In regard to being a parent, my husband and I joke with each other that we are off to the “work spa” when one of us heads up to the office. Work feels easy and relaxing compared to dealing with the constant demands of feeding, clothing, and entertaining a young child – not to mention keeping them from serious bodily harm. With regard the latter I am almost daily surprised to discover new ways that our son could potentially poke an eye out, knock his teeth out, get a concussion, or otherwise kill or permanently maim himself. I live in a state of constant low-level anxiety because I am now aware that there are probably ten times as many ways for him to get injured as I can think of on my own.

While our business is “older” than our child, I can remember the same feelings of exhaustion when it was first “born” as it took my constant energy and attention in order to keep it alive. I know from seeing parents of older children that, as our son gets older, he will not need the constant attention that he does now to keep him safe. He will develop an ability to fend for himself somewhat and survive in the world on his own without our constant care and attention.

It is the same with a business. Each year, as long as we are doing our job as entrepreneurs correctly, our business will also need just a little bit less from us. The same will be true for our son if we do our job as parents correctly. As entrepreneurs our job is to balance our time working ON our business (building systems that run whether we are there or not) with time spent working IN our business (doing whatever needs to be done in the moment) so that, ultimately, our business is able to function independently of us.

Being a parent is similar. In order for our child to grow up healthy and strong, we need to help him learn how to do for himself, rather than doing everything for him. It is actually easier to see the error of my ways in my business when I think of it in terms of parenting. If I am too attached to me being the only one who can do it right, then I am actually crippling my company from building the strength to fly on its own – not to mention clipping my own wings by keeping myself tied to tasks that may not be putting my talents to their highest and best use. If I don’t let my son feed himself because he makes more of a mess than when I feed him, I am both hampering his ability to develop competence and confidence in mastering this skill, and contributing to my own exhaustion by creating a situation where I need to be sitting there feeding him instead of being able to feed myself instead.

So as we are finally feeling the slight easing up of the pressure of this constant demand on our mental, physical, and emotional energies, I find myself wondering if I am ready to go back down into the abyss again – knowing that this time it might possibly be even more difficult as I will have a 2 -3 year old as well as a newborn to contend with. Furthermore, while our business is growing nicely, like any other nine-year-old, it still needs daily attention from us in order to  thrive.

The optimistic part of me wants to believe that it will be easier because now we know what to expect. In my younger days my natural optimism would win out and I would be going full speed ahead on baby number two telling myself that it would definitely be easier the second time around, that our business is no longer a “newborn” and is certainly on more stable footing than it was even 2 years ago, and that everything is going to work out for the best. Life has taught me that my natural optimism is not always warranted. Certainly it might be easier the second time around, but it might also be harder. Our son was actually a pretty easygoing baby, so number two could very well be demanding, high-strung, or any other number of things that would bring new challenges to those first few years and make them even more exhausting. Any number of things could happen with our business – such as the coming rollout of the HST -  to necessitate changes that would require more of our time and energy.

How do I reconcile my natural optimism – my spiritual faith that everything happens for a reason and always works out for the best – with my real world, school of hard knocks, life experience that life and business can get pretty hard at times, no matter how much faith you have? How do I get excited about the silver lining, when I am now acutely aware that the cloud comes with it?

….6 months later

Our son is now two and, while the reality of the issues identified above remain the same, there is now a lightness around the issue that wasn’t there before. Like in so many areas of our lives where we are struggling to determine the right choice, if we stop struggling and let the simple force of time work it’s magic, clarity emerges. At about 21 months, I was on a retreat with my writers group and one of the members was telling her story of  how she had arrived when her mother was 43. By the time my friend was 34, her mother had passed away. As I am 43, in that instant, all of the worries about the challenges of having a second child disappeared. It became clear to me that my purpose in having a second child – whether by natural birth or possibly adoption – was not to fulfill my own potentially misguided vision of the “perfect” family, but to give my son the opportunity to have the connection and support of a family once my husband and I are gone. This clarity of purpose – a deeply felt connection to why this piece of our vision is important – has simultaneously brought greater commitment to act in pursuit of our goal and greater acceptance that the achievement of this goal may not be totally within our control.

