The Sweet Spot & The Stretch

Are you hiding your entrepreneurial sweet spot in your pocket like a forgotten piece of candy? Photo by Lara604 courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

I turned down a good opportunity today.

One that I had been wishing for, abstractedly. Even scratching around for. One that, in fact, seemed to fall into my lap.

What happened was, I launched my new copywriting-and-creative-entrepreneur-coaching business {Abby Kerr Ink} almost six months ago {can’t believe it’s been that long!}. Since then, work has been coming in at a steady trickle. Not rushing over me like a river current, but enough to keep me ticking, thinking, motivated, and inspired. New clients and returning clients. A little bit more work every week. Good stuff.

So I got to thinking, this is great. But I need more. Now. I’ve got real bills to pay. What else can I do?

So I started scratching around for an opening in the cosmos that I could fit myself, my degree, and my professional experiences into. A gap I could take up. An income stream of someone else’s creation. I was asking, essentially, to be a cog. {A cog in a really good and worthwhile machine, but a cog nonetheless.}

And so, because I asked, said gap opened up to me.

And it fit. An opportunity that matched up with my “qualifications.” The right-ish amount of coin. And in some ways, still a bit of a stretch. Not a bad, uncomfortable stretch, but a stretch.

The only thing that didn’t fit into this gap was my wanting. I didn’t want to do this thing I thought I should.

But I told myself, who cares? You need this. You should take this. It’s the financially responsible thing to do. Take it. Do it. Do it now! [Channeling Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute.] Do it before this gap closes.

Now here comes the cool thing I didn’t expect. {But should’ve expected, because the cosmos likes to work this way.}

As soon as I started scratching around for more from another source — a source outside of myself — not only did what I was scratching around for get unearthed {so that I practically tripped over it}, but more came to me in the form of my sweetest wanting: my business cracked open like a frickin’ coconut. Sweetness.

More work of my own design came to me. New coaching clients. New copywriting clients. More repeat business from previous clients. Opportunities to be interviewed for other people’s work. And a flurry of new ideas that smell so sweet through the wrapper.

The very cool thing that happened was, within two weeks of scratching for something outside of my business, I became booked solid within my business.

“Solid,” to me, at this point, means I’m booked about two weeks out. But hells! I’m booked! For the first time ever. And that is a crazy cool realization. I’m getting there. I’m seeing that yes, this is possible. It is possible to design your own work life, set it up, learn about what you need to, and give it a go. It is possible to arrive in your own dream.

And it feels so gentle. Because I’m staying in — reveling in — tasting deeper into — my sweet spot. And I bet I’ll sleep a little better tonight knowing that I politely {and gratefully} said ‘no’ to this very good opportunity that I scratched around for.

The point is, your sweet spot is where you feel the most relieved.

And no, this isn’t just for entrepreneurs and self-employed people.

Perhaps you feel most relieved as a beautifully formed, fully arrived, totally self actualized cog in a machine of someone else’s making. Look at nurses. Teachers. Engineers. Restaurant servers. They are working and creating {in a flexible and self-designed sense} within a machine that is not entirely of their own making. My intention is not to diss those who don’t wish for, or haven’t happened across, the path of entrepreneurship.

What I’m talking about is knowing and claiming your sweet spot. The place where your natural, inborn gifts and talents are stoked and activated. The place where you let down your hair and find that you work better that way. The place where you know how to get your flow-etry on. The place where it happens.

We’ve all got a sweet spot. But for some reason, we feel a compulsion to stretch.

Sometimes we know where our giftings lie, yet we feel a compulsion to stretch through them and past them, and sometimes we even hitch ourselves over the brim and catapult ourselves right out of our sweet spot.

And we’re left standing there, with our back turned on our sweet spot, saying, Yeah, I can do that. But I want to try to do something harder.

Um, why?

Stretching outside of your sweet spot is not inherently bad or wrong. Heck, some people say you aren’t really living unless you’re a little uncomfortable. {I tend to disagree. I love to find places of comfort. I don’t think it has to equal stagnation.}

But if you do choose to stretch out of your sweet spot — to elongate your everloving arm and wiggle those I should do more, want more, produce more, be more fingers — make sure you keep your eyes open. How is the climate around you changing? Are you moving further away from your right people {and if so, why?}? Do you even like this new territory?

The sweet spot is way underrated.

And the stretch can be more dangerous than you may think. Like a piece of Hallowe’en candy that someone stuck a hypodermic needle into. You never know.

I believe that the most powerful nichification happens when we identify and claim our sweet spot. This is me. This is what I’m good at. This is where I shine. This is where I make my right people shine.

Sweet readers, have you overlooked your own sweet spot? Anything you’d like to do about that?