Jeremiah Tolbert

Last week, I turned down a new client because I felt the bud­get wasn’t enough for me to do the job I wanted to do.  It was a client that I’ve really wanted to work with, and I thought long and hard about bend­ing my rates to accom­mo­date them, but ulti­mately, I decided to stick to my ini­tial reac­tion, even though I was uncom­fort­able with the deci­sion. As I often do when I worry about some­thing, I posted a note on Facebook to the effect that say­ing no to work would never be some­thing I could be com­fort­able with.  A class­mate from high School, closet writer, and astute observer of  peo­ple, Stacey Hoover Coleman, had this to say:

This might not make any sense to you, but hear me out. You remind me of a lady in REALLY beau­ti­ful, high, high, high, heeled shoes. She loves them, they’re the right size, and wouldn’t trade them for the world, but they’re uncom­fort­able as all hell.

At first, I didn’t quite fol­low what she was say­ing, but she clar­i­fied further:

…I’m say­ing YOU run­ning your own busi­ness is like wear­ing fan­tas­tic but uncom­fort­able shoes. You love it, you don’t want it to change, but it makes you mas­sively uncom­fort­able, too.

Instant les­son learned.  She’s right.  It does make me uncom­fort­able. And I think I would be much more wor­ried if it didn’t.

The thing about run­ning your own busi­ness based on project work is that you have to be hus­tling con­stantly.  There is no “coast” set­ting on a busi­ness like the one I am in.  There’s no secu­rity (not that your aver­age office job offers much either). 

If I were ever to become com­fort­able, then I would lose an edge, and I would run the risk of my busi­ness fail­ing. Which would be finan­cially dam­ag­ing, but it wouldn’t kill me.  Let’s just state that’s an out­come that I wish to avoid, and not talk about the impli­ca­tions of fail­ure right now.  I’ll save that for another post.  Back to discomfort.

Discomfort is a moti­va­tor for me.  I think most peo­ple, in a state of dis­com­fort, are moti­vated to seek com­fort.  The way that I react to the dis­com­fort of a lack of finan­cial secu­rity is to seek more work and more ways to make money, to put more dis­tance between me and the unde­sir­able busi­ness out­come described above. It’s not likely I’ll ever achieve com­fort and com­pla­cency, but that’s okay.  So long as the moti­va­tion is there, I’m going to survive.

What I need to be com­fort­able with is the real­iza­tion that I prob­a­bly won’t get to be com­pla­cent or com­fort­able in this busi­ness.  I need to let go of the notion that to be happy, I need to have com­fort and secu­rity. I can be and am often quite happy while being discomfited.  

So my busi­ness is like a pair of beau­ti­ful, uncom­fort­able high heel shoes.  I’ll never give them it up will­ingly.  But from time to time, and mostly pri­vately, I will com­plain.  Quietly.  

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Tags: business, discomfort, motivation, saying no