Not surprisingly, work has been mirroring life. The last three months have also brought considerable clarity around the why and how of our business. This has also brought renewed enthusiasm for action, greater peace with the process, and less attachment to the outcomes.

I hope I can remember all this the next time I am tied in knots, efforting to determine the “right” choice….

The dialogue has continued, leaving us with more questions than answers. We renewed our commitment to vegetarianism – something that had slipped while I was pregnant due to carnivorous cravings, and continued to slide once our son was born because I was just too exhausted to put in the effort. Raised on meat and potatoes, vegetarianism – not just eating pasta and processed soy products, but proper vegetarian eating where you get all of the nutrients your body needs – is not second nature and takes much more effort for me. The first few days of the week went well, but by Friday night I found myself already sweeping this internal dialogue under the carpet, reaching for the emergency frozen pizza stash, and heading back to my comfort zone to engage in another of our favorite Friday night activities – watching TED Talks.

First on the agenda was Bill Gates’ vision for the world’s energy future, describing the need for an all out effort to create “miracles” to reach zero carbon emissions globally by 2050 – the goal he says is necessary to avoid planetary catastrophe. WHAM! – no room for complacency (let alone packaged, processed frozen pizza) in our generation. How are we going to achieve this monumental goal, and how can I, as a non-scientist, even begin to make a contribution that matters? Furthermore, with such huge shifts needed, aren’t my minor changes in eating habits insignificant?

Next on the agenda, Jamie Oliver’s passionate speech about the obesity-related health epidemic in North America and Europe. Double WHAM! My pizza stuck in my throat. Just to be clear, my husband and I are nowhere near obese and eat quite healthfully overall. This talk, however, brought back all of the information that I have – the stuff that I bury when I want to have pizza and coke – on just how damaging it is not only to our bodies but to our environment to eat “mindlessly” from the highly-processed, highly-transported, and highly-chemical-infused products that are now standard in most people’s diets.

Then on Saturday morning I opened my e-mail to read the latest post from a good friend of mine, Laura Mack, on honesty as a core issue in parenting her teenage son. She provided some very sobering statistics about the state of honesty – or lack thereof – with our youth. The thing that was perhaps the most troubling, was that despite the fact that they admit to a high degree of dishonesty the youth in the survey still saw themselves as being ethical and more honest than a majority of their peers.

It would be easy to be shocked at “today’s youth”, but I had to question how different I really am. While I do not lie, cheat and steal in some of the obvious ways these surveys are asking about, like a majority of our society, I lie to myself. While this might seem far less harmful, I am struggling with the dawning realization that this type of lying is perhaps the most harmful of all. It is harmful because the lies I tell myself – or the information I conveniently choose not to see or understand – are what keep me doing what is easy, what is comfortable, what I have always done, and what everyone else is doing. But it is clear from the sources above and many many more that we need to change – that I need to change. Like the woman in The Age of Stupid, (who, after winning the fight AGAINST having wind turbines put in her rural British community because they would ruin the view, enthusiastically proclaimed,  ”of course we must do all we can to reduce global warming!”) I am often unwilling to see my own hypocrisy. She wants to avoid global warming, but not if it ruins her view. I want to help preserve our planet for future generations, but not if it means I have to put more effort into what I cook for dinner.

Perhaps the biggest lie I tell myself is that I don’t know what to do. This is an easy one for abdicating responsibility. I see it in my coaching clients all of the time. When they say “I don’t know”, it is a flag that somewhere, underneath their denial, and buried deep within their fears of change and their desire to stay in their comfort zone, there is a dawning awareness of what they do want and what they do need to do. Saying they don’t know keeps them safe because it gives them an excuse not to act. If they are busy trying to figure out what they want or what they “should” do, they can preserve the illusion of productive action without really engaging in any. So despite my internal voice screaming loudly that I don’t know what to do, that my non-scientist talents are not really going to make a difference, and that the actions of my non-famous self can have nowhere near the impact of Jamie and Bill, I cannot hide beneath the “I don’t know” comfort blanket and still feel good about myself.

