Today I’m delighted to welcome Linda Wolf. Linda writes Insanely Serene, a blog devoted to her passion for peace of mind and serenity. Through her blog, she offers practical suggestions for moving from low self-esteem to powerful self-confidence,  carved from honest and touching reference to her own, real experiences. Here she shares how personal crisis and search for meaning alchemized her own Different Kind of Work.

I love Christine’s blog for her amazing writing, and for the ideas she presents about the possibilities for stepping outside our family and societal expectations to find the work we love. I’m inspired by her work and am honored to be a part of her series on how others have found their way to express their purpose in life. Here is a little bit of my story.

I am a quiet non-conformist. Reserved by nature, I was a sensitive child and shy young adult. I appeared to be following the path laid out by generations of my hard-working family with its immigrant roots in early 20th century America: Get a good education, a respectable job/career, marry, have children, buy a home, save for retirement. I went to college and later earned a graduate degree, built a career in communications, and got engaged to a research scientist. Textbook, huh?

But wait! (Sound of needle on record album screeching to a halt.) From the beginning there were signs of unrest. As a kid, I withdrew into books and stories when I didn’t like the reality around me. I did not fit in to any of the accepted crowds in high school. I refused to cover up unpleasantness in my family, insisting on speaking up for truth. And I didn’t have a path. I felt the pressure of family expectations for success, but I did not know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to end up.

A Different Kind of Inner Work

Several factors combined to lead me in the direction of a different kind of inner work. As a youth, I felt that something was wrong, but I could not articulate what. Though there was much chaos, I also saw around me adults who modeled the behavior of seeking help and balance – never giving up on the idea of feeling better, despite the crush of difficulties in life.

Thus, my inner uneasiness joined forces with a drive to feel better – to seek resources at every turn, to be willing to try new things – anything to get out of depression and into feeling happier.

Seeking turned into a lifelong pattern. At the point of my engagement, I had finally broken free of depression, but I was lying to myself to be safe, not in love, in my relationship.

A crisis led me to break off the engagement and focus intense energy on myself. I had to dig out all of my character flaws, face them, and let them go. In the process, I got to really know myself – the person underneath all the societal pressures. And I discovered the joy of emotional and spiritual freedom that comes from self-honesty and taking responsibility for my life.

A Different Kind of Life Path

Although as a young adult I didn’t have a clear idea for my occupation, I did eventually find my way to my ideal skill set – communications, specifically writing. I built a career in writing within my field of interest – science and health. I was lucky enough to get dream jobs at environmental organizations, science museums, and communications agencies. For a long time I was satisfied with my professional track.

Over the last few years, however, I started to feel a tickle in the back of my mind…there was something more I wanted to do. I didn’t know exactly what, but it had to do with writing, and it had to do with the work I’d done getting to know myself. And I knew it meant stepping off the traditional path.

Being a cautious person, it’s taken me a long time to evolve this new direction. For a few years, all I did was think about it (as in, “I’d like to retire so I can do whatever I want to with my time!”). I got some clarity around wanting to do my own writing. For the next couple of years, I evolved a plan to transition from a full-time job to a schedule that would allow big chunks of time for writing.

For the last two years, I’ve been able to manage a schedule of part-time work and time devoted to my writing – and what I’m going to do with it. I’m stepping outside the norm. I’m learning that the most important thing is what I think, not what I think others think. It’s about having confidence in my inner voice, whether for my personal growth or my professional path.

Even with all this searching, I don’t know my final destination. But if I listen to my insides, I believe I’m on the right track; and I know these things:

• I love to write and I’m good at it.
• I have a passion for peace of mind – and for using personal development tools to keep my serenity in all situations that life throws at me.
• I want to share my knowledge – how I’ve become my best self – because it helps me continue my inner work.
• I love helping others find their way to their true selves.

My blog is a first step toward helping others. For the future, I have dreams of possibly publishing a book, teaching workshops, and working with individuals and groups. I will continue down my path, without knowing where it ends, because for now, it feels right. I trust the unfolding process and that I’ll know the next step when it’s time.

I welcome any suggestions from you, and would love to hear a little of your journey toward a different kind of work.

