This morning at 4am I woke up from one of my nightmares that happen now and then. I have no idea what the dream was about, but I woke up sobbing my heart out, and a sense of complete and utter dread that overwhelmed me and left me gasping for air.
I lay there trying to calm myself down. The dream was probably about money and my business because the thought that predominated was that I had to go and get a job. If I didn’t, my kids would starve and we would end up on the streets.
A few days ago I had seen a job advertised that would have been perfect for me. It was a work-from-home job and I had all the skills and more to do it really well. I got up and logged onto the internet to find it again with the intent of sending my resumé through to them immediately.
I found the site and then went scratching around on my hard drive to find my resumé. While I was reading through my resumé I thought to myself ‘You are totally over-qualified for this job. You will die of boredom within 6 months’.
That set off another wave of depression. Why could I not do something thrilling and exciting and still make a solid sustainable living from it? Why after all these years of back-breaking work and almost zero social life am I not living it up with the fruits of all my endeavours?
Sometimes you just have to stop thinking. I got up from my desk and started cleaning the house. I did the dishes, loaded the washing machine, swept and mopped the floors and then had a shower. Standing in the shower I started to cry again. Being an entrepreneur is exhausting and it is lonely.
There is no-one that I could talk to at the time of the morning and just get it off my chest, get a hug and get told that it will all be okay. So I had to do it myself.
I stood in the shower and reminded myself that I was a thousand times better off than I was last year. We still had a roof over our heads, food in the fridge, a car that did not break down every five seconds and my children were healthy, happy and confident. My business was in much better shape than it had ever been and the prospects were good.
I thought about the product launch that I did last week with a partner that was not nearly as successful as I had hoped and needed it to be. We make plans all the time and sometimes they do not work out as we had hoped they would. But, I learned an enormous amount doing that launch. I got to see how another person approaches their business and the insights were valuable. Getting a different perspective is vital, especially as I tend to be a little insular and isolated based on my business model.
Yes, a job would mean more financial security, but by taking the job I would be giving up on my dream. As I thought about what that would do to me as a person, I knew that by giving up, I would lose everything I had ever hoped for and dreamed of becoming.
There are so many books that say you have to go through your darkest, toughest challenges right before it tips over into the light. Perhaps this is just that phase and all I have to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I feel better now. I gave myself the hug and the ‘Everything will be okay, you are on the right path’ pep talk.
So if YOU are going through some rough challenges at the moment, I want you to know that everything will be okay and you are on the right path. I would give you a hug too, but you would have to travel to South Africa to get that.
Hang in there.
Di
Diana Heuser specialises in e-Business and Publishing Resources for Authors and Content Creation Services and Strategies for Business. Connect with Diana Heuser on her business website, via Twitter @DianaHeuser or on Google+. Join our fabulous free Group “Secrets To Publishing A Book on Facebook”. You will find it interesting. Request to join here.