So what can I do? One thing I can do is write about it. This, at least, is a start. Maybe, in the same way that this information has inspired me to question myself and renew my commitment to being part of the solution, it will inspire others to do the same. We can’t all be Bill Gates or Jamie Oliver, but we can all do our part. Maybe your part is to find that solution that can take us to zero carbon emissions by 2055. Maybe you will send this link to someone you know and it will give them that little extra bit of insight they needed for the breakthrough. While I am not going to be personally responsible for solving the energy crisis, I can take responsibility for solving my own energy crisis. I can start having the courage to stop burying the truth beneath my comfort zone. I can plug the energy leaks that occur when my actions are not in integrity with who I want to be and what I know I need to do.

This kind of honesty can be hard and sometimes painful on all sides, but what I do know from experience, is that when I have faced the truth, spoken my truth, and been willing to look openly at the truths others are presenting to me, it has paved the way for increased energy, aliveness, creativity, and abundance for everyone involved. I also know that seemingly insignificant actions can spark massive change. Just as Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on the bus became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement, everything that I say and do, no matter how small, has the power to provide the spark or the tipping point for massive change. As Margaret Mead is famous for saying, ”Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

I would love to have you join me in my quest to live with eyes wide open and head out of the sand and, ultimately to create the “miracles” we need to build a world where we all can thrive. I hope that in sharing our stories – both the challenges and the triumphs – that we will give each other the strength, hope and the inspiration to continue doing our part.

But aren’t I supposed to be the one setting the perfect example of how to do it right – all the time? Aren’t I supposed to walk my talk every moment of every day?

That’s what I used to think. That is the “lie” that I still uncover at the source of my exhaustion when I catch myself yet again trying to be perfect – to hold myself to a standard higher than is humanly possible. It has taken me years to come to terms with the fact that this is actually what makes me good at what I do as a coach, trainer and consultant. The books I have read, the courses I have taken, and the experience on my resumé have certainly contributed to my expertise, but the real learning has come from my own struggles to apply this “book learning” into the real world – starting with my own.

The truth that I can see in my moments of sanity is that, just as a child learns to walk or talk by getting it wrong in a thousand different ways before they finally get it right, I cannot learn to “walk my talk” without giving myself permission to fail at it – repeatedly. I watched my son struggle single-mindedly for months, falling incessantly and getting more than a few bumps before learning to walk at 10 months. Now at 17 months, each day brings new excitement as we try to figure out which words the sounds he is experimenting with are intended to be. His insistent whining demonstrates his frustration that we don’t always understand him, but this doesn’t stop him from continuing to try. On the contrary, it only seems to increase his resolve to communicate.

It makes me wonder at what point we lose the innate sense of capability and potential we are born with as children and become the “grown ups” who see failure, mistakes, and not getting it right the first time as valid reasons to stop trying.

Talking with my coach last night I recognized that, up until about 10 years ago, my child-like naiveté that I could do anything I wanted if I just kept trying was relatively intact. Then, in the first three years after returning home from living in Japan, I experienced a fall from grace. I met with financial hardship, loneliness, and, after investing a huge amount of time, energy and passion in a business partnership with a close friend, the devastating pain of betrayal and the end of that relationship. It wasn’t until last night that I realized how profoundly I had allowed this experience to change me. Despite my deep passion and need for collaboration and partnership, since that failed partnership experience I have shied away from allowing myself this experience in a deep way on either a business or personal level even with my husband.

As this realization sinks in, I find myself asking, “What would my son do?” He has just learned to climb up on the kitchen chairs by himself. Yesterday I saw him looking at the table, strategizing how to get on top of that as well. I fear that it is only a matter of time before he takes advantage of a moment when my back is turned to make his move. What if he gets up there and falls? Surely it will be painful, but will it stop him from trying again? Experience tells me that it won’t. Just six weeks ago he figured out how to climb out of his crib and was rewarded with a substantial bump on the head. Of course we lowered his crib so that he has not yet been able to duplicate the feat, but I regularly catch him trying to get his leg up over the bars to repeat his accomplishment.

