I have a little Sciatica right now.
If you don’t know what that is, you can google it. If you’d like to hear my non-medical definition here it is. It’s when a shit load of pain shoots down your leg.
Always? No, just when you sit or move.
It’s not pretty.
This is my second bout with it, I usually get rid of it with stretching. I do different stretches at different angles, to work the pain away.
It’s a slow process.
It reminds me of something Professor Severus Snape said when he started teaching the Defense Against the Dark Arts class in Harry Potter.
“The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before…”
Sounds like Sciatica to me! Kinda sounds like business too. I always looked at business like a three-leg stool. Lose a leg and the stool will fall down.
Here’s the three legs you need…
You need skills at your craft. You gotta learn how to paint better. You gotta learn how to write better. You gotta learn how to coach better. Whatever you do, be excellent at it.
You need to know how to sell what you do. You gotta know your story. You gotta know the kind of people that will pay you for what you do. You gotta know where those people hang out.
You need to be spiritually grounded. You gotta know thinking positive gives different results than thinking negative. You gotta know that you are worthy of everything you want. You gotta know that because you are part of all that is, all that is is possible for you.
You gotta know this stuff!
But the problem is, too many people focus on one of the three.
And in our defense, that’s natural. I drew because I loved drawing. I didn’t think in the 8th grade that maybe I should take a business course so I can have a thriving art business when I grow up.
I just drew.
I just sang.
I just, wrote.
But in the business world, like Snape said, it can be like a many-headed monster so YOU need to be just as clever.
Do you need to be exceptional? No, just flexible.
You want to do YOUR WORK. Your craft, the work that excites you. AND you want to have a powerful positive expectation. You need to KNOW who you are and where you want to go. And you need to be able to share what that is with other people.
Is it easy? Not always, but to solve your problems you usually only need to focus on one leg of the stool at a time.
Life is doable. Business is doable.
So stop freaking out.
Adam