How To Keep Moving And Creating What You Love When You Love Lots Of Things And You Don't Have a Neat, Narrow Niche

I just got back from a wonderful retreat in Phoenix, Arizona, with the very smart and warm Charlie Gilkey, the inspirational and deeply grounded Pam Slim, and a bunch of wonderful, funny, fun, open-hearted and smart creative entrepreneurs (Crystal, Willie, Lori, Rachael, Kyle, Cheryl, Marissa, Avien, Ivan, Karen, Desiree, Angela and Patricia… miss you guys already! Here’s a picture of us all.)

My main purpose for going to the retreat was to connect with like-minded people because, even with Twitter and Skype and all, online businesses can be pretty lonely – especially when the friends you do get to see and hug in the real world don’t have online businesses and don’t understand the challenges of being a solopreneur and working across the internet.

Another big area I wanted to explore and get some resolution on was the whole thing of my “long line” and my “essence” – the thing that, when people think about it, would make them think, “Ah, we should call on Cath for that…”

I’ve been pondering my long line for what seems like ages – at least since 1997 when I finished school all hopeful about the contribution I would make in the big wide world and then hit a wall of analysis-paralysis, confusion, creative block and ultimately depression. I so badly wanted to do something meaningful and positive in the world, I totally understood that I had vast potential and that it was up to me to make it happen, I believed that work should be purposeful and fulfilling, I wanted to give my all, and yet I just didn’t know how to direct all my creative energy and ended up getting stuck and running dry on ideas and action instead.

Sound anything like you, or am I the only intense, crazy fool here?

Huh, what’s a “long-line,” Cath?

Your long line is the overall big picture or the essence of what you want your life to be all about. When a musician reads music, the music is made up of individual notes and on some level they’re focusing on the individual notes, articulating each note as they play it. But great musicians, once they’ve learned a piece of music, no longer concentrate consciously on the individual notes anymore. They develop the ability to hold in mind the “long line” – the essence of what they’re wanting to communicate through that piece of music. By having formulated or decided their long line, they tend to play much more smoothly and to be much more creative and adaptive in the moment when they’re playing and they’re much better at communicating that essential message of the piece through their performance. (If you’re interested in pursuing this metaphor further, here’s a video, where world-renowned conductor, Benjamin Zander, explains this idea of the long line in life and music.)

It seems to me that being clear about your long line in your life and work can help you to be more present, adaptable, creative and agile, and more consistent and clear in communicating your essential message to the world. When you’re clear on your long line – your overall purpose and values, you don’t need to focus on goals. You can make your major life decisions by checking in, “Is this aligned with my long line?” and “How am I living my long line right now? How can I adjust what I’m doing and who I’m being so that it’s more aligned with my long line?”

I have a body of work that’s been growing inside me and over the past few months I’ve been feeling like a heavily pregnant woman who can’t give birth. I have a bunch of chunks of message that are clear to me but it’s not yet clear how they come together, what the essential message is, and what my long line is. I’ve been feeling like I need that long line in order to be able to birth this body of work. Know what I mean?

And now I’m wondering if the idea that thought that, “I need to have a long line before I can birth this body of work,” is just a sneaky form of resistance. Is it true that I need a long line before I can birth this body of work?

The problem with not having a long line

I’d love to just say, “Thinking I have to have a long line before I can birth this work is a limiting belief and it’s not true!” and bust through that belief and get on with birthing and creating. But here’s where all my “Yes, buts…” come up.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying personal development, thinking skills, creativity and productivity management and a lot of these resources talk about the ability to “chunk up” and “chunk down” being a crucial skill. Chunking up is about being able to connect the parts and see the big picture and chunking down is about being able to break the big picture down into all the little parts and small steps that need to happen.

I’m excellent at chunking down. Give me a vision and I’m a chunking down demon that’ll help you to figure out your next steps. People who are good at chunking down are usually also really good at focusing on the project, getting stuff done and making stuff happen. Focus and productivity is not a problem for them, and that’s totally me.

But the shadow side of being great at chunking down is that it leads to mouse vision – seeing just what’s in front of you, down there on the ground. And then you often miss out on the important perspectives of eagle vision – being able to see the big picture, the overall direction and the long line. So I’m pretty convinced that having the mental flexibility to flit between eagle and mouse vision is one of the keys to doing truly great work.

What’s more, I think there’s some truth to the idea of having a very clear, tight niche and a short, easy way of saying what you do. The world needs labels for easy communication and understanding, especially when it comes to marketing and leadership.

The real reason why we want a long line

So those are some of the rational reasons why we need a long line. But honestly, when I think about it now, I think the REAL reason why I want a long line and why people like to follow people who have a clear long line is because… we all like certainty.

It takes a lot of faith, courage and motivation to step out and lead confidently when you only know what your next few steps are, because there’s always the fear that you’ll invest loads into that next few steps and then find that it’s a dead-end or even worse that it leads to failure, pain and regret in some form. It’s easier to motivate yourself and fend off the “what-if-I-regret-this” demons and self doubts when you’re certain of your long-term plan.

