Wanna work around my concept “Inner business bliss”? here’s my soulsearching entrepreneurial story:
A couple of months ago I was talking to my husband on skype, as we normally do on occasion during a workday. That particular day I had been working consistently on the business without paying so much attention to anything else, a part from the project at hand.
For the first time ever I was satisfied with my workweek, and not only that, when I wrote the magic words to my husband :”I am so proud of myself”. It was the first time I ever wrote it and felt it. It felt like a feeling coming all the way from the back and hitting me in the head. I kid you not. It was truely the first time ever that I could stand up straight and say “job well done Henriette” to myself.
And I wish it would have happened before. Maybe that time when a company I worked for, got sold to google. Maybe when I published my first book when I was 29, which I see as quite an accomplishment. Maybe when “why every company was a rockband” was downloaded more than 2000 times in a week. Or when I ended up on a couple of real cool people’s blogs because of my now-closed-startup-that-I-had-no-idea-how-to-run”can I crash”. These things are pretty huge to me and I didn’t linger and take them seriously at the time. I didn’t do the happy dance. I just continued working. I didn’t take the time to feel what I call my “inner business bliss” – where you’re happy with yourself and damn proud because of your achievements.
It ended up with, that the worst thing you could say to me was “thank you”, “great initiative” or “what a fantastic accomplishment”. Because I thought it was required of me, that it was the primary way of conducting my business. So I was already on my way to the next piece of love/acknowledgement that would get me happy for about 5 seconds, and if people told me that it made a huge difference in their life I thought “you’ve got to be joking right?”. No inner business bliss at all!
As far back as I can remember, I have been like that. Pacing myself forward. First born grandchild who really needed to show the world what I was made of. And literally it tore me down. I have no problem getting into action mode, I never had. But I have a hard time stopping up and listening when people say “wow you really made a HUGE difference for me”. I think it’s expected of me to make a huge difference. Or it is expected of me, at least by myself. I will not stop until I know the future of my children will be ok, That global warming and misogyny is something I laugh at, because it’s a thing of the past. Or that this article get’s 1000 retweets and facebook shares. Until I found Gabrielle Bernstein through a friend.
Anyway, I found out, that with this level of ambitions, I ended up numbing myself and my actions out. I started thinking that I didn’t matter if I didn’t get a bestseller book or had 100 people sign up for my next webinar. And it got me so down. here’s what I learned:
Nobody expects more of me than myself. I am my own worst critic. I don’t think I am good enough. I need to seach for my inner business bliss
And finally here’s my conclusion:
I need to stop being so hard on myself, and need to face the fact that I have a very high ambition level.
During the last couple of months I have slowly found my inner business bliss: feeling I am perfectly happy around my workweek and my achievements. The light came to me when I started mapping and writing everything down that I did- businesswise. WhenI got the feeling of “wow you’ve accomplished much today” I would stop working and take time off. Maybe it’s after a 14 hour workday or maybe it’s after a 3 hour workday. If my inner business bliss isn’t ringing then I am not done working.
It also made me WANT to work more than I ever had before. It makes me burn for my work,my message and my mission. I don’t feel indifferent and numb and actionless. I feel strong and important. And I think it’s keeping me from burning out and instead make me burning on.