As we get older and master more skills, it only makes sense that we will take on bigger and bigger challenges. Like my son, the higher we attempt to climb the greater the pain if we fall. For many, like myself, the memory of a really painful fall makes us shy away from the edge – but at what cost? Last night I began to get a glimmer of the true cost of my choice to “play it safe”  after my own painful falls on my journey to climb to higher levels. It has impacted my energy, my authenticity, my self-expression, my integrity, my financial stability, my relationships and even my health. The person I was before “the fall” ran her life on the belief that fear and passion were two sides of the same coin and that in going in the direction of my greatest fear, I would find opportunities to express my passions in the most fulfilling and lucrative ways. The results in my life and, more importantly, my joy in the process of getting there, validated this belief. The person after “the fall”, runs around wasting tons of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical energy trying to figure out how to make sure she won’t fall before she will even attempt to climb again. As I write this I recognize that, rather than ensuring success when I do make my next attempt, I am defeating myself before I start precisely because I am not starting at all!

So as I look back at those pesky new years resolutions I can see that I have not been giving them my full effort. I have not really committed to them for fear of failure. But I have a choice to change that. I can and I am giving myself permission to keep failing and to be just as “naively” excited about trying the next time as I was the first. I am going to practice being more child-like – more attached to the excitement and sense of possibility of mastering a new skill than I am to the discomfort of failing, however many times and however painfully I need to fail to get there. Rather than allowing my fear of failure to prevent me from trying again, I am going to accept that failure is part of learning. Like my son analyzes the results of each failed attempt at vocalizing a word, adjusts it slightly, and fails better the next time, I am going to stop expecting myself to succeed at each successive attempt and instead only ask that I “fail better” than I did the last time – that I learn something that moves me forward.

I will keep you posted on my journey of “failing better” and staying excited about it and would love to hear about all of your amazing failures as you work towards making the shifts you desire in your life and work for 2010.

The time has come to unshackle myself from the past. My fears of being misunderstood, of being seen as flaky, of having to struggle to get my message out – these are all in the past. What’s more, I can now see that these challenges were rooted in others’ limitations, not in my own. They could not or did not want to hear my message. “Getting it” would have meant reframing their universe and transforming profoundly their ways of being, doing and having in the world. Those who are ready, willing and eager to be transformed are thirsting for messages and living models of having the courage to be personal, spiritual and fully authentic – the only true source of lasting personal, business and planetary sustainability. It is time to stop being “secretly me” and to begin sharing my work – both the work I do at a personal level and the work I do with businesses – on a wider scale.

It occurs to me that perhaps an even more important question to ask myself is how ready, willing, able and eager I am to be transformed by my own work. What is stopping me from fully engaging in my own work to profoundly shift my ways of doing, being and having in the world?

There are two pieces.

One is my fear of being misunderstood. The other is the reality that I am far from being a perfect example of practicing the principles of kyosei and life-work integrity™ that I teach. These two fears work together most obviously in my writing to block me. My fear of being misunderstood fuels my drive for perfection in my writing. This drive for perfection saps my energy as I scramble to try to figure out how to do it right the first time. It stops me from releasing my message out into the world. (Case in point – the three books I have in the wings – 75% written but languishing in electronic purgatory while I attempt to “figure out” the best way to position them in the market.) If I can release my fear of being misunderstood, I can let go of the need for perfection, thus freeing up enormous reservoirs of energy and passion that I have buried in trying to figure out how to get it right.

Of course this is all tied into the need to strive for achievement, recognition, power and status that is the dominant modus operandi of our society. Because we are so ingrained with this belief that more and faster is better, we live in a constant state of not enough (or not good enough) despite the abundance that surrounds us and, in reality, is threatening to bury us. I know from experience that when I manage to step out of this dominant ethic that drives me to push myself to do more, be more and have more I am more at peace. I begin to allow myself the time to re-connect with myself, with nature, and with the wisdom of the universe that is wanting to flow through me to heal people, business and the planet. I let go of my belief that this work is something I “must” do, and open up to it as something that is being done through me. Not only does this drive productivity (as it makes it easier to step into the flow of actions and priorities in each and every moment), it creates more of the results I was seeking (power, recognition, achievement and yes, money) without all the negative side effects.

So, fellow travellers on the path to fostering lifestyles and businesses that offer sustainable health, vitality and prosperity for all, henceforth you shall find on my blog a more balanced mix of my personal/spiritual musings posted alongside the more “professional” ones. I look forward with curiosity to witness the results in my life and my business of no longer being “secretly me”.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments about the above, and would especially like to hear any success stories (and challenges!) you have had regarding your own journey of expressing your authentic self in your life and work.

