Pursuing Your Crazy Idea
It has been quite the journey learning about making and selling baked goods from my own kitchen! There was a bunch of researching of course, the Maine state home cottage laws (as they’re called, because you’re making food from your ‘cottage’ as it were) and going in circles a bit with various links and requirements.
And why are the applications for these things always more complicated or confusing than they need to be? I’m planning on making a podcast recording or video about filling out the application — a tutorial to help folks trying to fill it out. As a newbie it can be a bit confusing.
Home made pumpkin pie
Home baked chocolate chip cookies
It was a huge learning experience. Not least because it was actually a big self-growth experience, it turns out! Why do these things always turn out to be more than what it seems? It wasn’t really about my difficulty of filling out the form itself, and how the form was difficult to read and easy to miss things. (I almost felt like I was dyslexic filling it out and re-checking it 10x to make sure I didn’t miss a box). I realized it was really about my fear and lack of confidence around giving this business a try.
Again, it was back to my limiting patterns and beliefs — perfectionism (thus, procrastination), people pleasing (also, leading to procrastination). So, fear of messing up, doing it wrong, “what if no one likes it and I crash and burn” thoughts leading me to not being able to look at the form at all for a good week.
It was super helpful to realize that this is what was going on, and they are simply my limiting beliefs. They are patterns I want to grow out of. And to do that, I need to act outside of them; act despite them.
And remembering Michelle Rohr’s constant motto, which is, to focus on our SELF-GROWTH and not to try to chase money in our business. And there is where we’ll find our ultimate success.
This piece of wisdom has taken me a LONG time to process and digest and truly understand. You know, there’s a lot of advice out there (especially around building your own business) that you’re just like ‘OK, yeah right, that maybe worked for you, but that’s too simplistic to work for me.’ I was still focused on the short term, and mostly driven by my desperation, urgency and fear. Desperation and urgency around wanting to build my business up IMMEDIATELY or else. And fear around what if I can’t get it going? Then what? Will I be stuck at my corporate job forever?
Is there somthing in Alice in Wonderland (or maybe Through the Looking Glass!) where if you try to walk directly to the thing you’re aiming for then you end up completely far off the mark. But if you walk in a different direction, maybe where you feel instinctively pulled to go towards, and not focus directly on your goal, then somehow magically, you end up there!
I’ll try to draw up a printable that focuses on this (or doesn’t focus on it but leads us there!). Now, go and pursue your crazy idea that lights you up…