When I left legal practice and started my own business back in 2012 to answer my true calling; I felt so liberated, excited, (scared too to be honest) and I remember thinking to myself “Yes, I’m finally living my purpose”!
I thought gone are the days where I would dread going to work on Mondays, I would have flexibility at work that will allow me more time with my kids and have total control over how much money I’d be making. Doesn’t that sound great?
Little did I know that although, yes I would have all those things I mentioned above (and much more); my entrepreneurial start up journey was also one that is filled with mistakes (a lot of them!) and bad judgments that resulted in bad experiences which caused me a lot of headache and heartache.
If anyone reading this is going through a rough start-up or experiencing difficult times in your business or career or life in general, I would like to share the top three things that have helped me managed, navigated and overcame those bad times in my business then.
1) Saying Thank You
I remember when things were going bad for me, it was so easy to get sucked and stuck into the negative thought patterns. This is disastrous!
Our thoughts emit energies and so with every thought conjured more and more energy are being projected out into the world
You see now I’ve come to understand (which at the time I didn’t) that our thoughts emit energies and so with every thought conjured more and more energy are being projected out into the world. Due to energy’s ability to attract other energies that vibrate on the same frequency, it means that for every negative thought emitted, we are actually calling in more negative energies our way.
One day I came across Rhonda Byrne’s book The Magic and one of the teachings in it is to be grateful and to say thank you for all blessings; no matter how small it is.
So that’s what I did!
That’s when I started noticing changes in how I felt where instead of feeling down, worried and hopeless…I had this inexplicable feeling that it’s going to be okay and that things will get better.
I then started to make it my daily morning practice where I got a designated notebook (great excuse to get new stationery) to be my gratitude journal and started writing anything and everything I’m grateful for.
There are days when I would be inspired and able to write a long list of things but there are also days when I’m stumped for ideas and just wrote down whatever I’ve written from the previous day.
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing and whether it’s repetitive. As long as you’re saying a genuine thank you and feeling real gratitude – that’s what going to make the difference.
It’s because you are consciously and purposely putting yourself in a high vibration positive mode and therefore is calling in more of that into your life.
2) Practice Forgiveness
There bound to be people in your business, be it your employees, partners, service providers or clients who will rub you the wrong way, disappoint you, do you wrong, lie, steal, abandon…well the list goes on and on.
I’m not going to lie, when those things happened to me, I got upset and resented those people for making my life difficult and those experiences left a nasty taste in my mouth.
Even when they were no longer in the business; I noticed that the same problems kept happening despite having different people and companies to work with.
Here’s the thing… it’s normal to be angry and upset when you find yourself in situations that I found myself in as described earlier. What shouldn’t be the norm is allowing the memory of it and the resentment to sit within me over a long period of time.
The memory triggers the resentment, which then caused me to get upset over and over again.
Remember what I said earlier on about energy attracting similar energies? Well, the same applies here. Every time I got upset I was basically operating from a negative space and is calling in more experiences that will upset me.
So, that was why I found myself in a loop of meeting and hiring the same wrong kind of people in and to my business.
So, how did I get myself out of this vicious cycle? I sat down one day and instinctively started writing a letter to each and every one of the people that I felt caused me my biggest pains.
Especially after I wrote “I forgive you”, all the memories and the resentment that usually comes with them – disappeared
I wrote down exactly how I felt about them and what was it they did that really upset me. At the end of the letter, I wrote down the words “I forgive you” followed by me tearing those letters and threw them away.
That simple act of writing down my thoughts and feelings and especially after I wrote “I forgive you”, all the memories and the resentment that usually comes with them – disappeared.
Of course I still remember those events (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to recall it here) but they no longer affect me in any way. And with that too, I’m able to start calling in new people and experiences that fit in with how I visualized them to be.
3) Listen to My Heart
You may call it heart, instinct, intuition, gut feeling or any other labels…but when you get that “feeling” or “voice” – trust it!
There were so many times when I would get the “feeling” or “voice” in my heart telling me not to proceed with something or be wary of someone and I ignored it, that was when things would go all south for me.
Become more aware, listen and trust what my heart is guiding me to
So, over the years I’ve learnt to become more aware, listen and trust what my heart is guiding me to. I admit, it’s not always easy because my mind would get in the way of it.
In fact, there was one opportunity I had and it all looked good on paper, the people I was supposed to partner up with checked out and they had the experience as well as the connection for the opportunity to work. However, my heart was very reluctant to go with it but I put it down as fear of doing something outside of my comfort zone and went ahead.
True enough that opportunity ended up bleeding me financially, mentally and emotionally. *Sigh* It was an expensive lesson and that was the last time I ever let my head overrule my heart!
So, learn to trust your heart, instinct, intuition, gut feeling or [insert your label of choice].
You may be wondering – do I regret my decision of leaving my corporate job to start my own? Absolutely not! 7 years in and I’m still here doing what I love and see myself doing for a long time.
Currently, I have mostly good days tinged with some not-so-good days and I can confidently say (without feeling like a fraud) that I’m at a very stable and good place in my business right now.
As cliché as this may sound… whatever challenges you’re facing currently, they too shall pass and you will come out of it wiser and stronger.