1) Don’t make resolutions!

At least not in the traditional way. Most people’s New Year resolutions look like an overwhelming laundry list of “to do’s” that would require herculean willpower (not to mention an extra 40 hour work week) to implement. The challenge, after the initial enthusiasm for doing a complete life and work overhaul subsides, is that the energy required to implement so many changes simultaneously simply cannot be sustained. Unfortunately, rather than just cutting back when they realize they bit off more than they could chew, most people give up all together and slowly (or sometimes quickly) slide back into their old habits.

So what does work?….
2) Express Gratitude:

I always start my New Year off by ending the old year with expressing and cataloguing all that I am grateful for from the past year. This appreciation of my successes and blessings is not only energizing, looking back on all the many things I am grateful for in the course of the past year helps me to see what experiences and achievements have been most meaningful and fulfilling for me. Very often the things I am most grateful for were not things that I had planned for or had to achieve. They were the simple joys of living such as being able to earn a living doing what I love, having great friends, being healthy, and having a loving family. This gratitude exercise will help you to get perspective on your true priorities and inform your intentions and theme for the year.

3) Identify Your Intentions:

Go through the different areas of your life and identify your overall intentions for the changes you would like to see by the end of the year. As you all have heard me say many times, make sure that your intentions are in alignment with your Four Passions. If you write down a change because you think you “should” or “have to” make a change in some area, it is far less likely that you will be able to sustain the energy to follow through than if it is something that is in alignment with who you truly are and want to be. A common example for many people might be losing weight. I avoid setting specific goals around losing weight because, for me, this falls into the “should” realm as I really don’t care that much about the weight itself. Instead, I set intentions around what I want to experience physically. Since I had a baby this year, something far more meaningful to me is to return to my old levels of energy (can you say sleep deprivation?) and physical ability. My intentions in this area are to get more sleep and to be able to do the Grouse Grind and join a Bootcamp – two activities I enjoyed pre-pregnancy and would love to do again. This year I wrote personal intentions in the physical area, the spiritual area, my relationship area, and my creative area. My business intentions were focused in the area of solidifying systems and expanding product/service outreach. To set your intentions ask: Which areas of my life and work would I like to see change in that would have the most positive impact on my life overall? Describe specifically how you would like things to look rather than making a to do list of how you are going to create that change.

4) Pick a Theme:

Now the above might not sound so different than the typical goal-setting method, but here’s where the real power is. Look back over all of your intentions to find an overall theme for the positive changes you want to see in your life and work this year. In my case, when I looked over all of my dreams and desires for 2009, the thread that I saw running through everything was “Rebuilding Foundations”. Having had a baby this year I realized that all of my old routines had been disrupted. I can’t/don’t eat, sleep, exercise, socialize, or work the way I used to. All of the rituals, routines and habits that I had in place before baby came along that I took for granted now need to be rethought in light of the wonderful new addition to our life. I need to rebuild my foundations. So while I do have specific goals and plans around exactly what I plan to do, be and have this year, if I think about all of them at once it could become very overwhelming. By being clear on my core theme for the year, I can keep this top of mind on a daily basis and use it to guide all of my actions and decisions. This takes far less energy, provides more flexibility, and allows me to flow with choices in the moment rather than trying to force myself to stick to some plan that I made in a moment of expecting myself to be a far superior human being than I can usually manage when the daily demands of life come calling. No matter how overwhelmed (or sleep deprived) I am, I can usually manage to hold one theme in my head. The easiest way to do this is to form your theme into a question. My question this year is “How can I rebuild the foundations for thriving in my life and work so that I can minimize energy required for the necessities and maximize energy for the things/people I love?” Being mindful of this question will lead to many different actions that I cannot even imagine right now – while still creating the results I desire. To me, that is much more exciting than chaining myself to a huge list of action items that may not flow with the natural unfolding of circumstances that occurs in all of our lives.

I wish all of you a 2009 filled with passion, prosperity, and fulfillment!

–Andrea Jacques

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First, the bad stuff. Depression and stress disorders represent the fastest growing category of disability claims. They currently account for more than $9 billion in disability claims, or 30 percent of the estimated $30 billion that disabilities and presenteeism (the problem of employees being at work but not fully functioning) cost Canada’s economy each year (as reported by the BC Business and Economic Round table on Mental Health).

