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Part 1: Business Is Different for You–Come Out of Hiding!
May 9, 2016 by Lizabeth Phelps
I’m sharing this less-than-flattering picture because it captures a key moment in a presentation I gave recently when I lost my composure and got positively HOPPING MAD.
I’ve never actually lost it on an audience before, but here I am, literally jumping up and down in beyond-disbelief-frustration, as I called them out on the very reason they’re not where they want to be in their lives and businesses. Maybe the whole scene will resonate with you, too.
Let me give some context: I work with coaches and subject-matter experts with a fairly powerful impulse to change the world. Now, all entrepreneurs want to do that: from Silicon Valley app developers to social entrepreneurs tackling poverty and clean water issues.
But something makes coaches and the subject-matter experts I work with different from all of them: they want to empower people—how people think, act, behave. Their distinction is that they’re compelled to raise the consciousness on the planet. I call them “transformation artists.”
Most likely, if you’re reading this, you’re a transformation artist, too. And that Impulse to change the world is a strong, relentless driver, is it not? It’s got its hand on your back almost every minute of every day; it pulls you to your feet when you’re slacking, and floods you with images of your potential when you’re doubting yourself. Right?
But here’s the problem. There’s an opposite-force driver that is, miraculously, even stronger than the Impulse. It’s the Hider, who handcuffs you to your home-office arm chair and seduces you into writing books, strategizing, “preparing” and otherwise finding ways to keep you out of the limelight (i.e. marketing.)
The Hider shouts, “Anything but the limelight!! That hot beam will fry you! Who’s going to believe you? Who’s even going to get what you’re saying? They’ll crucify you out there. Stay out at all costs!”
The Hider is a demagogue–and a cunning one. It knows about its arch-rival, the Impulse. It knows if it exerts too much pressure in the opposite direction, you might come to your senses. So, it keeps you in the game—it just directs you to do it from the middle-of-the-curve.
And good thing, because it’s cozy in there. You get to relax because expectations aren’t high. Those crowded in there with you 
aren’t suffering too badly; no one’s humiliated from having exposed too much of themselves or said something too off-color. Those to the right of you offer good-enough programs…those to the left have acceptable brands. So, you do, too. Who’s going to ridicule you if you look like them? Sound like them?
Who’s going to notice if your business model is like theirs; your fee structure, promotion strategies, messaging, branding, marketing? Who’s going to complain if you’re just like everyone else?
No one. They’ll just hit “delete.”
And so, you become just like them. It’s so much easier than being seen and rejected on the fringe.
The Hider is pleased.
But you slip deeper and deeper into the crowd.
Where no one can find you.
And where you can’t hear the Impulse within you at all anymore. It’s just a faint, far-off pulse-beat.
I want to ask you:
Is this okay with you?
Is it okay for you to be where good-enough is good-enough??
Is it okay with you to settle into the middle of the curve and follow—when you’ve been called to LEAD??
This is the question I asked to the live audience recently. It was their response that brought out my Irish.
They gave me a low, grumbling, uncertain, uncommitted, “No.”
And I lost it. I lost it because this is not the first time that front-line change agents have given me this half-hearted reply to the same question.
I had more to say, but I couldn’t. I stopped. I stared. And I started jumping up and down, flailing my arms about. “Are you kidding me!??” I cried. “In what UNIVERSE is it okay for you to perpetuate the status-quo and argue for your limitations??? In what UNIVERSE is mediocrity okay—especially when it’s your own life? Your own calling? Your own purpose??”
I did it in such a way that I never lost them, even though I was genuinely mad–and that’s because they knew I was mad on their behalf. I was embodying the Impulse, channeling it, daring them to wake up. I was all for them.
As I’m all for you.
For who you are meant to be–for yourself. And for your family.
For those you’re here to wake up and teach.
So, if you were in the room and you’d given me a grumble, I’d have been hopping mad at you, too.
If you’re hiding out in your 1-gig contract or home-office and not honoring what called you to do the work you do in the first place–and some how weren’t SERIOUSLY DISTURBED about that…
…I’d have been hopping mad at you, too.
If you were in the room, you’d have seen me settle down after a minute and then ask again.
With even greater volume and energy than I’d used the first time, I asked:
Is it okay for you to be where good-enough is good-enough??
Is it okay with you to settle into the middle of the curve and follow—when you’ve been called to LEAD??
How would you answer?
Read Part 2 now. Answer that question BIG and POWERFULLY once and for all–by taking a page out of Scarlett O’Hara’s book.
Cliff says: Thank you for the rant Lizabeth. You got my attention! Get the message out!
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Lizabeth Phelps says:
Amen, Cliff!! So glad the message was received!
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