often, people hire me because they are fed up of being stuck in same-old land, where there are no firsts and indeed great fear of firsts.

What helps them break the seal and crack open the new?

Here are five strategies I’ve seen work:

1. Create a deadline. Publicise a date and commit to some accountability. Manoeuvre yourself into a hard-to-back-out-of situation where you don’t want to let someone down who is depending on you. Let go of the tendency to overanalyze the deadline – you may be surprised by what you can achieve in a short time-span; as Parkinson’s Law states: “Work expands so as to fill time available”. There can be a tendency to over-prepare for a first experience which is why casual deadlines get pushed back and back until they fade away and become forgotten about. And catch yourself trying to back out of deadlines with seemingly valid excuses. Only one person has signed up? Go ahead anyway.

2. Acknowledge that fear is normal. We don’t often see people doing things for the first time. The actress on stage, the seasoned teacher, the accomplished public speaker all seem so polished. But they had a first time too and back then, they were probably terrified. When your fear kicks in, take that as a sign that you’re normal and that you’re moving into new territory.

3. Think ahead. Get out of the now. It’s easy to get blinkered tunnel-vision when all that surrounds you is the fear of doing this for the first time. Ask yourself: What will it be like in an hour? At 6pm? Next week? That future version of you will be on the other side of this situation, having done it and for that future you, this experience will have been worth it.

4. Rely on a champion. If you were the captain of a ship and announced that you were taking the ship into unchartered territory, your crew might become justifiably anxious. They might even mutiny. You want someone there with you, as your unconditionally supportive mate, steadying your hand and believing in your choice of new direction. At the moment, the odds are stacked in favour of the familiar; you need someone to help tilt that balance.

5. Grow your evidence. Every time I do something new for the first time, I sit there with the fear and ask myself: “Corrina, why on earth are you doing this to yourself again?!” I imagine it’s the same question a long-distance runner asks themselves half-way through a race. Why do we do it? Because ultimately the pleasure and satisfaction are far greater than the discomfort. As your bank of evidence grows, you’ll see more clearly that the pay-off from a new first-time is worth that initial discomfort.

Familiarity is a tempting comfort blanket, wrapping us up in the boundaries that we’ve marked out for our existing life. Deep down, that’s not where we really want to stay. We want to be the person who has done the new thing, who has it behind us, and who is now basking in the new territory.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) The action this week is simple yet it’s no mean feat. Use the five strategies above to support you in committing to do something for the first time. Set a deadline that it’d be hard to get out of, expect the fear, project to the future satisfaction, choose someone as your champion, and watch your evidence start growing.

2) Leave a comment on this blog post, letting us know how you find first times. Which of these strategies do you already use? What else might help? When have pay-offs been worth the initial discomfort? And how do you remind yourself of that when the fear kicks in?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

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Want A Different Kind Of Christmas Present This Year?

Fed up of the same old CD, book and pair of pyjamas under the Christmas tree?

You might like to ask for a present from You Inspire Me this year. You could get an e-course to help with your new year resolution (£7.50), a place on a workshop to combat your fear of failure or kickstart your venture (£35 – £45), a one-to-one session (£75), or a coaching journey of eight sessions (£600).

No snazzy vouchers as yet but simply send an email to your loved one with the relevant webpage link and a little ‘pretty please’ note at the bottom and they can fill out the relevant booking or enquiry form and play Santa.

The likelihood is, you never are.

Short story for you: I led a workshop which showed fellow coaches how to use Twitter to grow their businesses. Lots of them wanted to learn more so there’s now a masterclass series available, via teleconference, starting 9th November. That’s just three weeks from idea to actualization and the point is: the interest was there, the timing felt right, I was being encouraged from all sides – so why not?

Every time I’ve launched a new workshop or programme, I’ve offered it with just a title and a synopsis. I’ve known the general stake and have felt the heart of the work – and people have hired me or enrolled based on that. Having the date in the diary and people to whom you’re committed provides that all-important external deadline that every solopreneur craves. The detailed planning and structuring then takes place with that date in mind.

So much of what we do as entrepreneurs is stuff we’re not ready for. Our first radio interview, first talk, first community workshop, first funding application. I’m reminded of that scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding when Cameron Diaz’s character has the microphone thrust into her hand  and is told she’s singing. She holds back, petrified at first, and yet soon she is reveling in the experience, delighted to have been pushed. On the entrepreneurial path, it is vital to respond to pushes, give ourselves pushes and then feel ourselves being pushed onwards and onwards by the dates we set and the commitments we make.

