why we might just need that tinfoil antenna - time is the means | part III

See Part I and Part II

So many times I've been the girl standing at the crossroads, getting sunburned and wrinkled, trying not to make a mistake. Sometimes a decision came quickly and I would move toward something I really wanted to do. But not often. Unless I stayed busy and let the decisions work themselves out (which works until it doesn't), I struggled.

I could never just relax.

As I get older I've started to embrace the thinking that we can't really get on the wrong road.

And this doesn't mean we can't get on a road littered with potholes and sticker bushes and maybe even fire breathing dragons - it just means the other road - the road not taken - very likely had its own kinds of roadblocks and setbacks and boulder slinging orcs!


Maybe life can use whatever road we take to get us where we need to go. Maybe if we stopped wasting energy deciding - we would have a whole lot more energy for the journey ahead no matter which road we choose.  

Although I'm not sure about wrong roads - I do think we can get on long roads.

I have had a few businesses, but only two that I started from a space of excitement and these are the two that have worked out the best for me. One was when I found Etsy in 2008 and fell in love with the place

and the other was several years earlier when I saw an ad in a magazine for a personalized product that could be sold from a mall cart. I thought the product was super unique, clever and kind of genius.

They had a cart in a mall on Staten Island and I drove up there with my brother to check it out. It was a large mall and I realized while parking my car I had no idea where their cart was located. We walked in a side entrance and the cart was right there in front of us.  

I took that as a good sign.

I wandered around the cart pretending to be a customer and asked the kid working there how business was going. "Terrible", he said, "this is the slowest cart I've ever worked."

I took that as a good sign. 

Note - when we really want to do something we will take everything as a good sign!

In fact, when I am taking everything as a good sign - I take that as a good sign!

I don't think the passion and excitement mean we will make a million dollars or even succeed in the way we set out to. I do think it's a good indicator of something we are meant to do - in the sense that our soul purpose, skills and timing line up with it.

On the other hand when I have jumped into something that put me on the long road 

(for example when I started the embroidery business I wrote about here)

the jump was not made from a space of enthusiasm or joy or eagerness for what I was about to do - the jump usually came from my fear of standing still -

I didn't trust the right thing would come along for me at the right time. My doubt created an urgent feeling that I had to do something now.

Other times the long road for me (the road with the boulder slinging orcs) has come from an act of indecision - a space that isn't the same we work with when we embrace a "waiting attitude".

Maybe we let the deadline slide by and don't sign up for the course or apply to the show. We don't take care of ourselves and then get sick and miss the job interview. We tell ourselves it just wasn't meant to be.

Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes our fear of doing something or of that something not turning out very well stops us in our tracks. And rather than make the decision to stop, cultivate a waiting attitude and lean into what develops - we just let the opportunity slide by and then tell ourselves it wasn't meant to be. Indecision is a decision (and an action).

We can feel the difference between something we procrastinate because we just don't want to do it and something we are afraid of and then make the decision, unconsciously, to not make the decision.

The first thing we maybe won't think about again (until life presents us with another opportunity to handle things in a better, higher way) and the second thing will gnaw at us (yes, kind of like Olive when she hasn't had her dinner and I am working).

I don't think that gnawing feeling of regret necessarily means we should have, or even could have, done the thing we let slide away, but I do think it means we should have stepped into our power and responsibility and made a conscious choice about it

(and next time we will - that's the great joy about living on a round planet everything comes around again, although often in a different form, for another go!).

So how do we know when to advance and when to retreat? How do we decide between X and Y when we just can't decide?

I think just asking the question tells us we can't get there from here. 

Remember that scene in the Chevy Chase movie Funny Farm where the moving men ask the local how to get to a certain place and the local guy says "well, I wouldn't start from here."

We need to get to the space where we wouldn't ask the question.

And I don't mean this in a woo-woo enlightened "I know it all" kind of way or an "I am the decider", I choose a position and cling to it forever kind of way either. 

Maybe the real question isn't should I choose X or Y or should I keep going or give up - the real question is always how do I get to the space where I know what I want; that space of receptivity where I awaken the power of the Creative within me and flow into my next right action?

Some things we can be asking ourselves are:

1. Can I embrace the thought that the "passionate, excited feeling" is the best, most reliable good sign that I line up with something?

And if we tend toward negative thinking, like I do, these passionate things may be few and far between. Another reason to work on a more optimistic attitude.

The optimist has many more avenues available for creative energy to support because they can get passionate and excited about more things and so line up with them!

2. Can I embrace the thought that if something doesn't work out the way I hoped it would, it doesn't mean I shouldn't have done it?

We came here for the experience. Think about it - what do we really learn from winning anyway except how to win and we can learn that from losing, too!

I don't want to minimize failure. I hate when business people glamorize their failures because those failures can hurt other people and create chaos and instability. I just don't want us to be afraid to do that new thing we are excited about! It's not that we should do something because 'maybe it will work' - it's that we should do something we are passionate and excited about because we will grow from the doing.

Whether or not it will work out the way we want it to is a whole other conversation. And, yes, sometimes that conversation needs to happen, but let's have this one first.

We aren't masochists here - we would all rather learn about winning from winning than learn about winning from losing! Who doesn't want a mantle full of trophies or a bank account full of greenbacks? I know I do.

Well, actually I do have a mantle full of trophies (don't hate me), won by other people, but so what, they look adorable and no one is getting that close to them anyway (yes, I've trained Olive to stand guard while people ooh and ahh and I take a little bow).

So, how do we get to this space?

Next up in part IV (have I said lately how much I love Roman numerals!) - Can You Hear Me Now or what's blocking our reception?