And when we’re looking to leaders, most people want to follow Tour Guides who’ve pinned down all the details and call tell you for certain what you’re going to experience if you follow them, rather than Expedition Leaders who are inventing the path and learning with you along the way. Expeditions are a lot harder to sell than Tour Guide Packages.

Yeah, but what do you do if you just aren’t sure of your long line?

I definitely don’t have it all worked out, I often feel lost, alone and scared about my work, and there are still many days when I freak out inside when I see aspiring young entrepreneurs who are complaining about corporate life and excited about gaining their “freedom to live and work by their own rules” and I want to sit them down and tell them how hard it actually is to lead your life and work ALL THE TIME, carrying the responsibility of inventing your way forward, and how under-rated the structure, resources, clear boundaries, instructions and feedback mechanisms in corporates are when it comes to growing and shaping your ideas and projects.

I’m definitely still figuring this stuff out myself, but I think I’ve learned some stuff about directing your creative energy and doing purposeful work along the way and I think I’ve found ways to get out of the analysis-paralysis and get on with living and creating and contributing, even if you don’t have a clear, narrow niche or a simple, clear long-line. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1. Realize that other people can often see your essence and your unique value more easily than you can

One of the greatest things I got out of attending the Lift-off Workshop was hearing how each of us was struggling with seeing (and valuing) our own essence and the unique contribution we make, and yet everyone else could look at that person and so easily see their unique and valuable essence. I guess when you live with yourself you’re just too close to it all to see yourself clearly and honestly. Add in the fact that you see and experience your own fears and vulnerabilities everyday – stuff that other people don’t necessarily see, and its easy to see how your perspective of your own strengths and the value you add can get all cloudy.

It seems that we all wear superhero cloaks that are invisible to us, but totally obvious to everyone else. And as I think about it now, it seems that this is a really good thing – it helps to protect us from arrogance and it means that you need other people to be able to discover and reveal your superpowers – just another reason why honest, real intimacy with other people is such a sacred, powerful thing.

2. Often the thing that you are best at helping other people with is the place where you’re stuck in your own life

This is weird. As we went around the room, and people shared what they do and what they’d come to the retreat for, the basic pattern was, “I help other people with X, and I’m hoping to get help with X in my own business.” We were all stuck in the very place where we’re so great at un-sticking other people.

Because I had wanted to use the retreat to discover my long line and essence, I took the opportunity to ask the other participants – some of whom are current clients of mine, and many of whom are regular readers here at Mine Your Resources, what they get from me and how they see my unique, essential contribution. They unanimously agreed (in individual conversations) that it’s my ability to chip away at the clutter and crap and find the essential treasures for other people (mining the resources, huh?), as I do with the Bottom-line Bookclub and in my one-to-one coaching where I help people to get clear about their core values. And here I am, stuck with not being able to see my own essential treasures!

My Social Self jumps in here and says, “You must be a shit coach if you can’t help yourself with the stuff that you help other people with. You’re a hypocrit!” But I’m greatly encouraged to realize that this is a pretty universal pattern. And when I think about it now, it makes sense that when you’re really great at helping other people with a particular change process, often those change tools you use to help other people are so familiar to you that your own conscious mind knows the deal and gets in the way when you try to use those tools on yourself. It’s as if it’s saying, “Oh no, I know where this is going, and I’m going to resist this change.” Looking back, the coaches who’ve helped me the most are the ones that use very different and unfamiliar techniques to the ones I know, so I wasn’t able to anticipate where they were taking me and get in the way of the change.

It makes sense to me that this is another reason why honest and real connection with other people is such an important part of evolving yourself and discovering your great work. I think, despite all the resources we all have, we’re designed to need each other in order to heal and transform our core stuff.

3. Realize that your long line and life purpose is an evolving, living thing

A lot of people that talk about life purpose speak as though it’s something that’s pre-destined and nicely defined and it’s your job to go out and search the world and search yourself to find it. And then when you’ve found it, you can pour all your energy into it and that’s the secret to success and happiness. It’s a two-step process of finding what you love doing and then doing it. Simple process, but also pretty scary if you believe this because then you’ll always be wondering, “Is this it? Did I find it yet?”

I’ve never experienced this simple two-step process and I’ve yet to find someone else who has. It seems that our life purpose is something that we both decide and find, as if we’re co-creating it with the universe. And it seems that its not a once-off event. It’s an improvised process of making it up as you go, and then making it up again, and again, as opportunities around you change, as your relationships change and as you change. It’s a live, growing, evolving thing that is shaped by you but also has some life of its own and surprises you with unexpected twists and turns.

4. Your essential self delivers your truth in spontaneous, tangential, gradual ways

The left brain thinks rationally, logically and sequentially but the right brain thinks tangentially and metaphorically. While we would all love to know the plan for the next few years, laid out in a neat, step-by-step bundle, my experience is that the essential self often only reveals the next small step and its only as we take that next small step that the following next small step becomes obvious to us. It’s as if the road is revealed to us as we walk it. Following your essential self requires faith and courage to step up and lead even though you’re heading into un-chartered territory.

