What do you do when things go pear-shaped?

Many of us have been feeling an abundance of challenges lately with the recession and with environmental and societal crises. There’s a lot that doesn’t feel safe about our world and it can be tempting to withdraw and struggle along quietly and alone, which in turn can increase our sense of isolation, despair or panic. All this, of course, on top of the usual challenges of being human.

Danielle Mills felt the impact of the recession on her business, BrightSpark Recruitment. After a brilliant initial two years, which she describes as “everything I thought it would be”, times got tough. She found that cash-flow became very difficult and she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to pay her workers; she saw many others in her industry fall by the way and she would wake up with dread, wondering: “What do I have to face today?”

She is now breathing a tentative sigh of relief; work has dramatically picked up and she is celebrating her fifth year of self-employment. So what kept her going through what she describes as a “painful, awful time”?

Well, she made some classic business-savvy manoeuvres like watching trends in her industry and diversifying accordingly. She made her motto: “In the quietest time, make sure you’re shouting loudest”. She also kept a long-term perspective so that when the current day was hard, she thought forward to a time when it would be easier again.

But what struck me most about Danielle’s story is how human she allowed herself to be and how able she was to acknowledge that she was really struggling. She leant into her networks, both offline and online, and directly asked for help. She was able to say “This is massive and hard – anyone else feeling that?” and she received both empathy and practical advice. She surrounded herself with what she calls “realistically positive” comrades and as well as receiving help, she also looked for opportunities where she could help others. She was honest with her workers, explaining how difficult the situation was and not promising anything, and she went the extra distance with the companies on her books – reaching out and offering her expertise to help them. She invested a huge amount of time and energy, without immediate financial gain, in order to ease others’ situations and build relationships.

Underneath all of this is the foundation that she is passionate about what she does. She has been fiercely persistent and doggedly determined because she knows that her work helps people and brings them peace of mind. She gets immense satisfaction from the impact she has on people and says that while there are still “loads of challenges”, the benefits outweigh them.

No-one said that following our passion would be easy. Turbulence and turmoil are part of the course, even before you’ve thrown in the economic challenges and others around us. If we want to do what we love, we would be wise to develop our resilience and our unique approach to hard times. What do we want these struggles to mean? Perhaps they bring us closer to others. Perhaps they help us become more compassionate and understanding of others’ pain. Perhaps they reveal to us qualities we hadn’t realized we had. Perhaps they simply remind us that we are all human and we’re all in this together.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Where are you really struggling? What do you need to ask for help with? Who can you ask and how can you ask them? What would stop you from doing this?

2) What about the people around you who are struggling? How can you help them? What would stop you from doing this?

3) Scroll down and leave a comment on this blog post and let us know: Do you find it easier to ask for help or to offer it? How are you with admitting that you’re struggling? How easy do you find it to witness other people’s struggles?

What are you fearful about struggling with that would stop you from starting your own venture? In the Kickstart Your Venture workshop, we explore possible obstacles – both internal and external – that you and the other workshop participants have. Together, we then find ways for you to approach these so that they don’t stop you from creating the venture you’re passionate about. Find out more & book your place here > > >

Not around for the workshop or prefer one-to-one support? Find out how individual coaching can help you here > > >

Danielle was interviewed recently as part of my Inspirational 100 project. Find out more & get involved here > > >

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2010

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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.

Everyone has a weak spot. Mine? Things breaking.

When a piece of equipment fails or some software doesn’t work properly, a button of mine gets pressed. Some old pattern of not feeling safe in the world gets triggered and I utterly freak out. I have tears, I punch pillows, I tell the world how much I hate it and that I don’t want to have anything to do with it if it’s all going to be so unreliable.

It’s irrational, it’s out of character and I’m almost reluctant to share it – but I’m doing so because I know that we all have our own triggers. One close friend has dyscalculia; figuring out train times, dates and logistics sends her in to a cold sweat. Some of us dread the dentist, others find it hard to be around food; some shake at the thought of speaking in public, others throw wobblies when choosing what to wear; some of us become different versions of ourselves around authority figures and others of us can’t bear criticism and failure.

When our buttons get pressed, here are some options….

#1 Avoid
Ever notice that desire to evacuate… from yourself? When something breaks, I can go into “I cannot deal with this” mode and shut down or disengage in order to protect myself. Others of us – to use the examples above – will avoid meal times, giving talks or travelling.

#2 Delegate
This option is expected in most organisations and it’s important to remember that finding our own path doesn’t mean we have to do everything ourselves. There are certain emails or pieces of paperwork which I simply forward to my web developer or my accountant. Conversely, I’m happy doing activities which others feel less comfortable with, like giving talks or sitting with with
someone who’s crying in total despair. What are we comfortable with that others aren’t? This can be a great clue, revealing to us our niche a.k.a. where we’re most needed.

