More isn't always better

Do you have an alphabet soup of credentials following your name? When will you know enough to offer your program and services? The answer is: As soon as you know a little bit more than someone else.

It took me 100’s of thousands of dollars to finally get this. Not that I regret my training or education, it’s just that I could have been doing more of what I love, which is coaching, training, public speaking, writing, and mentoring. Instead I was cloistered within the Ivory Tower walls where the majority of my writing was only for the eyes of my professors. I was still deeply involved in my full-time practice as a Family Coach, but there was so much more I wanted to be doing!

At the core of my over-achieving I had a secret. As illogical and irrational as it seems, I felt like I was a fraud! I thought that any minute they were going to figure out that I’d snuck into my PhD program and tell me to get out!  So I peddled harder, said yes to more things than I really had time for, and hoped that at the end of the day I’d measure up. What a crock! Which was pretty much what my advisor told me when I went to her with my fears. She told me that the higher you go, the more likely it is you’re going to feel this way.

She was right, I did belong. I was right too though, because the higher you go, the more perfection is expected of you. There’s always someone looking for the chinks in your armor so they can tear you down. Not because you’re bad, but because of their own fears of not measuring up.

How do you get off that hamster wheel?

1. Take an honest assessment of your accomplishments. Have people you know and trust help you with this. Ask them what your strengths are, ask them where they see your biggest challenges.
2. Whatever program or service you’re offering, listen to your own words. They are for you as much as they are for your clients. Let go of the idea that you can ever be the whole bag of chips. Know what you know and know there are people who want to learn from you.
3. Recognize that the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know, and will never know. Embrace that. Let your walls down and agree with everyone who tells you that you don’t know everything. Like, duh?
4. Be transparent. We all have challenges in our lives. Your vulnerabilities are also your strengths. People will trust you more when they know you’ve faced the same challenges they are facing.
5. If learning is something you love, then keep learning, just do it for the right reasons, and in service of your highest goals.
6. Accept that there will be people who don’t like you, or think what you’re doing is wrong or misguided. There are people in this world who don’t like the Dalai Lama, that doesn’t stop him from being in service to others.
7. Let it be easy. Be willing to let it be easy.

What are you willing to let be easy?

You say collage I say college

What do you do when someone points out an error in your copy?

Maybe this is a grammar police issue, or maybe it's bigger than that.

Have you ever posted information about an upcoming offer and had some error in spelling or punctuation pointed out? How did you respond? Were you embarrassed, grateful, irritated beyond belief?

I saw a post recently that was so bad, I debated on whether to point it out at all. I considered waiting for someone else to do it so I wouldn't have to be the one. If I hadn't cared about the person I probably would have kept my mouth shut, but I knew that every second the clock ticked another hundred people were likely to see it and turn away.

I won't share all of what was written or who wrote it, just that he was comparing the cost of college to the lesser cost of taking his program, which in his comparison was of higher value. Except. He spelled "college" wrong. He wrote "collage".

Sigh.

It's pretty hard to take seriously the idea that a college education is worth less than a program offered by someone who can't spell the word college. With love and humor I gave a shout out, first saying how incredible my own experiences in his programs had been to soften the blow of making such a seriously funny error.


My hope was he would be nimble on his feet and turn my comment around in his favor, you know, saying something about how his college education was missing the "spellcheck" component, or darn, how his excitement about offering the program got ahead of him having a second set of eyes look it over before posting.

Anything but what he did. Really bad client care. Friend or not, I'm a potential client, with huge email lists full of even more potential clients.

He got defensive. He insulted me. He lost me as a client, or joint venture partner, probably forever. We find out who we are in situations like this, when the pressure is on. Who are you gonna be next time?