The big secret about working for yourself

So many people get frustrated working a job. It could be the hours, the job itself, or the people in charge of you.

I hear it all the time, I should start my own business so I can work whenever I want and there won’t be anyone to tell me what to do!

While working for yourself does, in some ways, give you that freedom, it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

There is one big part of starting your own business that people tend not to talk about. Maybe because it is so obvious.

It’s all on you.

There is no one to give credit to when things are going well. There is no one to blame when things don’t go as planned. There is no one to tell you what to do and when to do it. There is no one to lean on when you’re having an off day.

This can be liberating. But, it can also be debilitating.

Imagine waking up in the morning and you can do whatever you want, whenever you want.

But… there’s always a catch.

You may not have anyone telling you what to do and when to do it. You may have the freedom to do as you please. You can sleep in if you want. You can rot on the couch and watch Netflix all day. But every decision you make will dictate whether or not you can pay your bills next month.

Your success or failure is completely and 100% on you.

I am not telling you this to suggest that I am perfect in any way. I get distracted just as easily as anyone. I get stuck in doom scrolls and procrastinate like the best of them.

I’m so good at procrastinating that it can be called something else. 

Protaskinating: the art of finding any unnecessary task or project you can work on so you don’t have to work on what is actually important.

I do that a lot.

So, how do I combat this so that I can continue to be successful working for myself.

Routine. Discipline. Consistency.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before. 

“Just create a morning routine for yourself to make sure you start your day right.”

“You have to be disciplined, that is the only way to succeed!” 

“Consistency is key, without it everything falls apart!”

I’m not here to preach any of that, though a lot of it is true. I am just here to maybe give a little insight based on what has worked for me.

First, it is important to understand that you can go too far in the other direction with all of this. You can have an excessively long morning routine. You can be too disciplined. You can be too consistent.

It’s the same for everything in life. It’s about finding balance.

A morning routine could simply be making your bed and leaving your phone in another room for an hour. Your morning routine can also change and evolve. Just because you decided to have this specific routine, doesn’t mean you have to keep it. My morning routine changes often, you could say my routine lacks routine. But, there are a few things I do every morning to try to set myself up to have a good and productive day. Figure out what those things are for you and try to implement one or two of them at a time.

Discipline will take you much farther than motivation ever will. Motivation is a flash in the pan, it's really strong and hot but it goes away very quickly. Discipline is understanding that some things need to get done every day regardless of how you are feeling. Discipline is sometimes just forcing yourself to get started on a task, then before you know it you’ve checked three things off your list for the day. Discipline is not picking up your phone in the morning because you know you will get stuck in a doom scroll. 

Consistency might seem like an easy and obvious one. Of course you have to do things consistently to be successful at anything. But when I say consistency, I want you to think about that word a little differently. I am not saying you are going to consistently do the same amount of work every day and put in the same amount of hours every day. I am simply saying that you are going to show up every day and give the same effort to move the needle a little bit every day. Some days the needle will move a lot, some days it will barely move at all. But if you show up consistently to try to move the needle every single day, it is really hard to fail.

To be successful working for yourself, you have one thing to rely on. Yourself. 

You can have the best coaches and mentors in the world, but no one is going to do the work for you.

It is up to you.