#3 Turn The Light On
This option is about recognising that often the monster under the bed is scary only because it’s the unknown. I can avoid and delegate all I like but sometimes I’m going to be home alone when a circuit blows and I need to know what to do with that fuse box. It takes a deep breath and a swallow of pride. I need to allow myself to be incompetent and vulnerable and say: “I find this hard. Help me learn” if I am committed to moving forward in an empowered way.

The World Needs Your passion, so…

1) Without judging, scan your life to see: What are your buttons? What triggers your fear, your discomfort, your desire to run and hide? What overwhelms you so much that you short-circuit? What could someone say or do that would spin you off track for the whole rest of the day? What brings you out in a cold sweat? Take a deep breath and just look.

2) Assess how you currently deal with these situations by reading back over the three options I highlight. Do you avoid or reactively delegate? What would be your version of getting up close and personal with that fuse box?

3) Leave a comment, letting us know how you deal with your trigger points….

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** Does failure trigger you? **

When you fail at something, do you come up against a default mantra like “I’m no good” or “I should give up”? Or do you attempt to avoid the experience in the first place by sticking with seemingly ‘safe’ paths?

It’s important that we ‘catch’ this mantra, examine it and then ask ourselves: Is this what I choose?

If your current mantra on failing isn’t working for you, grab a place on a Fail Is NOT A Four Letter Word workshop (see Workshops section of this website).

In the documentary, Rebecca Hosking takes a thorough and honest look at our food chain and how the end of cheap, abundant oil will affect what we eat. Her explorations take her to peak oil experts, a Soil Association conference, and permaculture-designed small-holdings.

I found it very accessible because she doesn’t set out to preach or convert. In fact, it’s a tale of her conversion. She’s a very regular woman coming from a family of farmers and yet doesn’t cling stubbornly to ‘the way things are done’. Instead, she’s willing to look anew and investigate her (our) inherited assumptions about how we feed ourselves. She acknowledges with deep respect and gratitude what her family have passed on to her AND is brave and humble enough to explore doing things differently. She doesn’t know if alternative ways of managing her land will work but she recognises that the current way is unsustainable and so other options must be found.

As she takes in the alarming facts and statistics about our imported food and fossil-fuel-dependent system, we can see her fear and yet rather than going into denial – as we all so easily could – she keeps her eyes open so that she can find genuine solutions.

Here is a living, breathing example for all of us of how to compassionately challenge the status quo in the area of life most close to our hearts. Whether it be food production, medicine, or our education, housing or transport systems, the message is: Another way is possible. It might take courage and hard work but perhaps what’s at stake makes it worth it.

The World Needs Your Passion, so…

1) Inquiry: What’s the area you’re most passionate about? What other ways are possible there?

2) Action: What’s one step you could take to find new solutions for this area? Is it getting together with like-minded people or doing research? Or is there a big project you’re just on the verge of starting already? Take a deep breath, gather your courage, and just get started. Let the passionate urgency of Rebecca’s work inspire you.

3) Inquiry: Where in your life do you need to swallow your pride, acknowledge that things aren’t working, and go back to the drawing board or seek support?

©  Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** What’s it like to have a goal you’re passionate about, but keep feeling it slip away from you? **

How important does it feel to see it through this time? Jump on to the New Way Resolutions e-course. At £7.50, this offers a super-affordable way of staying focused on what you want to achieve. See the E-Products section of this website to read how the e-course works, how it has helped others and subscribe now. No more excuses. Resolutions are not just for January 1st.

This is Global Entrepreneurship Week and to mark its start, I volunteered at the first day of Chain Reaction, an event which saw 700 people gather to explore how entrepreneurship can be a source of social good.

There was a variety of inspirational speakers including Tim Smit of the Eden Project, Sophi Tranchell of Divine Chocolate, and Eugenie Harvey of We Are What We Do. My greatest surprise of the day was the closing remarks made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His focus was on the economy but not the all-too-familiar message of “this is just a downturn, we’ll be back to big, strong, lean and mean again soon” of which many politicians and business people are trying to persuade us. Instead, he acknowledged the economic crisis as one and the same as our resource crisis, emphasised the ‘climate change imperative’ and urged the importance of investing in renewable energy and agriculture. He described these times as experiencing the birth pangs intrinsic to us becoming a global community and as such that they alert us to the need for transition phases.