There’s obviously a balance to be found here. We don’t want to be underprepared. We don’t want to commit to offering anything which we genuinely don’t have the time or resources to put together. Yet nor do we want to fall into the too-common trap of overpreparing, letting a project fall stale because it’s continually being revised on our office desk. We need to trust that there’s a point where we can release into the public domain because so much of the evolution of a venture takes place collectively. If you look at a movement like Transition Towns or 10:10, you’ll see that so much of what takes place is beyond anything that an individual could have conceived in his or her own mind.

The secret is: We’re never really ready to offer anything because the readiness comes as a result of the offering. As with my Twitter masterclass, as long as there’s one person enrolled (and there is!), people will take benefit and the venture will move forward.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) What are you sitting on? What project have you been mulling over and over without really getting anywhere?

2) How could you start nudging this into the public domain? What step do you not quite feel ready for but which might actually be the step that helps you BE ready? One action may be to join a social networking forum – like Facebook or Twitter – and start connecting with others who could collaborate with you, or help you move this project forward.

3) Time for some bravery. Launch an idea knowing the heart of it and with some structure (e.g. a date or a way for people to get connected with you), trusting that ideas and support will flow in from others and in turn bolster you in your feeling of readiness.

4) Leave a comment on this blog post, letting us know how you are doing with moving your venture forward, piece by piece. What helps you know you’re ready? When does holding back… hold you back?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

Stop Waiting – Time To Spread The Word

You have a venture and want to let more people know about it. Maybe you want to find your ideal clients, maybe you want to find collaborators or funders.

In my experience, Twitter is a fantastic way of networking with vast amounts of people whilst using little energy. It makes it fun and easy to spread the word about the project you’re passionate about.

Join us for this 4-week masterclass series via teleconference. We start Monday 9th November and then speak again the following three Mondays throughout the month. You also receive a 45-minute mentoring session which helps you get super-clear about who you want to communicate with and how to reach them in the most effective ways.

For more information, click here. There are now only five places available so to avoid disappointment, do book yours now.

When I scan my life for experiences of this feeling, I can quickly find dozens: bungy jumping, telling my friend I had feelings for her, the first time I gave my The World Needs Your Passion talk, sky-diving, handing my notice in at my teaching job, singing a song I wrote in front of 300 people at a conference, our wedding day, hand-gliding.

It’s no coincidence that these are also some of the events I land on when I scan for the highlights, those experiences which have brought the most richness to my life.

Why no coincidence? Well, as Susan Jeffers outlines in her classic ‘Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway’, we are guaranteed to encounter fear every time we take a risk. It makes sense that moving out of our comfort zone won’t be comfortable. The critical point is that we take these actions because we want to have a more fulfilling experience of life – we want to say that we have truly lived – and so that feeling of fear is worth bearing. Jeffers’ point of view is that we need to accept that fear will always be there and decide to take it along for the ride.

Or we could not. No-one is forcing us to take risks or leave our comfort zone. BUT staying where we are is not the pain-free option. I’m sure you know as well as me that when we stay stuck, we experience that gnawing sense of a wasted life, the silent panic as time ticks by without achievement, that dread, the regrets, the hopelessness and the helplessness. I don’t want that feeling – nor do I want it for you.

Invariably with my clients, a motto emerges. “Get on with it”, “Just do it”, “Go for it”, “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. These women are brave; they adopt their motto because they are committed to moving forward, knowing that encountering the fear is far preferable to living a half-awake life.

You’ve probably seen that there’s a workshop running on Sat 10th October called Kickstart Your Venture. This is a heart-felt plea for you to pause and honestly consider whether this would help YOU move away from a life of regrets. Do you have an idea for a project or business, a charity or community venture, that you’re not currently acting on? How does that feel – that gap between idea and reality? My guess is that it doesn’t feel good.

Now take a look at the Kickstart Your Venture workshop. Can you make the date? Can you afford £35? Now scan for fear; if it’s there, it’s a good sign! It indicates that this could actually be an opportunity for you to finally move forward. I want to clarify: It doesn’t matter how vague and higgledly piggledy your idea is. It doesn’t matter that you have no clue how you’d actually make it happen. That’s what the workshop will help you with. You just have to turn up, willing to talk about your idea, and willing to support the other participants as they share theirs.