To get Linda’s updates, why not subscribe to her RSS Feed? Or follow her on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Paving Your Own Path
2. Doing Your Real Work
3. Introducing The Manifesto For New Work Pioneers

When I asked Jen Smith to write for me a few weeks ago, she could not have known that I was thinking of running an occasional series of guest posts, profiling people who are finding their own “different kind of work”. But serendipity being what it is, this is the theme that she herself chose. Read and enjoy!

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wanted to share with you, my own experience with “A different kind of work”. I love this website and it is great to connect with like-minded people, people who are “committed to finding the way to do what they love and to love what they do”.

For ever since I can remember, I have wondered what my purpose in life is. I used to think I was a bit strange, particularly when growing up, as other people didn’t seem to ponder these questions as much as I did. I have realised as I have got older that it isn’t the case that other people don’t think about these things. Particularly through setting up my own blog, I have met others who are on a similar journey, people questioning the status quo around ‘work’, who are committed to creating work for themselves that truly fulfils them.

Where I’m at

I am thirty four, and for the last eighteen months I have really started paving my own path. What do I mean by that? Well, I have done some great (and not so great ) jobs in my time. A lot of my jobs have been in the areas of health / psychology / coaching, but it really hit me last year that out of everything I have done, coaching and mentoring is the thing that I feel really makes a difference and is a natural expression of me (particularly one to one work). I have now trained and set up my own part time business. ‘Paving my own path’ has been about biting the bullet and setting out to do work that I truly love (coaching) and creating it how I want to (working for myself).

Discovering my purpose

For a long time I was a little bit jealous of people who had a special talent or obvious vocation in life, people that were naturally talented singers or just ‘knew’ they wanted to be a doctor, for example. Funnily enough, my passion for personal development was always there. When I was about ten I remember avidly reading my dad’s personal development books and I’ve been like that with personal development ever since. Maybe I knew my purpose all along but didn’t believe that I could actually earn money from it or had the belief in myself to believe I could. Looking back though, the path to discovering my purpose has really given me an invaluable insight into my passion and helps me when coaching other people to do the same now.

Creating my own path

My journey changed in the last eighteen months when it hit me that I probably was never going to find the ‘perfect job’ and that maybe I needed to create it myself. I always liked the idea of being self employed but, if I’m honest, I lacked confidence and self discipline. I held out for finding a job that would be ‘me’, with a steady pay-check, paid holidays and everything already set up (i.e. a bit easier than doing it myself J). I tried lots of jobs, but didn’t find the perfect one. It’s not to say it’s not out there, but that’s where I got to. I realised I need to be self employed, a) because it really appeals to be my own boss and, b) to shatter that belief that I can’t do it (after all that’s what being a coach is all about isn’t it! J). A series of soul searching, and getting in touch with what I wanted and enjoyed, led me back to one to one coaching.

Things are usually easier than they seem

One thing that has really hit me since starting my own business is that when we follow what feels right, even when there is no ‘map’, things fall into place. Since getting accredited as a coach at the beginning of 2009 I have cut my hours in my employed work nearly in half and am now consistently earning an income coaching and mentoring on a self employed basis. That’s not to say I haven’t worked hard and been consistent, but if you had told me that I would be in this position a year ago, I might not have believed you!

Each step leads to the next

I know this is probably obvious, right? But everything I have done has made me who I am today. I am not totally where I want to be with regards to work (full time self employed coach, mentor and writer) but I am definitely on my way. There are a lot of experiences that I look back on, that didn’t make sense at the time but do now.

There is a time for everything

There is a time for questioning and a time for action. I question things a lot and I really think that continual questioning about why I am here has really helped me to be stubborn and not ‘give up’ looking for my passion. We all know people that have given up and settled because they don’t know what they want to do- I have never wanted to be that person. Life is an evolving process, and just because you may not know what you want to do now, or even in ten years time, doesn’t mean you always won’t. We need to keep questioning and learning and being open to discovering our passion. Similarly, it is not a ‘destination’- finding the work we love will evolve. From needing a website for my coaching business I stumbled across blogging and have now incorporated this into my work too. I am sure this journey will look different again in a years time.