Having said that, I want to be clear that I don’t believe in sitting back and waiting for your purpose to be revealed to you. I think your purpose is revealed to you as you take action and step forward. It’s not a passive thing. Even when you’re given a message from your essential self, you still often have to actively “unpack” that message. Yesterday I was on a call with Jamie Smart and Michael Watson and Jamie said something like, “Your unconscious often delivers a message that’s like flat-pack furniture and you have to open it up and assemble it into a meaningful message that you can use… and it doesn’t come with assembly instructions!” You have a few pieces of the message and it’s your job to play around with it and try out different ways of putting it together and see what works.

This distinction that Jamie made really clicked for me. About 6 months ago I got a crystal clear sense that “Agile Living” is my thing. Saying and hearing those words made me feel excited, open, motivated and creative. I started using the words “Agile Living” on my website, without even being clear on what it means, and now I get regular emails from people saying, “I really resonate with your idea of Agile Living!” In the early days, I sometimes wanted to email back and say, “Fantastic! Would you do me a favor and tell me exactly what it means…”

There’s been a clear energy and momentum developing around the idea of Agile Living and I’m getting much clearer on what it’s all about… but I’m still unpacking it and assembling it. I have my “Agile Living e-course, where I’ve begun to do that, but that’s the first iteration and I’m still discovering the essential messages. So look out for an Agile Living Manifesto in the next few months!

Actually, I’m almost certain that this is a book. It feels like coming home when I think of my “Agile Living” book…. mmmmm.

5. Do something, even if you’re not sure whether it’s the right thing

I don’t think you can discover your purpose through paper exercises alone. God, I wish you could, and trust me, I’ve tried every life purpose exercise I’ve ever found. At the end of the day, they’re still just theoretical and you only ever know the truth of what you love and value when you step out and create and experience it for yourself. There are things you can learn from experience that you can’t learn by thinking about it. As you do something, you learn what you like and don’t like, you learn about your own personality strengths and faults, and you get real-life feedback about how well it fits you. As you take that next step forward, you get to see another step further into the future and it becomes obvious what other possibilities exist.

Over the years, in spite of not knowing what my “thing” is, I got on with it and channeled my energies into whatever work I was doing – trauma debriefing, training medical students in empathy skills, selling educational toys to teachers, teaching craft classes to junior school children, volunteering to help build houses with Habitat for Humanity in South Africa, freelance illustration work, painting murals, working in child protection, counseling burned out teachers and medical staff in South Africa, helping run my mother’s toy and craft shop, training and supervising Social Work students, counseling stressed out call centre agents, supervising and supporting a team of women managing a refuge for women and children who’ve escaped domestic abuse, counseling women who were in abusive relationships, training supervisors and managers of call centres in communication, leadership, teamwork and empathy, coaching people to figure out what’s important to them in life and shape their lives around that… and without ever aiming to end up here with this site and The Bottom-line Bookclub, this is where all of this being, doing, experiencing and learning brought me to.

Naturally, having such a broad range of experience, skills and interests makes it difficult for me to just pick a narrow niche! I’m really not sure what form my work will take within the next year even, but I’m learning to trust that by giving my whole self to what I’m doing and being right now and always moving forward and leading off of that, I’ll enjoy what I’m doing now and that future path will be revealed and it’ll take me to places I love.

6. Invite other people to co-create with you

I’ve always been a fairly independent, self-directed soul and I’m learning over and over how important real relationships with my tribe are to me. The old model of leadership is that the leader assesses the situation and designs the vision and communicates the vision to the tribe, and if it’s a worthy vision, the tribe follows. As you can see from this post, I’m really getting that this is not just me and “the universe” co-creating this vision. You’re all a part of it to. Sure, it’s easier to control and plan and manage if I create it all myself, but I’m pretty sure that’ll lead to a heart-less, one-dimensional creation.

I know this is a long post jammed full of stuff, but I’d love to hear your thoughts and responses, even if you take a few days to mull it over. When I get feedback, when you throw in your “Yes, and…” then the shot of energy, clarity and momentum I get is amazing.

I’m not totally sure what we’re creating or what roles we’ll all play, but will you come play and co-create it with me?
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Do You Love Lots of Things And Struggle To Step Up Because You Haven’t Found a Narrow Niche Yet?

You may well be a Juggler at heart! So check out the Bottom-line on Ian Sander’s inspiring book, “Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life,” for more about how to invent your own custom-designed life- and work-style that’s a mix of all the things, people and experiences you love, and how to avoid overwhelm and get stuff done when you’re juggling a bunch of different projects.

And if you love the sound of Juggling, and you’re an Agile Living fan, if you’re heading out to SXSW, then be sure to come along to Ian’s “How to Unplan Your Business Idea” panel at SXSW and learn how to get moving, improvise and create a business without getting bogged down in a detailed, over-analyzed business plan. Here’s a short video on unplanning your business, from Ian:

Video from Ian Sander’s SXSW videos