How Long Is Six Months?

It’s easy to get derailed and not reach our weekly and monthly goals when we work for ourselves, especially if we’re not sure what our next step is supposed to be. Here are a couple of ways to get back on track.

Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash

Greetings!

Hope your week has gone well. 

A week is an interesting chunk of time, isn’t it? We start on Monday, full of plans and pep, with a concrete vision for how the week should go. 

When Friday comes around, however, sometimes we look back and see something entirely different than we had planned. Our time got hijacked by randomness - clients, family, Twitter… Our plans fell by the wayside. Maybe most of our personal and business goals went unaccomplished.

And then, the next Monday comes along and we promise ourselves that this week - THIS WEEK - is going to be different.

...except that it’s not.

We’re already seven weeks into the year - have you made seven weeks’ worth of progress in your freelancing business?

String a few more of these weeks together, and you’ve got six months… Where did half the year go?!

It’s easy to kick ourselves about lacking focus or not working hard enough. But don’t be too hard on yourself - neither lack of focus nor laziness is the real issue.

Especially for freelancers.

The real issue is ANXIETY.

Anxiety comes from not having clarity and not knowing what the next thing to do is. If you’re not seeing a well-defined path from where you are right now to where you want to go, or if you’re seeing a clear path, but you don’t know how to do the steps in the middle, it can be scary. And scary is incredibly demotivating.  

When we’re not clear on our actions and we don’t see our actions being rewarded with successful outcomes, we also start feeling like what we’re doing is not particularly important. 

Which demotivates us even more.

See how easy it is to let a week...a month...half a year pass by?

How do we get out of this rut? Well, the first thing to do may sound counterintuitive. 

The first thing is to stop looking forward and instead to take a look back. It’s easy to miss incremental progress while you’re in it. But if you look back, you’ll see that your actions (when you’re consistent with them) get results! 

Tiny, incremental actions lead to proficiency in nearly every new skill - from tying your shoelaces to getting your degree to becoming a good writer. That’s how you’ll become a successful freelancer, too.

The second thing to do is stop doing things in a vacuum. 

You don’t have to figure everything out on your own (and that’s actually really, really hard). It’s totally OK to lean on others who have been in your shoes and ask for advice when you need it. The struggle and self-doubt will only get louder when you don’t have someone to help guide your path. 

The antidote to going it alone is joining a group of like-minded people who are all working on building their businesses with the guidance of someone who’s been there and got the trophy (and scars) for surviving all the pitfalls.  

If this sounds like something that might be of interest, we’re putting together a small group coaching program that starts on February 24. You can get all the details here. 

Just an FYI, there are 8 spots left.

To your freelancing success,
Maria