One of the most disturbing things about this increasing trend toward depression, stress and other mental-health related disabilities in the workplace is the fact that, while 80 to 90 percent of people with these disorders can be treated successfully, only one third of them actually seek help.

So what does all of this have to do with networking?

This month I attended the Canadian Mental Health Association’s annual conference on mental health in the workplace where one of the most inspiring and empowering speakers was a tiny, dark-haired, passionate woman in her 50s, Sandy Naiman.

An accomplished journalist, broadcaster, teacher, mental-health advocate and public speaker, Sandy has also struggled with mental illness since she was 12-years old – a journey that has included 20 hospitalizations and four different diagnoses. As I listened to Sandy’s stories, it dawned on me that what had allowed her to create such a successful career, despite a serious mental illness, was her ability to cultivate her network.

The secret to Sandy’s success, however, is the exact opposite of what most people are taught to do when building their network. Sandy was fortunate to have a mother who both encouraged her to discuss her illness openly and not to see it as a defining factor in who she was and what she was capable of.

Sandy became equally comfortable describing both her limitations and her strengths. When she wanted to attend journalism school, for example, she walked into the office of the chairman of Ryerson University’s journalism program, sat down and explained to him that she had a serious mental illness, but that she very much wanted to be in the program. After listening to her story, he admitted her on the spot and later was instrumental in paving the way for her to work at the Toronto Sun.

We can all take a lesson from this when building our personal and business integrity, as well as strengthening our networks. In this day and age, where customers and employers are becoming increasingly suspicious of anything that sounds too good to be true, being honest and open about limitations builds trust.

I believe that it was Sandy’s acknowledgment of her weaknesses that helped to lay the foundation for her confidence in her strengths. In presenting herself as a whole person, rather than hiding her weaknesses, she learned that she was useful and valued just as she was.

The lesson for networking is this: building a strong network that will help you and your business to thrive is not only about promoting your strengths. In today’s economy it can also hinge on your willingness to be vulnerable. Vulnerability builds trust, the key to solid relationships in all areas of life and work – and to high-performing organizations.

This kind of authenticity also builds my confidence and trust in yourself. Seeing that others, with all of their imperfections, have succeeded, provides confidence that you can too.

If we would all have the courage to begin building our networks by presenting ourselves as whole people, with both strengths and weaknesses, it would go a long way to stem the rising tide of stress, depression and mental health issues in the workplace.

By chance I came upon a job working part-time at the student careers office teaching people how to write résumés and find jobs. I applied, got the job, and discovered that I loved working with these students because they were highly motivated and simply needed a little guidance and inspiration to help discover their career direction. This vocational discovery taught me that my interest was to work with people who wanted to go from good to great, rather than from dysfunctional to functioning.

My second “career crisis” came at 23. As the career development director of a health-care union I had created several innovative programs delivering career-resiliency services to union members and employee-engagement training to hospitals. While more mainstream in organizations today, 16 years ago such initiatives were new and it had taken me close to two years of research, development, marketing and perseverance to get all of our programs up and running. Then, just as we were poised to start making a return on this investment, my whole department was laid off due to budget cuts.

After the initial shock wore off and I had some time to think, I recognized that I had essentially built a successful small business within the organization. Even though I knew that it wouldn’t be easy to get started on my own, this crisis was the impetus for me to become an entrepreneur.

My third crisis at 26 had several issues overlapping that led me to shut down that same business, call off my wedding and head off on my own to travel Asia for six months.

First of all, the majority of my business at the time involved career and re-employment training and coaching. I felt torn between trying to serve the best interests of my immediate clients – the people who were trying to create a new life for themselves – and the interests of the companies who hired me – who wanted these people back and work, any work, as quickly as possible.

Secondly, I had always dreamed of backpacking through Asia and had postponed my dream to pursue career opportunities that I thought were just too good to turn down. This dream was calling to me once again and, although I was engaged to be married in three months, I realized that my dream of traveling was something that needed to be done on my own.

