Bigger Things Are Calling You

For the better part of the last six months, while observing and connecting with online entrepreneurs like myself, I have noticed a trend: change is in the air, and not just because it’s January.

We are shedding the skins of old business models, old business practices, and old marketing habits-changing everything from the internal way we see ourselves and our work to the external polish and branding on our websites, sales pages, and social media outposts.

More and more, business owners are unhappy with how they have been doing things, and they’re ready for change. Perhaps it’s only the people I see in the circles that I inhabit, but I have noticed so many more people putting the brakes on, standing up, and saying, “This isn’t working, and something has to shift.”

The change space is familiar to me.

I’ve been living in this change space myself. In the past several years, I have been slowly re-inventing myself in iterations, and the last (and, I think, best) iteration is encapsulated in the new name and direction of my business.

This only came about because I was willing to stare into the face of what was, and bravely risk my success and my reputation on what I knew was calling me, even though I never had the whole picture at any given time.

Some change feels necessary. Some change is unavoidable, and some we undertake by choice; but all of it involves some kind of risk, some amount of trepidation, and a lot of uncertainty about the end result.

But isn’t that what we set out to do, as entrepreneurs here in this online arena? Aren’t we champions of risk, purveyors of change, and railers against the status quo? It would be the most laughable irony for us to dig our heels in and refuse to change when the time has come to do so.

When is the time to change?

When your business-having it and working in it-no longer feels the way it used to.

When there is dissonance between what you want and what you’re experiencing.

When the type and quality of your clients and customers reflects a deep-seated truth about how badly your marketing has been communicating your real desires.

When the usual just isn’t working anymore.

When bigger things are calling you.

Inviting change into your life and business can mean that everything is going to be sideways for a while.

Now, while you are in the change space (or so close you could fall in), is the time to create some anchor points for yourself.

What does this change represent?

If it’s something unavoidable, what has happened to bring you here, and where does it look like you’ll end up?

If you have chosen it, what is the “before” picture that you so desperately want to get away from, and what “after” picture do you visualize as your goal?

Having a roadmap, even when it is merely the shape you’ve scratched in the dirt that records the shape of what’s right behind and right in front of you, is deeply valuable to you when you are making and experiencing shifts.

Engaging and experiencing change is something that looks a lot like every other true thing in life and business.

Change is a consistent element in all of life.

Every day we are alive, we are different from the day before. Every day we are in relationship with someone else, that relationship is slightly different from the day before.

We experience seasons, the life cycles of plants, computer updates, birthdays, and the stunning annual realization that even though we completed exactly none of our previous year’s resolutions, we changed anyhow in a year’s time.

Think of the iterative process of any kind of design: first draft, second draft, revision, trial run, more revisions, and eventually the final piece. And even that is not set in stone as a thing that can never be updated, revised, or changed in the future.

Business is no different. A growing, healthy business undergoes cycles of change: organic and natural times of iteration and revision and outright re-invention.

Embrace the change.

Let it sustain you. Endeavor to learn from it.

Above all, don’t cling to the things that no longer serve you: in business or in life.

Image credit: Ben Fredericson