Freelancers: How To Beat The Lack Of Drive (Once And For All)
If as a freelancer, you're pondering the next step and stage of your business, enterprise or life. There is one thing that is needed to propel your motivation forward with the same force needed to lift a heavy cargo airplane.
Without it, you're stationed firmly where you are. The plane cannot rise without considerable force (in addition to the fuel of course). It needs an almighty push to propel forward, a push so strong that nothing can come in the way of it rising.
This is your driving force.
There are 3 major aspects that impact your motivational drive:
Personal insight
Some people like to refer to this as a lightbulb moment when everything makes sense. This generally happens when you've slowed down and awakened from your stupor. There is no anxiety or stress. The voice in your head or the gut feeling has slowed down enough to give you a moment in time, a split second when everything comes together.
Clarity
Having a crystal clear vision of where you want to go, or what you would like to achieve. Although you might refine and readjust this as time goes on. You know with certainty that this is what you want.
Your Why
Having a ‘why’ is essentially what will drive the insight and clarity forward. This flows with a simplicity and effortless that does not resemble the stressful energy you previously had when you were ploughing away at what was not working.
In my experience of watching clients as they struggle with getting off the ground (back to the plane analogy), there is a moment in time when everything makes sense and comes together. The next step or stage has such clarity to it, that it is almost as if a new pair of glasses refining your vision has replaced the old withered pair.
To illustrate an example to the above, I will elaborate further as evidence that when you have a clear vision of where you're heading, there has to be an underlying drive which underpins all of it.
A number of years ago, I gave up the regularity and structure of a regular 9 to 5 job as a Psychotherapist, for the world of self employment. We all know that self employment brings plenty of ups and even more downs. however my driving force and what continues to keep me in this unstructured, unfamiliar (and at times scary) territory has a number of driving forces behind it.
I forfeited the predictability of employment for the unpredictability of self-employment and freelance work.
Firstly, working on my own terms coaching clients allows me to be more accessible to them via mediums such as Skype, which means that I am not limited by time or location. It allows me to work with more people and have access to working independently without anyone limiting my creativity or flow.
I do what I want when I want and use any method to bring about an awakening with my clients.
If my gut feeling tells me to continue working in a specific way, I do without limits or inhibitions.
Having to work around a boss or manager, who limits my progress due to stringent and outdated rules and boundaries would limit and repress me greatly.
Secondly, being self employed allows me to spend more time with my family, and more importantly travel abroad to see my loved ones in my home town.
When the going gets tough, this is what I focus on. Unlimited time with my loved ones, as opposed to being limited to 21 days of holiday a year. Nothing to me is more precious than this, and it has become my ‘why’ which in turn drives me on.
I recall that in years gone by, I used to miss out on many a special occasion due to courses I was attending or jobs I was doing to be able to gain a promotion and get ahead in my career. This was all meeting a short term fix of feeling secure and needing acknowledgement. I wanted only success and I was intent on compromising everything with little clarity or focus.
There was an end result that smelt sweeter than anything else, and this was wanting the acknowledgement that success brings.
The jobs I did years ago in essence were meaningless other than to give me a fix, a feeling, an emotion that drove me on. The driving force I had at the time was meaningless and held little substance, none of it was motivated by insight, clarity or a clear why.
It was pure motivation from the ego that was all.
At times, in order for you to wake up from the meaningless you are running after (like a dog chasing its tail), life has a habit of forcing you to wake up and take notice. The wake up call could come from bankruptcy, bereavement, divorce, health problems or a multitude of other wake up calls, thus realigning you to what's really important.
Once you wake up to the fact that what you're driven by is ultimately inside you. Yes you're good enough, even without the snazzy job title, relationship or money.
You have the capability for joy, contentment and happiness regardless of your circumstances and which is not outside of you but in you, ready to be accessed. When you wake up to this fact, your choices will then be driven by a whole different force.
Like a dog chasing its tail, once it understands the tail is attached, why would it continue to chase it?
It seems simple, but the results can be tenfold. A change in the way you approach life and ultimately your freelance business can make a huge impact and transform everything.
I once heard Tony Robbins (a master in motivational speaking) state that plastic surgeons, in order to transform peoples appearances, all that was needed was one millimetre. Nothing more or less. The face and body of patients can be transformed through a millimetre.
A simple tweak.
The Same goes with your life as a freelancer. When the motivation and drive comes from a more authentic place, everything transforms. The work you're consumed in takes a more effortless flavour and the stress wholly dissipates. There is no longer an urgency to get to where you need to get to, there is a only a healthy drive in it's place.