Save for your dreams

Saving, and making the most of the money you have, makes a real difference to achieving your dreams. It’s all about priorities. If you want to go back to study, maybe staying in an extra night of the week and cutting back on some non-essentials will help you achieve that? If you really want to achieve something, money isn’t everything, but it does give you freedom to do more of what you want to do.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Henry David Thoreau

Jen is a Life Coach and Personal Development blogger who can be found at Reach Our Dreams. You can connect with Jen on Twitter @reachourdreams or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to her RSS Feed?

Related posts:

1. Deviation From The Norm – My Different Kind Of Work
2. Change Your Career While Keeping Your Job
3. Doing Your Real Work

Happy New Year everyone! How were your Holidays?

I hadn’t planned to be off-air for almost two weeks, but that’s how it has worked out and, boy, did I have a ball. One of the most amazing things about living in the heart of the English countryside is, well, the countryside. Yes, it’s been freezing cold, and yes, we’ve had snow, frost and ice. But I’ve loved wrapping up warmly, putting my walking shoes on and getting into the Chiltern Hills. The air has been crisp and clear, and on sunny days the views of snow covered fields have reached right over to Oxfordshire. The steaming glasses of hot chocolate in the cafe at the bottom of the hill just added to the toasty atmosphere of it all. Sheer bliss.

So, my batteries are recharged and I’m buzzing to get back into things.

Before Christmas I did some thinking about what A Different Kind of Work was going to mean for me in 2010. I’ve been building it slowly since mid last year, and my ambition now is to take it to the next level and really get it humming. So, what I wanted to do in this post was share my plans with you and invite your feedback. Where have I got it right? And what else could I be thinking about?

1. This blog IS a business. Yes, Michael, I know you’ve been making this point to me for a while now, but the lightbulb has just gone on! Some people (clearly not Michael) have given me the advice that I should think of my blog like it was a business, or as if it were a business. This did not engage or inspire me. It’s too conditional, too intangible. Deciding instead that A Different Kind of Work is a business brings out the latent entrepreneur in me and allows me to see possibilities I hadn’t before. This has been fundamental to helping me shape the other activities I’m about to list out.
2. I’ve developed a manifesto. It’s really rough at this point, but in the next little while I hope to share the detail of it with you. I’m calling it The New Work Manifesto. I began writing it as my own call to action, helping me define more clearly my purpose in developing A Different Kind of Work. In the process I realised I was developing something I could share. Something that defines the challenges and the opportunities for what I’d call The New Work Pioneer – the person at the forefront of making work a different experience. Wherever and however they choose to work. This has also served the purpose of helping me think through the kind of things I need to write about, and what products I need to be both developing and affiliating with. Watch this space.
3. I’ve set goals. Because I’ve got clear now about the purpose of the blog, I am clearer about what the blog needs to deliver. So I’ve set goals for myself in terms of content, traffic, subscribers, products and income. I’ve also set some critical milestones – things that help me to know that the blog is developing in the right direction.
4. I’m tracking my analytics. Using Google Analytics, I’m keeping track of my key metrics: visits, pages per visit, bounce rate and percentage of new visits. These are all currently going in the right direction, but I’m going be looking at them at least monthly. Also, I’ve identified a couple of role model bloggers who are in my niche, and are running six figure businesses. I’m getting some idea of their metrics via Alexa. This is giving me a picture of what good looks like. In business terms, they’re my benchmarks.
5. I’ve put together a work routine. It’s one thing to put goals together, and quite another to work in the focused way required to achieve them. Well, it can be like that for me. So, keeping my business hat on, I’ve put together a little work routine for myself that I hope’s going to help me crack things. Some of the fundamentals are weekly and monthly blog reviews. These are diarised appointments with myself. To make this fun for myself, I do them in my local cafe which tends to be buzzing and plays hot music. I use a Paul Smith notebook that my friend Mandy Lehto gave me, and some funky coloured pens. I look back on what’s gone well, and not so well in the last period and I create action lists for the time ahead. My monthly reviews focus on bigger items, like my site redesign (more of which shortly), metrics and what to discuss in my next blog coaching call. My weekly reviews focus on more tactical things like the posts I’ll write each week. My daily routines are less defined. Instead I have some targets I’m setting myself around the number of pages of writing I do each day, the amount of other people’s stuff I read and comment on, and the number of personal interactions I make. I’m not precious about these numbers, but they give me something to work towards.
6. I’m putting a bloggers yearbook together. I got this idea from IttyBiz and thought it was inspired. What it involves is looking at the year ahead and noting all the key dates and events, both from a public and personal perspective. Then thinking about what products and blog posts I can develop for different times of the year. A post for 25th January – the year’s most depressing day. An e-book offer for my birthday in June. I think you’ve got the idea. And these things, of course, need to find their way into the action lists too.
7. I’m revamping the design of the site. Half a year or so ago when I started blogging as a personal experiment, I had enough of an idea to develop a site on WordPress, and launched it on the unadapted Thesis Theme.Now the design needs to say more about me and my brand than it currently does. So I’ve hired Grant Griffiths and G2 Web Media to shake things up. I’ve seen some great early logo designs from their designer Mikhaela Craig and am pretty sure things are going to be rocking a whole lot differently soon.

