Someone recently asked asked me:
How do you stay excited about your biz ventures?
What’s interesting is this is someone who I have a lot of respect for, and whom has been doing a lot of really creative and unique projects lately.
Anyway, the short answer to the question is… I don’t.
How do you keep those fires of passion from burning out?
One question that I’ve often asked my mentors over the years echos the above: why do I always run hot and cold about my business?
No one has ever had a great answer – I suspect because deep down they all knew that it’s part of the deal and didn’t want to admit it to themselves. (My good friend Mary had a good comment about it: “Are you sure you know what you want?”)
Find Your Reset Button
My advice for you if you’re feeling a bit wishy washy is to find your reset button. We are all so damned busy that it’s hard to understand what those feelings of frustration are all about.
For example, I like to do a lot of walking and reading to get myself grounded again. The walking helps clear my head of over-stimulation, and the reading helps me expose me to some new ideas and ways of thinking.
Some other suggestions on getting reset:
- Start a stop-doing list.
- If you’re dealing with a backlog of critical or important tasks, hire someone to help clear it. Whether that’s tech tweaks to your systems, to getting that darned brochure finally written, it might be that your frustration might be with a specific project or task, not the business overall.
- Get some external perspective. I’ve talked about the problem with paying for advice, but outsider viewpoints can help shed some light on what’s going on. (Shameless plug: if it’s your website that needs some perspective, I can help.)
- Consider trying one new creative project. What’s a small risk you can take to try something new? (Hint: this can be a personal project, not a professional one, if you choose.)
Hot and cold happens, it’s how you handle the long term that separates those who make it from those who don’t.
Share in the Comments: Do you run hot and cold about your projects?
If not, how do you avoid it? If so, what do you do to deal with it?
PS – I’m sending out a newsletter update on Wednesday about some projects I’m working on. Are you on the list?