Plan B

Plan B

The back up plan.

The safety net.

Have you got one in place in case your goals don’t work out or your dreams don’t come true?

What are you going to do if that happens?

Giving up on your goals could be a Plan B.

Or better still NOT giving up could be an even better plan B.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my entrepreneurial journey over the years perhaps it’s because I can feel things changing, shifting, moving even more so in the right direction.

I’ve been looking back at how far I’ve come, how much has changed, how much I’ve changed. From breaking free from the 9-5 and walking out of my last job without a Plan B years ago to create a life and business on MY own terms.

In fact, I walked out of my last 3 jobs without a Plan B.

Very spur of the moment – I made the decision and left there and then! I guess the first 2 attempts were practice attempts with hindsight. Third time lucky. Once I was gone, that was it. I was outta there with my parting words to my boss being ‘Go to hell!‘, there was no turning back.

When I say I had no Plan B, I really mean it. No savings, no partner, no other job to go to, no relatives to help me, no nothing EXCEPT for a promise to myself that I would live my life on my terms and do anything rather than swap my life for an hourly wage and clock in and out and be beholding to someone else for my living. Actually I did take a part time job for a couple of years. It was one were I could mainly work from home and I still fitted in all my OWN business activities around it. I don’t want to hear that you can’t run or build your own business around a job, part or full time. You can. It’s totally possible!

Anyway, back to your Plan B.

What’s it gonna be?

All or nothing?

Do you promise yourself that you are going to get out of your soul destroying 9-5 one day?

Are you making imaginary deals that you will start your own business when X, Y or Z happens?

Have you got ideas that you are just filing away for One Day?

One Day is NOW.

If you are doing work on a day to day basis that makes your heart sink and makes your mind get covered in a dark cloud, you really have to change something, and you have to do it now. Today. Tomorrow is too far away!

You have to make up your mind. You have to promise yourself that you will commit to your Plan A and put everything, your heart, mind and soul, into it. If you do that, and you keep going, YOU WON’T NEED A PLAN B because you will be LIVING YOUR PLAN A.

I could give you so many examples of when I could have given up on living life on my terms doing what I love and helping others to do the same.

I could tell you about times that would have driven most people to run back to the ‘safety’ of having a job.

Where shall I start!

I could tell you about the time I had 17p (about 30 cents) in my bank account. And my mortgage was due the VERY NEXT DAY! And I hadn’t got a Plan B.

Now, that’s the kind of thing that would have most people scanning the ‘wanted’ ads, so what did I do?

I took the day off!

The OPPOSITE of what most people would do.

Deciding on living a life on your terms, really YOUR terms, means exactly that. You don’t do what ‘most people’ would do.

Most people will keeping turning up every morning to a job they hate rather than set themselves free. They will put up with a day-in, day-out pain because the pain isn’t quite bad enough and they’ve kinda learnt to live with it.

Most people will put their dreams on hold. They will wait for the right time. The perfect time. The new year. Their 30th, 40th, 50th birthday. When the kids are at school. When the kids leave school. When the kids leave home. When they’ve learnt enough. When they have prepared enough. When they have procrastinated enough. And in the mean time that dream that they had, that they go SO EXCITED about and got their blood pumping and heart racing, it lies dormant and soon becomes a distant memory and something nice to do ‘one day’ and then ‘life’ takes over and….I don’t need to tell you how that story ends.

To live a life on your terms, you have to be willing do what most people won’t.

The end to that story? Some unexpected money arrived in my bank account overnight like a miracle (though really it was the result of some actions I had taken many months before that and I hadn’t really expected that action to result in any money), and I paid my mortgage.

If you are deliberating over starting something, I want you do to know that you CAN do it. I did it, and I am doing it, and I have No Plan B. I’m not smarter than you. I’ve got no more ‘secrets’ about business or life than you have. The only person that is stopping you is you. Not your boss, not your partner, not your best friend, not even your horrible friend, not anyone on the internet. Just YOU.

When you accept FULL RESPONSIBILITY for where you are, what you have, and where you are going, even though it might be hard to stop the habit of blaming everyone and everything around you, it’s LIBERATING! Do it.

I found this tiny cutting from a newspaper stuck underneath my desk with blue tack. I’d dropped something – probably a blueberry as I that’s something I ALWAYS drop when I eat at my desk (don’t ask about the times – yes twice – when a blueberry rolled into the depths of my printer!).

This scrap of paper was from about 9/10 years ago. When I was still working 9-5 with a boss who fell out with everyone. He was the most cantankerous man I’d ever met. The one I told to go to hell.

Anyway, I remember cutting this bit of paper out around that time and I actually had it stuck on my desk and within my sight for ages, and can you believe it, THIS is what I used for motivation!!!!

horoscope

 

Yep. My MORTGAGE  was my motivation.

Not being free. Not living a life on my terms. Not following my dreams.

My mortgage.

Because I bought into the ‘rules’ that said having a mortgage was a good idea. It was a Good Thing to be on the property ladder (as well as the career ladder). And I honestly, truly, placated myself with that little message from a crappy newspaper and THEN I stuck it up and in front my computer and read it every day! If I could go back in time, I’d give myself a slap and a shake!

I wish I could have told myself that I really didn’t have to start each day (and especially Mondays!) with dread and sit in an office with people I wasn’t that fussed about, do work that my heart wasn’t in, just for the sake of feeling ‘secure’ and in some twisted reasoning making my mortgage my motivation.

What’s your motivation for putting up with a job you can’t stand?!

What’s your excuse for putting your goals on hold?

My motivation is FREEDOM.

And I will put up with the sinking feeling of having 17p in my bank account and having the mortgage due the next day 1000 times over giving up my FREEDOM.

Building a life and business on your terms is thrilling, it’s exciting, you get to figure a lot of stuff out, you get to learn about yourself and test yourself.

I walked away from a ‘secure’ job and ‘stability’ and ‘safety’ and walked into uncertainty.

Was it worth it.

YES!

I’m about to try something new in my business and I’ve just bought a one-way ticket to Spain. I’m going to experiment with running my business from my laptop and being location independent. It may be for just a few weeks, or really, who knows! But the best thing about this is having the CHOICE. I don’t have to ask ask for permission from a boss to take off, and I won’t have the holiday blues when I come back home.

It’s possible to create a business from the things you love, DOING the things you LOVE!

ONE WAY

Do you feel on the verge of stepping into the life YOU really want to live? On your terms. With YOUR RULES. Doing the things you LOVE rather than the things that you feel like you have to ENDURE. 

If you are ready to tell get the hell out of that job you can’t bare, or or just tolerating, then check out my new course;

Tell your boss to stick it! 4 weeks to FREEDOM

Starting Monday 11th August! Stop tolerating and start taking charge of creating a life and business on YOUR terms.  

Leave a Reply