It Takes the Time it Takes
Six Lessons from 10 Years of A Wild New Work
Part Three
This is part of a series to mark the 10-year anniversary of my self-employment journey. Part one: Here is the Only Place to Start. Part two: Not Easy, but Easeful.
Image by Philippe Bout, via Unsplash
It Takes the Time it Takes
In the Spring of 2017, I found myself frustrated about the pace at which my new career coaching business was growing. I really enjoyed the work and the people I was supporting, but there simply weren't enough of them knocking on my door.
In an attempt to change things, I borrowed $3,000 from my parents and hired someone who would help me design and create what was called a "signature talk" that I could use to market my services to potential career coaching clients. I thought that this made good business sense at the time, and the coach I hired was very convincing about how this signature talk would take my offerings to the next level.
You might be able to guess how it turned out…The coach was a kind person, but not the right fit for me, and some of her tactics for building a coaching business made me squeamish. After feeling like I wasn't getting much out of the program, I asked to end early and receive a partial refund; the coach said that wasn't in line with the contract I'd signed, so we had to awkwardly hobble along to the end of our sessions.
The "signature talk" that I created through this painful process was called "Should I Stay or Should I Go?," and some of you might have been to one of those classes! It was a fine thing to create, but I did not need to pay someone $3,000 to make it, and it did not change things for my business.
When I enrolled in that coaching package, it was because I believed that my business was growing too slowly. It had been over a year since I'd started, and I felt that I should be somewhere other than where I was. The urgency I felt for things to be different led me to spend money I didn't have, take steps that were out of integrity for me, and end up feeling even more deflated. My "signature talk" experience wasn't the last time I'd enroll in something out of a sense of urgency and discomfort, and those endeavors almost always failed (although I learned a lot).
One thing that's become clear to me in the last ten years is that the Work that the soul wants to undertake really can't be rushed.
How do we know that something's our soul's Work, you might ask? I know I'm doing my soul's Work when I feel that underlying sense of ease I wrote about last week and when what I'm doing feels meaningful to me.
Work that feels easeful (even if it's not easy) and meaningful doesn't usually happen on the same timeline as our industrialized culture would prefer.
So if the soul's Work can't be rushed, how do we do it in the midst of capitalism's pressures? We still have needs, and most of us can't wait all day to earn the money we require.
My business and my soul's Work are currently entangled–my business is the container through which much of my calling can pour through, and it has taken a long time to cultivate. I know people who started their businesses just a few years ago and are experiencing a level of visibility and traction that I have yet to experience. I know other people who have been self-employed for longer than I have and are experiencing a dip in "success," wondering how to manage in a phase of decline.
For a long time, I felt ashamed about how slowly my business had grown and would rail against the Universe about how I was ready for more but the work wasn't coming, or about why I deserved more help and visibility than I was getting. I have cried many tears over the feeling that other people were moving much more quickly toward what I desired while I felt like I was wading through mud.
I don't know if it's the result of working with my wise and well ancestors, a big ritual reset I did in September of last year, or this being my 10th year of self-employment, but I feel a comfort with my timeline that I've never felt before.
I've come to see that there's wisdom in how (and when) a soulful calling unfolds, and I'm reminded of this every time I work with someone. Many of the people I've worked with thought they were ready for a change years ago and tried, but it didn't stick. In our work together, they often come back to the same calling but with a different perspective, truly ready for what's meant for them now. Other people I've worked with didn't make a big change during our process, but they planted important seeds in fertile soil that were able to bloom later. I never know what someone's timing will be, but when they show up and do their part, the right things truly do come in at the right time.
The juicy work of living into your calling simply takes the time it takes, and it can't be rushed. That said, we don't have to sit on our hands all the time waiting for signs to act. We can tend to the Work even in the waiting, when it seems like nothing is happening, or we're wondering how it's all going to work out.
I saw a wonderful image on a tarot card once. I can't remember the artist or which deck it was, but the card was the 5 of Pentacles: a symbol of tightness around resources or materials. This card can represent that crunch we feel when things are financially tight, and the image on the card was of a woman making tortillas. What I felt from the artist was that in those times when we're feeling the tightness or urgency of living inside capitalism, we should return to the simple, hands-on work of tending to what's right in front of us.
Things take the time they take, but we don't have to suffer quite so much while we're waiting. We can always tend to the calling indirectly, even if nothing about it is meant to change right now.
Below are some of the most helpful things I do when I feel stalled or forced to wait for things to drop in. One important note: none of them are related to working on the thing I'm waiting on! For example, if I'm feeling nervous about whether or not a program will fill, a part of me will want to fidget with the webpage constantly or check my email all the time to see if anyone's signed up. What works much better for me (in terms of how I feel but also what "results" I get) is to make metaphorical tortillas.
Ways to tend to yourself when it feels like things are taking forever:
Tend to the vessel through which the Work flows: your body. I usually go for a walk when I'm feeling crunchy or impatient about something.
Ask your spiritual helpers and/or wise and well ancestors to step in and take care of it. This works best for me if I embody the surrender in a way - a verbal request, using my hands to wave the thing out the window and into their hands, releasing a symbolic object to the River, etc.
Cleaning. My house can be very clean when I'm waiting on a Work thing to clarify or drop in!
Compost old beliefs about where you should be by now. Let the tears flow, hold your heart, and grieve your disappointment. I try to do this regularly each Autumn.
Update your expectations so that you allow yourself double the amount of time for something to unfold (e.g., instead of expecting to have X in one year, what if it's two? How would you support yourself in that extended timeline?).
Whatever it is that you're on this Earth to do, your calling has a timeline of its own. It might take longer than you'd like, or the next layer of it could drop in tomorrow. These soulful discoveries simply take the time they take, and I hope that what I've shared today has brought you a little bit of ease as you try to embrace your natural process and pace.