Four Ways to Overcome Your Feebleness as a Freelancer and Entrepreneur
“The difference between who you are and who you want to be is WHAT YOU DO” — Bill Phillips
We all have weaknesses; no one is born with all the characteristics and strengths required to run a business. So how do you overcome your own weaknesses? The trick is to use four simple methods that I’m going to discuss with you in this article, follow them and you’re good to go!
Let me ask you some questions, what do you do if you’re weak in any given area which is essential to succeed as a freelancer or entrepreneur? What if tardiness is a perpetual thorn in your a**? What if your personal organization sucks like an overpriced vacuum cleaner? (I bet that would be interesting).
What do you do if you struggle to meet the fu**ing deadlines? (I know, it SUCKS!). Well, to be honest, you only have two options:-
1. You can cry and blame yourself for it because you’re not Mr. Perfect
or
2. Stop crying and recognize your weakness, this way you can overcome it or at least manage it.
“Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most important of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you.” — Jeffrey Gitomer
Some newbie freelancers or entrepreneurs pictures themselves relaxing in a hammock in Hawaii when the reality for many of us is that we have to sleep on a friend’s couch back home for the first months before being able to sit at a table and work from Hawaii. Lying in a hammock just isn’t productive.
Over time, these things get better. You’ll come to appreciate the idea that you won’t sell on every call. You’ll find that you’ll manage your time better, commit to less, and most importantly, you’ll learn to appreciate the “harsh” fact — you have to meet your deadlines every week and grow your business before being able to relax in your Hawaii hammock.
Accountability Partners
To start with, the best coping strategy is to find an “accountability buddy”. An accountability buddy is another freelancer who will coach you in terms of keeping a commitment. Often accountability partners exchange commitments to help one another to follow through.
Here’s the gotcha:
Your accountability buddy isn’t your boss (and you aren’t of hers or his). You don’t scold each other or shout at each other, but you do the check-in, and the simple pressure of reporting to someone is often enough to help us break out of natural weaknesses. It’s embarrassing to tell someone, “I didn’t do the work this week.” In fact, it’s downright shameful.
To know more about Accountability partners, find the link below:
Proactive Coping
when you’re dealing with weakness or anticipating a stressful problem another positive coping strategy is proactive coping. Anticipation is when one reduces the stress of some difficult challenge by predicting or what it will be like and preparing for how one is going to cope with it.
This stress-management strategy reflects efforts to build up resources that facilitate promotion toward challenging goals and personal growth. Proactive individuals are motivated to meet challenges, and they commit themselves to their own high standards. They see demands and opportunities in the distant future and initiate a constructive path of action toward meeting them.
In contrast to the other three types of coping, proactive coping does not arise from any negative appraisals, such as harm, loss, or threat.
To know more about proactive coping and it’s types, find the link below:
Conquering our weakness isn’t as hard as it might seem. Bad habits can be overwritten by good habits.
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” — Sir Edmund Hillary
Conquer It
The alternative, if you don’t like the above ideas is to follow a simple pattern to overcome your weaknesses:
- Find the weakness. If you can’t admit your weakness, you can’t address it
- Acknowledge the weakness. You’ve no excuses here. It’s not: “I am a lousy time manager because I am so busy.” It’s: “I am a lousy time manager.” Often, the truth hurts when you first realize and recognize it
- Love the problem. When we know a problem deeply, we see things that are non-obvious. By removing the filters of solutions we want to implement on at some point, we are able to solve efficiently.
- Break it. Perhaps you’re the worst time manager on earth. But you can keep a diary; you can plan your days, and you should not let yourself make excuses. You can stick to the plan. Is it a comfortable process? Hell no. Most likely, you would much rather chuck in your responsibilities some mornings and go to the beach or a cafe, but you also know that if you did, you would soon have no work at all. You could be free to go to the beach whenever you wanted, but you wouldn’t be able to have a beer or an ice cream quite so easily — because you would be broke
Coping is a big issue because we’re complex beings. The tip of the iceberg is conscious, but often we struggle unconsciously too. You have to find your weakness, acknowledge your weaknesses, and love them in order to be able to deal with them. YOU CAN CONQUER!
Celebrate
We all live fast-paced lives and mostly focus on our problems. Train your mind to feel light and even joy in the face of possible rejection by making time to reflect and celebrate your growth. Look at your list of action steps. What did you do? Which fears did you face? Which actions pushed your comfort zone? What did you learn? Acknowledge yourself for doing this deeply uncomfortable work.
Taking the time to celebrate will train your mind to respond to the results of your bold action, rather than the fear of taking the action in the first place. And then, the next time you challenge yourself, you’ll feel the excitement of the end result.
And keep going. The more you consciously choose to face your fears, the easier it will be to do it. Celebrating yourself for your work and growth will rewire your brain to not only be more resilient in the face of discomfort but to actually get excited for the next opportunity to get uncomfortable.
Why? Because you’ll know you’ve been able to do it in the past, it wasn’t as bad as you thought, and the result that you were doing it for made it all worthwhile.
I hope you enjoyed reading the methods I compiled here. I hope you avoid the pitfalls I encountered. If you think I lack knowledge about this topic (which I probably do) more knowledge is welcome. Feel free to shoot me an email anytime you want to keep me updated of your success :)
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