Finally, I had received an offer of a junior partnership from a prestigious international outplacement company. Despite the fact that this was a very lucrative offer and a great honour to receive at my age, my gut was telling me that if I accepted I would be sucked into the “corporate world” of stress, politics, and burnout, never to be seen again.

Despite my fears of giving up my business, my fiancé, and this lucrative career opportunity, I knew that I needed to follow my dreams to travel or I would regret it later. I had no idea at the time that answering this call to travel would bring me to Japan, where I would eventually develop my own systems for helping people and organizations to create work and workplaces that are filled with passion, purpose and meaning.

I have learned that a career crisis is often not a crisis at all. It’s a calling – a calling to listen to your heart, discover your passions, and align with your purpose. We get these cues throughout our lives – intuitions, gut feelings, synchronicities and other messages that are trying to guide us towards meaningful work, vibrant health and a fulfilling life.

When we fail to act on these messages the calls become more insistent in mid-life and generate a crisis so we will stop ignoring them. Whether you are in the middle of a career crisis now or simply wish to prevent one, take the time to explore the messages you have been ignoring. It takes courage to acknowledge these messages and even more to actually act on them. The payoff, however, is worth it. And the price of not listening is high.

Andrea Jacques (kyoseigirl)

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On the recommendation of a friend who knew my passion for all things Asian, my first afternoon escape led me to a little café called Sakura Japanese Coffee and Tea in the nearby town of Parksville.

Walking through the front door I was overcome with “natsukashii” – an expression that conveys a complicated and favorite Japanese emotion, the bittersweet nostalgia for something lovely and loved, now past – and settled in for a productive afternoon of writing. I loved the place so much that I returned there almost every afternoon in that second week. As much as I loved the place, however, it was evident to me by how empty it was that business might not be so good.

Even though I was supposed to be focused on my writing, I can never resist offering a helping hand to a small business in need, so by Friday I was compelled to strike up a conversation with the owner. Naoko, a very young and energetic looking forty-something woman, had emigrated from Japan ten years ago due to her husband’s work. The first few years had been focused on raising their son, but as he got older, she found herself needing something more to occupy her time. After a few years of unsuccessfully searching for work she would enjoy, she determined to open her own business.

I asked Naoko why she had started her business, aside from earning an income for herself. The main reason, she confessed, was that in her forties with her son entering his teens, she was at a point in her life where she wanted to re-establish a life for herself as “just Naoko,” rather than as Mrs. X or X’s mom.

She also loved baking and drinking coffee and had missed the Japanese-style sweets and coffee that she was used to back home. This was the basis of her business concept. She believed she could differentiate herself in the market by running an authentic Japanese café serving green tea, Japanese-style coffee and homemade Japanese-style baked goods.

Unfortunately the market was not too keen on the latter two product offerings. Sales in her first month were dismal. The Japanese-style coffee was too strong for Canadian tastes and the authentic Japanese baked goods were perceived as too high in fat, too sweet, or simply unfamiliar. She changed her menu to offer weaker Canadian style coffee as well as lattes, cappuccinos, and traditional baked goods such as muffins and cookies. This had led to a small increase in business, but still not enough to cover her monthly expenses.

A friend suggested adding Italian sodas, ice cream, sushi and panini sandwiches, popular in other cafés, to her offerings. These items had definitely added to increased sales. Over the few weeks that I was there word seemed to be getting out about the sushi in particular and regular customers were growing steadily. Still, the tables were mostly empty with customers trickling in to order sushi or grab a quick coffee one or two at a time. Most of these customers were summer-only traffic due to her location in a resort area, so Naoko was concerned that her business would not be able to make ends meet come fall.

While we were chatting, one customer stepped in the doorway, looked around and then quickly stepped out saying “just looking” when Naoko caught her eye. Naoko looked at me in frustration and told me that scene repeated itself numerous times each day. Some of the customers did end up coming back in at a later time, but many did not.

As I stepped outside my own original love of the place brought on by many fond hours spent in similar Tokyo cafés and looked at the décor with fresh eyes, I suddenly saw how it might not meet with customers had come to expect from the other coffee shops in the area. The other homegrown coffee shops in Parksville hit the funky-cozy end of the continuum. Naoko’s café, by contrast would have seemed almost stark and cold. In short, Naoko was feeling frustrated and fearful. What had inspired her to open her business to begin with hadn’t been received well by the market and now she was scrambling to compromise in order to survive.

