The Client Letter
July 5, 2013
The Northland
Partly Cloudy 61 Degrees
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How much are you doing that you don’t really want to do?
How many clients are you working with that you don’t want to be working with?
Why?
We can all rationalize why, but I know for me, that’s not the real reason.
I don’t like getting rejected and I don’t like the (perceived) conflict that comes from “rejecting” someone else.
Over the years, this feeling has been so strong in me that I don’t have enough paper to list all the times I’ve chosen to follow what others want instead of what I want.
If I stand up and truly show WHO I AM out in the open, that’s going to create some strong reactions.
Can I deal with those?
That’s the fear I’ve lived with for as long as I can remember.
At first, I wasn’t even conscious of it. I was IN the movie without realizing it was a movie.
Then I realized it was a movie and that I was playing a character I didn’t want to play.
But I grew up with a very strong fear of being rejected. Of not “measuring up.” Why do you think I got straight A’s in school?
Why do you think I studied probably twice as much as I needed to?
I’ll tell you why. Because I was a drug addict in school. I got addicted to the drug of pleasing.
I spent my school years practicing something I never should have been good at: following someone else’s rules.
And if you spend your time practicing something you don’t want to do, you will get good at it too. And then you will wake up one day and realize you’ve lived someone else’s life.
///////////////////////////////////////////
You can reverse the brainwashing that keeps you small: http://bit.ly/1272mvG
///////////////////////////////////////////
The ONE chance you got this time around, you spent it living as someone else.
How much simpler is it to work on the ability to say Yes when you mean Yes and No when you mean No?
The more you do this, the easier it gets. And over time, your life gets “lighter” as you release the weight of things and people and projects and deadlines that should not be there.
Right now, this year is about half over. Have you spent the first half being you in your work with clients?
Are there people in your business that shouldn’t be there?
Have you taken on projects that don’t belong to you?
This is a process that’s taking years for me to work out myself, so it’s hardly instant, but it’s worth it. Do it slowly over time if you must, but DO IT.
How can you hope to be unique in the marketplace if you’re covering up who you truly are?
You can’t control where you are right now, but you can control the next step you take.