Please don’t wait for the fear to dissipate. It won’t. As Susan Jeffers says: “We can’t escape fear. We can only transform it into a companion that accompanies us on all our exciting adventures”.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Inquiry: Where do you find it easy to move forward, despite the fear? In which area(s) of your life have you taken risks so often that the fear has lessened and a previously daunting experience now feels normal and comfortable?

2) Inquiry: Where are you stuck because you haven’t been willing to experience the fear? What’s that like?

3) Action time! Based on your findings in 2) and encouraged by the evidence you uncovered in 1), commit to taking action TODAY that feels scary. You know that you will feel fear; take a deep breath and decide to do it anyway. And as you feel the fear, acknowledge yourself for how you are able to handle it. It may not feel pleasant but nor does it kill you. You can deal with it. How much freer does that feel, how much more is possible for your life?

4) Leave a comment below, letting us know what you experience when you feel the fear and do it anyway…

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

The Global Climate Wake-Up Call

Monday 21st September, 12:18pm onwards, EVERYWHERE

Unprecedented grassroots action in our communities to demand that our leaders sign a fair, ambitious & binding climate treaty at the final UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December. Click here for more information; find your local event or feel the fear and put yourself forward NOW to host one!

Along with loss of financial security, one of the top concerns I hear from women who are contemplating a new path is the challenge of having to start from scratch.

It’s understandable. In your existing profession, you’ve built up years of experience and a solid reputation. You’re known and you know your systems so well you could run them with your eyes closed.

Perhaps you’re a teacher who has accumulated years of schemes of work and lesson plans, or an HR manager who has built hundreds of relationships.

You know you’re good at your work and you can’t quite bring yourself to turn your back on all that groundwork to go back to square one with a different venture or industry.

It’s the same reason we don’t leave relationships or move house, even when we know they’re not ideal. We’ve invested a lot in the status quo and we’re fearful, believing better the devil we know. Our existing situation isn’t ideal – but it’s good enough.

Right?

Wrong. ‘Good enough’ isn’t good enough.

It’s not okay that you get that sinking feeling in your tummy on Sunday evenings. It’s not good enough that you’re getting frequent migraines, colds, back pain and eye strain.

You’re too precious to waste your life, to let your creativity stagnate, your idealism fade away. You know you want to be doing something more meaningful, making more of a difference – so it’s time to find ways of dealing with the loss involved.

As you may have spotted, I’m in a process of major transition at the moment. Creating my new website has meant letting go of the old one; shifting my email communications to a new automated system means I’m guaranteed to lose some of my previous subscribers.

The truth is – if we’re committed to moving forward, we WILL lose certain things along the way. In order to embrace the new, we’ll leave some things behind AND we won’t leave everything. What is important is to decide: What is worth holding on to? and What is holding us back?

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Whether it’s leaving a job or changing an aspect of your existing venture, take pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and answer: What are the main aspects you’re reluctant to lose? What are you intending to gain? Then, assess honestly: Does the expected gain make the loss worth it?

2) Choose a metaphor for this transition that inspires you. Perhaps it’s that you’re leaving one island and swimming to another. Build into this metaphor the key aspects you’re taking with you – certain skills, people or ways of working – that will help you on the journey and be useful when you get to the other island.

3) Contribute to the discussion, letting us know how you deal with loss and letting go.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009. All rights reserved.

* Workshop: Kickstart Your Venture

You may be a ‘leap and the net will appear’ believer, or you may feel more comfortable with having a tangible plan. Either way, you need space to articulate your idea for a new venture and the Kickstart Your Venture workshop has been designed for this purpose. Click here for more information and to book your place.

We used to sleep in the loft. The previous owners had it converted into a beautiful bedroom space that many our visitors have made appreciative noises about. However, the designers neglected to include heating so for four years we shivered through cold winter nights. This week we finally admitted that much as we’d tried, it just wasn’t working for us. It was time for a change, time to take ownership so we pulled the bed apart and moved it down to the first floor. Other rooms had to be gutted and rearranged to compensate which was hard work but very much worth it. Our primary goal has been attained – we’re cosier and more comfortable – and there have been extra benefits too. We want to invite people round more, it’s better for our relationship, and I’ve got a more organised office space.The house just makes more sense this way round, with rooms having more appropriate roles, and we’ve felt much more inclined to tidy and clean (I’ve turned into a super-proud domestic goddess, in fact).