Ambitious? Sure. But I’m also up for the challenge and ready for it. What do you think?

Related posts:

1. How am I doing?
2. How A Year In The Country Has Revolutionized My Work Life
3. A Month of Birthdays

It was just an experiment at first. I had no intention of becoming hooked. All I can tell you is that, after a while, something else took over.

My first introduction to blogging was by accident. I was doing some online research for a coaching skills course I was running and stumbled upon Mark McGuinness’s Wishful Thinking. Mark’s blog was not only really useful for what I was doing; it also captured my imagination. An online site that looked a bit like a broadsheet newspaper and was being developed by one guy. I’d lived a fairly traditional professional life till that point and could not have then identified what I was looking at as a blog. But it made me curious.

I can’t remember now how I found other blogs, but somehow I did. The big ones to start with. Copyblogger. ProBlogger. IttyBiz. Men with Pens. Remarkablogger.

Somewhere along the line I understood that these were not just cutting edge websites putting stuff out there for people’s reading pleasure. Part of their equation was a strong commercialism. People were selling all kinds of products and services, but there was no hard sell. How they seemed to be doing it was off the back of extreme generosity in giving away knowledge, and trusting that, as a result of educating and building relationships, people would buy. Clever, as well as creative, I thought. A whole new type of entrepreneurialism. One that has what the Positive Psychologists call an “abundance” mentality at its core.

That’s when I really began to get drawn in. Having worked for myself for over a decade, there’s a real business person in me. But I’d been a closet writer all of my life, with three half-written books to my name and endless story-boarded ones. I’d also had an interest in the role work plays in people’s lives and had worked in coaching and therapy to support people transform their experience of work. But I’d never promoted this as a passion of mine.

“I began to wonder whether blogging would give me the platform I hadn’t known I’d been searching for to bring together these three disparate strands of me.”

Someone told me about WordPress.Org, so I got a site and tried it out. It seemed remarkably easy to play around with the themes and pictures and colours. But I could tell from early on that the serious bloggers had their blogs on their own domains and that I was going to have to work out how to do that for myself.

My friend and former neighbour, Mandy Lehto, had found a really handy book called Does this blogsite make my wallet look fat?, which she lent me. It gave me enough know how to figure out how to get my own domain and load WordPress onto it. I confess there were times during this process when I wondered what the hell I was doing. Sure, I could have paid someone to do it for me, but at that stage I wasn’t at all sure that I’d stick with it. Besides which no-one might read me.

It was only when I was about four articles in and feeling, if anything, more determined than ever to really develop something, that I reached out for support. And I did so in the form of Michael Martine. He’s been a complete star in pointing me in the right direction.

I still have a long way to go. There’s still much to learn and a mountain or three to climb in terms of really making the thing earn its keep. But I’m amazed at how passionate I feel about it; how much I believe in it; and, indeed, how it has changed me to allow myself to experiment like this.

