TAMING THE BEAST OF DISSATISFACTION

How to create opportunities
HOW TO CREATE OPPORTUNITIES (AND THE NERVE TO LET IT HAPPEN)
THIS KILLS BUSINESS QUICKER THAN AN UGLY LOGO - brand storytelling www.amandablum.com
THIS KILLS BUSINESS QUICKER THAN AN UGLY LOGO

TAMING THE BEAST OF DISSATISFACTION

 

There’s this dis-ease that goes around by the name of dissatisfaction.

Never enough.

Always wanting more, needing more, waiting for the next big hit.

We’re like addicts waiting for the next high.

I suffer from it frequently.

No matter how well my business is doing and how wonderful my life is, there’s this ugly side to my personality that needs more.

The antidote is simple:

Gratitude and Trust.

Relatively speaking, our lives are beautiful. They are messy and painful, but there’s a natural order.

Yes, I’m talking about yours too.

You’re reading this, which means you have access to Wi-Fi, power, food and shelter. You have access to every opportunity.

Lucky scoundrels, we are.

But every now and then, that same awareness of how just lucky we are can backfire. Like, why aren’t we further along? Why am I not making more of the opportunities? What kind of looser stands around counting their blessings without being proactive?

We feel impatient.

We chastise ourselves.

We condemn our progress, forgetting how far we’ve come.

[Picture this: where were you two years ago from this exact moment? Do you remember? What were you doing? How much was different? My guess, almost everything. Maybe your relationships. Maybe your very business. Maybe you’ve learned some lessons you’d never repeat]

And yet…

And yet, it’s easy to want more.

More is the epidemic of our generation.

We need money (more money), to secure our future and ensure everything will go according to plan.

As entrepreneurs, we’re Do-ers. We’re the people who think then act.

We’re the people who need a sense of control; of our future, our sense of freedom, our vision, our output.

We’ve come to believe, if we don’t act, plan, follow schedules and push ourselves beyond our limits, we won’t succeed. Our ideas will die a miserable death of I-didn’t-try-hard-enough.

Entrepreneurship is often likened to giving birth. They say giving birth isn’t easy, so why should birthing our ideas and our businesses, right?

But here’s the thing.

Labor pains are a small part of the process. And the actual birthing can take less than a few hours. But the buildup to that moment?

The buildup took nine gradual months. And some of those months we need to put our feet up and trust nature will take its course.

Our bodies need no instruction. We don’t need to tell our wombs to construct bone and limb.

Creation is entirely instinctive.

There moments of incubation and stillness just as there’s moments of vigorous action.

But in our gung-ho attitudes to get shit done, we’ve lost the wisdom to discern the two.

The truth is, sometimes you don’t need to do anything at all – but relax and trust the next step will unfold.

Because life is in constant motion. It’s always moving forward.

Life will never leave you behind. There’s no wrong way. There’s only what feels right.

But… MORE.

More has hypnotized us.

More is wanting the next gadget or fashionable accessory. More is looking at what everyone else doing. More is thinking what we have is not good enough.

We are a culture of More. Consumerism is its ring leader. 

Every time we go online, every time we pass a shop, every time we turn on the radio: more, more, more.

It’s the hum in the background.

And the only way we can turn it off is by turning inwards.

There’s a silence that comes from within. And that stillness knows exactly when enough is enough.

Wisdom, as the serenity prayer says, is ability to know the difference.

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