Change isn’t always easy, pleasant or beautiful. Sometimes we have to create a mess before we get things in order. If you’d taken a snapshot of us trying to squeeze the mattress down our spiralling staircase or the two of us attempting a four-burly-men reassembly job, then you’d have thought we were worse off than if we’d still been in that cold bedroom. My clients experience this too. Sometimes they risk a change and things don’t go brilliantly at first: a new kind of work is far more exhausting than the previous one, they take brave moves and others don’t respond well or they sell their house and the eco-community they dreamed of finding doesn’t emerge.

This is why it’s so important to remember that finding and following our passion is a journey. There will be wrong turns… and also right turns which go up hills before we can sail down the other side. There may be chaos initially and things can look worse before they get better. This is why I love the metaphor of a sliding puzzle which you’ll see as the image above. The picture could look 90% right but if we want the picture to be complete, something has to give. We have to change some thing, make the move and risk dismantling and rearranging if we want to really go for what we want.

The World Needs Your Passion, so…

What one thing could you change? What could be reallocated or rearranged to get things moving in the direction you want? For example, reallocating ten minutes of your day to meditation or planning, asking to reduce your employed hours to four days a week or turning the corner of a room into a mini home office. Make a list of options and then do one. What happens when you change one thing? Let us know….

©  Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** Want to change something… but scared of failing? **

Every time we change something, there’s a chance we’ll fail. How are you with that possibility? For many of us, failing is not an option we embrace and so we stay stuck, not taking that risk. The impact? Stagnation, abandoned projects, bottom line = not achieving what we want to achieve or being as happy or fulfilled as we know we can be. Click here to find out more about a workshop that will change this for you.

My curiosity was sparked. Here were probably our last few hours of warmth, of glorious weather, before we turn the corner in to winter; an opportunity to relax, listen to the birds, be carefree… and someone was choosing to spend them ironing. Continuing my thought process from last week, I wondered about why we do the things we do – how each of us decides what to do in any given moment.

Often, we will choose an activity like ironing because it honours our values. We consider professionalism, quality or feeling smart to be important to us. AND often we do things out of habit, or by default. We don’t even realise that by saying “yes” to one activity, we’re saying “no” to another which we’d find infinitely more fulfilling. The question is not so much ‘should I do this activity?’ but rather ‘is this activity more important, will it bring more joy, than the other options available to me right now?’ It’s down to each of us to know where that line is between values-honouring and conforming to ‘shoulds’ or distracting ourselves from life.

It’s interesting how much time we spend ironing out the creases, rather than living fully. We can go to great effort to make life spotless and perfect, rather than just throwing ourselves in, creases and all. My personal crease-addiction is words. I’ll double, triple, quadruple check emails before they go off. Sometimes, it’s because I love phrasing things ‘just so’ and get immense satisfaction from it. Sometimes, I’m avoiding making an error, fearful of looking stupid, eager to impress. The former is fun and worthwhile, the latter is a waste. What do I miss out on when I’m spending those extra minutes behind the computer?

Maybe we could allow ourselves and others more room for creases. Perhaps we could increase our tolerance of the things which really don’t matter, and decrease our tolerance for those which do. Maybe we could ignore crumpled shirts and a ‘your’ instead of a ‘you’re’ and instead get feisty about the times when we waste our time, our potential, our lives. Here’s an apt thought on this topic by Raphie Frank, a storyteller: “You look at the scratch and completely miss the diamond.”

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

Ask yourself: Where are you ironing away the creases, rather than living life? How do YOU decide what to do, and what not to waste your time on? This week, choose one crease-ironing activity and pledge to yourself to do it less in order to free up some of your life. Let the scratches go and focus on the diamond.

I’d love to hear which activity you choose, and what happens as a result. Post a comment….

* Do your imperfections make you want to reach for the iron?

Do you hold back from doing things because you fear failure?

Are you ready to stop clinging to crease-reduction and live fully instead?!

Find out more about the Fail Is Not A Four Letter Word workshop and claim more of your life.