In many ways, the general thrust of the day was similar to the approach taken by Rob Hopkins, instigator of the Transition Town Movement – that we are entering transition years and that the innovation, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit which got us in to this situation can now be re-harnessed and directed towards finding solutions to the world’s needs.

As I left the conference and spotted in the newspaper that more City jobs are being cut, I had a vision of those thousands of people moving not from employment to unemployment, but to enterprise. A move away from complacent expectation that someone else will employ us as a cog in some wheel…. to a belief that we can have great ideas, gather with others to turn them into reality, and effect social change through doing so.

It feels like time to get excited. There’s the sense of a new model of business emerging. It’s not the old way where business is set up purely for the sake of profit with the directors perhaps developing a conscience later in life, creating philanthropic foundations to offset the damage their enterprise has done. The new model is that enterprise itself is a vehicle for answering society’s needs.

The win-win-win nature of this transaction continually inspires me. I spoke to two women at the conference who were feeling increasingly frustrated as the day went on. They were hearing about all these inspirational projects yet feeling that their own gifts were being wasted, their potential not fulfilled. I hear this so frequently when interviewing women for my Inspirational 100 project – the pain of that gap between what you could be doing, and what you are doing. One of the women started crying as she told me that in her previous decade of working life she felt that she had added no value. She knew that she could give, and that she WAS, more than that. It reiterated to me this great human need for personal fulfilment through fulfilling our own potential – and that one way of doing this is by fulfilling a need in the world through enterprise.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Inquiry: What is the most entrepreneurial thing I have ever done? What was it like to match my strengths/interests with a need in the world?

2) Inquiry: If starting a business were the only way to effect social change, what need would I want to meet and how could a business model serve that need?

3) If there were no time to waste and you were really needed right now, what would be your next action step? Get whatever support you need to make it.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2008

** You – The Entrepreneur **

This is the very exciting launch of a new workshop designed for anyone who is considering starting their own entrepreneurial venture. This is a FANTASTIC opportunity to attend a super-affordable, high-impact workshop and get you moving on that entrepreneurial path. For more information, click here.

I’m delighted to be showcasing one of my favourite ever ventures: Morsbags. The story is – an inspirational young woman named Claire Morsman realised the devastating impact of plastic bags on marine animals. Rather than starting a campaign to stop people using plastic bags, she decided to create an alternative and came up with ‘social guerilla bagging’. This involves groups of people getting together with a few sewing machines to turn recycled material into beautiful, useful bags and then distributing these outside supermarkets etc. Not only has she created a proactive solution to a problem, she’s inspired people to connect and get creative – and ultimately become more alive and involved in their world.

I first made a bag at an event several months ago where Claire was guiding people through the process. I can’t tell you how proud I am of that bag – if you see me in person, ask me to show it to you as I carry it everywhere I go. Apparently that one bag will save me using about 80 plastic bags and it’s immensely satisfying to refuse a bag and put shopping in my home-made one instead. We managed to acquire a sewing machine via my father-in-law’s colleague, my grandma visited to teach me how to use the machine, and then a friend and I got together to start a little creative pod here in Cambridge.

On her website, Claire has paired up a Sad Fact (over 1 million plastic bags are consumed per minute globally) with a Happy Fact (making morsbags will help immediately). We can see this problem/solution match being true for so many aspects of this venture:

Sad fact: Old sewing machines are sitting around gathering dust
Happy fact: This project is inspiring new generations to learn old skills and perhaps reconnect with our society’s elders

Sad fact: People feel isolated
Happy fact: This is an excuse to get together with existing friends, make new friends and feel part of a community

Sad fact: People feel bored and sit in front of the TV all evening
Happy fact: Here’s a way of spending time creatively, doing something enjoyable and unusual

Sad fact: People feel useless and unimportant
Happy fact: We can start seeing ourselves as needed, useful, able to make a difference

With this kind of inspirational project, we are powerfully matching up needs and solutions. This is what any business venture is meant to be about – using our genius to come up with win-win ways forward. Rather than simply ‘what does the world need?’ and ‘how do we NEED to solve it?’ – let’s ask: What does the world need and how would I LOVE to offer a solution?

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

Make a list of what you feel most sad/angry/frustrated about in the world. Now list activities you would LOVE doing which would offer solutions. Then: What’s the first step? What could you do right NOW – literally, in the next five minutes? Notice what it’s like to be the solution. I invite you to share your thoughts as comments on this blog – to inspire others and create some momentum for yourself to get into action.

©  Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2008

* Focus On You*

The idea of the world needing our passion is at the heart of the work I do with each coaching client – helping her connect with that passion and get in to sustained action to create an inspirational venture. To book a consultation to explore how you might benefit from this support, simply click here.