Be A Goldfish. (Or, What To Do When You've Been "Slimed.")

If all you take from today's post is that Ted Lasso was the best thing I watched during the “Panny-D” (that's “pandemic” to you normal folks), and that you need to immediately watch the first season at least twice-through, I will consider this post a success.

Other than that, I want you to consider one of Ted Lasso's best quotes:

“You know what the happiest animal on Earth is? It’s a goldfish. You know why? Got a ten-second memory. Be a goldfish, Sam.”

(Another favorite quote: “Sounds to me like someone’s trapped inside life’s most complicated shape. A love triangle. Second place of course is the ‘I just walked in on my mother-in-law changing into her swimsuit dodecahedron.'”)

Back to being a goldfish, though:

Sometimes when my clients start taking big risks and upping their game, they get, as one solopreneur-client called it, “slimed”:

-The co-worker you've been in the trenches with at the agency implies that you're a “sellout” for wanting to start your own practice (even though you're bleary-eyed from burnout, and still can't pay all your bills).

-The successful business-owner that you're networking with implies that you're naïve--and maybe even a little spoiled-- for thinking you can attract your ideal clients right from the start.  

To quote Don Miguel Ruiz in The Four Agreements: 

"Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves… When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world."

When you get slimed: 

Take a few minutes to process your emotions however you need to, (literally) shake it off, remember that the sliming is probably more about them and their story than about you (and maybe even wish them well; they're just showing you their imperfect humanity), and then… 

Be a goldfish. Keep on swimming. You've got a business to build. 

-Jane