I have seen similar scenarios occur in many small businesses and the results are never good. If they hit on the right mix and the business ends up surviving, the owner ends up stressed-out and unhappy because they find themselves heavily invested both with their money and time in something that they do not have a passion for. If they don’t hit on the right mix, the owner frantically jumps from one new idea to the next trying to figure out what the market wants, leading to inconsistency in both marketing and product offering eventually closes the doors.

So if you find yourself in this dilemma, how do you get out of it?

The ideal would be to avoid it in the first place by making sure you do your due diligence before opening your business. All too many small businesses do not bother to write a proper business plan let alone do proper market research before diving in and opening their doors.

Being an entrepreneur myself, I believe that this is at least partly due to the fact that the entrepreneurial mindset has a tendency to combine risk-taking and pig-headedness in a potentially explosive combination. In our not-so-practical terms this means that once us entrepreneurs get an idea in our head that we believe will work, we have a tendency to tune out any information and opinions to the contrary.

Now I’m not saying that you should listen to every naysayer about why your business won’t work or how it needs to look to succeed. Many of the most successful businesses of our time have grown out of ideas that were contrary to what was endorsed by successful businesses at their inception.

I’m just saying that you need to listen to these opinions and information enough to take them into account and develop strategies and contingency plans to address them.

Assuming you didn’t write a business plan or do market research when you started your business and you now find yourself in a dilemma similar to Naoko’s, stop and take the time to write one now. I’m not talking about taking months to do a two-hundred page document. Probably anywhere from three to ten pages will do for a start, depending on the complexity of your business. If you are in a position where your business is already up and running this really need not take you more than a few hours over a period of a few weeks as the challenges and successes you have had up to this point will have given you a much better understanding of the market and where you want and need to focus your business.

Your tendency even now is probably to ignore this advice. You are probably thinking that it is more important to rush out and implement the latest idea you have to save your business. Stop. Take a deep breath. Now honestly ask yourself whether that “jump first, think later” attitude is what might have brought you here to begin with.

Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. Take the time to stop and determine how best to build a strong foundation for your business. Don’t give in to the survival fears that may be driving you to just run out and do something, anything, to bring more money in the door. While you might get some short-term payoffs, it may be at the expense of the long-term health of both yourself and your business.

On a final note, never lose sight of the real reasons that you started your business. What were the passions that you were trying to pursue? For most small business owners, their business began as much more than just a way to make money. If, in order for your business to survive, you need to change it so much that it no longer serves these passions, then you are better off to let it die.

Building a successful business requires putting your heart and soul into years of hard work. If your business is designed to serve your heart and soul then all of the hard work is not only worth it, it is a huge part of the payoff long before you see the financial returns rolling in. If your business does not serve your heart and soul then even the perfect recipe for making money will exact a far greater price in misery.

As for Naoko, we ended up coming up with some great ideas to help her refocus her original concept in a way that would be better received by the market and still help her meet her key objective of having a place where she could be “just Naoko” while sharing her love of baking, coffee, and Japanese culture. The key strategy, due to her location being somewhat off the beaten path in a tourist resort area, was that she would need to make her coffee shop a destination – a place that people would go out of their way to come to because it had something special to offer.

To support this she decided to warm-up her décor by making it more Zen and Japanese to draw customers in and encourage them to stay awhile. To further make it a destination and to tie in to her desire to share Japanese culture with her community, Naoko also came up with a plan to promote and run regular events such as classes in sushi-making, Japanese flower-arranging, tea and coffee appreciation, and even baking.

In Naoko’s case, we were able to increase her likelihood of success by amplifying the real reasons she had started her business – to create a place to connect with her community and share her culture – and integrating them more fully into her business concept and marketing strategies.

While this may not be possible in every case, you are always going to build a stronger foundation for success and fulfillment in your business by asking “how can I make more money by making my business express more of who I am or be more of what I want?” than you will by asking “What things that I want do I need to compromise to make this business work?” Remember, you probably left your job because you didn’t want to sell your soul to the company store. Even if it’s your own store, selling your soul still has the same result.

-Andrea Jacques (aka. kyoseigirl)

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