Flying Sans Parachute

We’re still not finished with this idea of finding the voice of your business and especially how you see your larger entrepreneurial life as an inspiration or a hindrance to this.

Let’s hear some more from Izzy. Remember her?

So, maybe the larger topic is simply motivation. Or fear itself. And the discussion becomes what enables some people to jump in fearlessly, trusting. Because if you can’t conquer that, you can’t even begin to form the words, let alone create the “voice” you need in hopes of having your “right people” hear you.

Izzy wrote to me recently in response to a post where I asked for deeper feedback on what’s challenging around finding the “voice” of your business. {I’m creating my first info product this Summer, which will help creative entrepreneurs do just that, then find the confidence to speak it forth.}

I know that for every person who takes the time to reach out to me about something, it usually turns out that there’s ten or fifty others out there feeling the same way.

Realizing there are no parachutes is a learning curve in any entrepreneur’s life.

So I gather it’s time for some talk about the entrepreneurial art of flying sans parachute. And the gorgeous foolhardiness of it.

Because that’s what we do, you know, those of us who hear the siren song of entrepreneurship {sounds so romantic, I know} and dare to answer it. Even if only to utter a timid, gulp-propelled little, “Yeah?”

We buy a ticket. We get on the plane. And we fly. And we do it without a parachute, putting our faith in the laws of physics and the ability of the pilot to troubleshoot any number of tricky aerospace scenarios we can’t begin to understand.

It seems to me there are an awful lot of comparisons we can draw between the rather pedantic {or holy-crap!-inducing, depending on how you feel about it} act of flying, and our entrepreneurial adventures.

As a young girl, I didn’t know people were allowed to fly without parachutes.

I took my first plane ride at the age of 20. It was the Summer before my Junior year of college and I was traveling to Detroit to visit a boyfriend who was interning there for the Summer. I was nail-bitingly nervous about taking my first flight. I’ve never loved heights and didn’t like the prospect of my body being 30,000 feet above the earth and trapped inside an aircraft that was totally out of my control.

On the morning of my first flight, I’d talked myself down from a near panic attack and said to my mom, “If the plane starts to crash, I just have to remember to pull the string.”

My mom looked at me quizzically. “The string?”

I stared back, wide-eyed. “The string on my parachute.”

“Honey,” she said. “There are no parachutes.”

I took a moment to process this information .”So,” I said. “What happens if we crash?”

She looked at me kindly, matter-of-factly. “You die.”

I didn’t know about any of my fellow travelers, but to me, flying without parachutes seemed like an awfully big gamble on the laws of physics to build a multi-billion dollar industry around.

Yet somehow, I was comforted by the awareness that people do this every day. Celebrities, politicians, and people who work cross-country fly multiple times a week! Once I boarded the plane and took my seat, I noticed that the former frat boys carousing in the back rows weren’t phased by the fact that we were about to take off. Neither did the creepy, grease-y business man in ill-fitting pleated khakis sitting next to me who stared at my bubblegum pink toes half the plane ride {the other half, I covered them with my carry-on tote}. Neither did the flight attendants, who completed their beverage service with nary a lip twitch. This was air travel as normal for everybody else.

It was pretty much only me who was freaking.

The reality is, the fear of flying is so much greater and more spirit-crushing than is the likelihood of crashing and dying in a fire-y blaze.

Can’t we look at our entrepreneurial life like this, too?

Or can we continue to let our fear of crashing {our dreams} keep us away from the destination?

I’m just not sure that’s good enough for you.

What do you think? {As Izzy tells me, our beliefs can really keep us down.}