Blogging, and its associated activities of reading and commenting on other people’s blogs and being present on other online communities, like Twitter and Facebook, have taken my work and my life in a direction I simply could not have imagined in April when I started out. Then, I was a good coach, facilitator and therapist who’d been getting business through traditional networking and referral. But my creativity was under-exploited and I needed something new. Being so close up to things I didn’t see that at the time. All I knew was that I was vaguely bored with my life.

Blogging has allowed me to know that there’s a way of working as a coach and consultant that I’d never imagined. That there’s a world out there with opportunities that go beyond the confines of what’s possible if all you ever know and focus on is the City of London.

In recent years when I’ve been travelling to far flung destinations with my partner and playmate Steve, we’ve talked about how wonderful it would be to have the kind of work and business that wasn’t dependent on us being in any one place. After each trip, it has been a dream we’ve packed away as we’ve resigned ourselves to our self-employed, but location dependent lives.

Over the summer, inspired by what I was learning about online business, we decided to extricate ourselves from London in order to create the conditions that would make our dream come alive. Some people no doubt think I’m barking mad. But I really don’t care. I’ve got a concept of where I’m taking this blog that only now is starting to be made more concrete in terms of its business model and its commercial reality. And I have faith and determination.

As well as reading whatever else I write, come on this journey with me and see first hand how blogging seriously can change your career.

Are you up for it?

Related posts:

1. A Different Kind of Blog Review: March 2010
2. How A Year In The Country Has Revolutionized My Work Life

This is the third in a series of three posts on quitting paid employment and reinventing your life and work. It’s based on my own experience of having exited a so-called top job twelve years ago, and having subsequently made a good living from doing what I love.

What could I possibly sell?

Long before I ever resigned, I started to hone in on the things I could actually package and sell to the market as services. Surprise, surprise, many of them were the things that I most enjoyed about my day job when I stripped away the politics and lousy working conditions. HR and organisational consulting, team building, group facilitation, team and individual coaching, management training courses.

In the beginning, there were a couple of things that I felt less confident about. For example, although I’d done content coaching in the context of specific projects or leadership development programmes, I’d never done bespoke coaching, contracted around the client’s unique agenda. So I decided that, in the beginning, I’d offer content coaching, whilst finding some training for myself that’d help me build my wider coaching skills.

You will find as you get into freelancing that you can build, develop and even reorient your offering. But in the beginning, especially if you’re in any way risk-averse, focus on what you know you’re good at and package it.

Who’s going to buy me?

Good question. And you can ask it from a small, childish place in yourself, or from a confident, problem-solving grown-up place. While the former will keep you locked into your risk-aversion, the latter will give you the energy to push beyond it.

Since I wanted to target business leaders who had both a need for my services, and the wherewithal to pay for them, I made two lists. One was of the business decision-makers in my network; the other was of people I knew who could influence decision-makers. There was a mix of business managers, business consultants and HR guys. I called up those I felt most close to and chatted with them before I quit my job. My reason for doing so was threefold: first to stay networked with them; second to share with them what I was planning to do; and third to get them to sound-check my ideas. I started with my closest connections because I trusted they’d be honest with me, and that they’d allow me to warm up before I put myself in front of people I knew less well. To my amazement, putting the word out that I intended to freelance began a flood of interest. This gave my embryonic entrepreneuring spirit a huge boost, and allowed me to believe that my planned escape was much less risky than perhaps I’d been imagining.

What resources do I need to get set up?

Think about this well in advance of leaving the comfort of your corporate job. I completely underestimated how dependent on my employer I’d been for things like my laptop and computing support, work venue and admin support. It meant that I was sorting out all these things for myself at the same time as taking on my first freelance projects. My difficulties in setting up customised email accounts and that sort of thing were mainly invisible to my clients. But, looking back, I could have done without feeling stressed about these more basic things whilst also learning real time how to deliver what I do in a totally different way.

So, think about where you’re going to conduct your business from. What are you going to call yourself? Are you going to have a website or a blog? Do you need to get business cards printed. Quite basic stuff, but if you’re not used to having to do these things for yourself, finding out how to takes an enormous amount of time. Time that, once you’re out, you probably want to be investing at the front end of things.

How much money will I make?

How much money do you need to make? Before you step out there on your own, you want to be very clear about your finances. I did a budget of my monthly expenses and included in it everything that I really did want to be able to afford. Rent, council tax, insurances, gas, electricity, water, food, petrol, the daily Starbucks fix – it all had to be in there. That’s was then my bottom line. The amount I absolutely had to make once I’d set aside what I needed to pay the tax man.

Then, how much do you need to be charging for your various services in order to make your top line? In considering this mix, I did a bit of competitor analysis to see what other people were asking and getting. The guys that had been at it a long time and were well regarded set the top end of the pay scale. Other newbies and people less well regarded set the bottom end. I set my fees along that range at a point that I felt both reflected my value and was reasonable as a new comer in the market who wanted to win good work. If what you’re doing is completely new to the market, what’s the nearest equivalent?

Although you can and probably will play around with this, I can’t over-emphasise the importance of setting your fees at the right level for you. Set it too high for you, and at a level you’re afraid to ask for, and you risk undermining your confidence to sell. Set it too low just to get work, any work, and you’ll soon resent what you’re doing. If you’re struggling with this, it’s a great thing to take to coaching.

How should I set myself up legally?

In the UK, you can either set yourself up as a sole trader, a limited company, or, if you’re going into business with one or more other people, a limited liability partnership. I started off as a sole trader and morphed into a limited company as I began to work with more businesses who wanted to trade only with other companies. Here’s where you need to reach out to a good accountant to advise you on what’s best. Over the last five years, I’ve used Neal Patel of BSG Valentine, who’s brilliant.

For the risk-averse, having as much certainty, and as clear a picture of how you’re going to manage the basics is really important. But, you know what guys, if you’re figuring out how to account for your business, the great news is you’ve already decided to do it. So, get the more practical things sorted well ahead of jumping off. Then you can really fly, and use your creative energies in building the freelance business you’ve been dreaming of!

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Related posts:

1. The journey to freelancing confidence
2. How to quit corporate life

This is the second in a series of three posts on quitting paid employment and reinventing your life and work. It’s based on my own experience of having exited a so-called top job twelve years ago, and having subsequently made a good living from doing what I love.

One of the things I really struggled with was the whole emotional roller-coaster ride. One day I could be thrilled at the prospect of running my own show. The next, my stomach would be in my mouth as the terror of being entirely dependent on myself for making a living hit me. Often, I wished that I could just stop feeling – that way I’d make the change with a whole lot less grief.

As it transpires, I discovered that the emotional ride was actually a fairly natural and necessary part of the process. Here’s how I found my way through the minefield of feelings and got to the other end successfully.

Preparing to leave

1. Excitement. Quite apart from any negative feelings that my paid job was engendering at the time, what drove me on was the elation I felt at the thought of doing my own thing. I imagined how wonderful it would be to work in a way that was more self-directed. And especially after I did work to envision my future life, I could touch and feel how much more energy and zest I would have. How much more freedom I would have to pursue things beyond the bind of the corporate career.
2. Doubt, fear and anxiety. But as I got further into thinking and planning what I wanted to do, some yuckier thoughts and feelings emerged. “People will think I’m crazy,” I said to myself. “What could I sell?” “I’m not really good enough to go it alone.” Looking back, I notice how often I slowed myself down with this kind of thing.
3. Anger and frustration. Eventually I got pissed off with how long it was taking me to do something decisive, and, indeed for thinking badly of myself. This, coming at a time when my job was on its last legs, brought me to a point where I felt compelled to act, decided to resign, and did.

Ship to shore

1. Relief. From the moment I resigned, the worrying was over. I had set sail and there was no going back. From the months of wondering about whether or not I’d be able to make a go of it myself, I was suddenly in the position of having to put myself to the test and I had a fresh burst of focus and energy. I stopped caring about what anyone else thought.
2. Disorientation. Post the leaving party, things felt rocky for a while. Going from working with large teams around me, and having the enviable technological and administrative support of big corporations, to being entirely self-sufficient was initially quite disconcerting. It was now entirely up to me to set my own goals and review my performance. There were no landmarks like weekly team meetings or client reviews that charted the map of the week. There were times when I lost track of what day it was. All my known reference points were gone. I had to set my own structures and support systems and they had to work for me. In the beginning that was hard. I’d work late into the evening to set things up on my computer or to master computer software that I’d previously only had a passing interest in.
3. Incompetence. The other huge surprise was that I initially lost the feeling of seasoned confidence in my work that I’d built up over my years in corporate life. Suddenly I was doing things in a completely different way. I was having to learn different skills – like invoicing, accounting. Even the form of selling I was doing was quite different from what I’d done previously. This added to my wobbliness.
   It took me to some time to realise that, although I was creating what I’d believed I’d wanted, this was entirely new territory to me, and I was going to have to acclimate to it like the Pilgrim Fathers had to when they set foot in America. Giving myself permission to be that newcomer allowed me to slow down, ease the tension I was feeling, and take things a day at a time.

Happy landings

1. Confidence. After months of living and working in what felt like foreign territory, the world started to look and feel better. “I can do this!!” I started to think. This in turn made me feel surer of my footing and stronger in what I did. Meaning, my results improved, I got great feedback, and I felt fantastic.
2. Certainty. “I’ve done the right thing,” I started to tell myself as I began to sense solid land beneath my feet again and to feel more at home.
3. Joy and happiness. The bliss of doing my own thing is now immense. I won’t pretend that there aren’t times when I feel challenged by things I confront in the process of doing my work and living my life. Or that the type of work I do has stayed the same in all the years I’ve worked for myself. But there were some significant lessons I learned from making this journey that I now apply in an ongoing way to my ongoing travels. A key one is in being able to use feelings more assertively to guide my actions.

The wisdom of feelings

Feelings can seem overwhelming but I’ve discovered that, if I reframe feelings from being things that block me, to things that inform me, I can move through life’s challenges that bit more easily, quickly and productively.

“if I reframe feelings from being things that block me, to things that inform me, I can move through life’s challenges that bit more easily, quickly and productively”

There are two broad ways I do this, so let me share them with you. One means focusing on practical things that your feelings might be quietly nagging you about. The other means digging deeper into feelings to discover whether there are beliefs you’re holding about yourself that are past their sell-by date. Here are some self-coaching questions that you can use for both:

Practical things

• What might this feeling be challenging you to give more thought to? For example, if you’re suffering doubt, fear or anxiety, and what you’re telling yourself is, “I’ll never make enough money,” do you know what ‘enough’ looks like? And…
• What can you do to address this feeling directly? Sticking with the same example, you could develop your personal budget, understand what your bottom-line budget is, do some informal research to test what people are charging for the kind of work you want to do, and test whether, assuming you can market yourself successfully, you can charge enough to cover your bottom-line.

Digging deeper

• What’s this feeling really about? Yes, there will be a large part of it which is really about the change you’re making. But what else is it about? In the “I’ll never make enough money” example, where did you first learn that money was a scarce resource?
• What are you believing about yourself in order to experience this feeling? What are the words that go along with the feeling? “I’ll never be good enough,” might be an example. “Other people would make a fortune, but not me.”
• Where, when and from whom did you learn these things? Chances are a parent either overtly or otherwise inferred that you weren’t good enough and that you had to go along with other people’s ideas of what good was in order for you to feel okay about yourself.
• What would you rather choose to believe about yourself now? For example, “I can be successful on my terms”; “I can make money and be okay.” Say your new belief from that solid, grown-up part of you that knows it’s already true.
• How does rewriting your belief make you feel? The chances are that, thinking differently about yourself will chase away less resourceful feelings, and free you up to get on with the next bit of your freelancing journey.

So, rather than have your feelings hinder you, allow them to tell you of the practical things you need to be considering and the emotional things that need some work. And see where all of that takes you!

This has been the second article in a series of three articles on quitting corporate life. Feel free to subscribe if you don’t want to miss the third installment, which is on the subject of risk-averse freelancing.

Related posts:

1. Risk-averse freelancing
2. How to quit corporate life