Is ezineosphere even a word? It is now!

The common message from several business consultants, marketing experts, and coaches is…

Don’t do it yourself!

I’ve read a lot of posts and articles lately on the importance of getting help with some tasks so you’re free to shine you’re beautifully shiny shine in other tasks.

Makes sense. Except when it doesn’t.

I just spent a frustrating few hours – maybe three or four cumulative over the past twenty-four – wrangling with my autoresponder to send out my latest newsletter. It may be that there were updates to the system that I have to get used to. It may be that I haven’t sent out a newsletter since we were in the long hot siege of endless days over 100 degrees. But it was pretty d@*&!# hard to get everything right this time.

The last hurdle, or hassle, I had to overcome had me stumped so I had to call customer support. The guy reminded me I didn’t pay for a support package, but he helped me anyway (thanks, dude), because my problem was:

“I can’t send my newsletter!”

Turns out there’s something glitchy in the way the editor panel deals with HTML code when you paste it in. The hard line breaks disappear, and then the system warns you that your HTML lines are too long. It takes your breaks and then says YOU screwed up!

Did you just get confused by that last paragraph? Then I’m doing well making my point. You see, after these hassles, one suggestion would be for me to hire someone to take my words and format my e-mail and send it out. But if I did that, I wouldn’t understand why there was a problem or know how to prevent it in the future.

Other than my insatiable curiosity wondering how things work, I could probably be fine outsourcing my newsletter publication. Okay, probably not fine, but I think I could handle it. The thing is, I work with a lot of solo entrepreneurs and I have lots of colleagues who are solo entrepreneurs. I help people learn how to do basic marketing things so they can use the confidence that comes from new skills to stand up to their fear and uncertainty.

I coach and train around the theme of Trailblazing, for goodness sake! That’s about being adaptable and flexible, ready to take on new challenges so you can take charge in your own life. While it’s possible for people to get help (or hire it) for all the areas of their projects and businesses they don’t know how to do, it’s more empowering to learn some new things along the way.

So I like being in charge of formatting and publishing my newsletter. That means when I’m talking to someone who wants to start a newsletter, I can talk about what I do. It’s not that advanced and it doesn’t involving hiring someone, which most people at the start-up phase aren’t ready to do.

And if I keep things simple enough that I can manage them, then I’ll be teaching self-employed people skills that are simple enough that they can manage them, too.

I do wonder if it’s a justification. Am I being too controlling, or maybe too cheap?

Could be! But mainly I want to be able to tell someone, “I know you can do this. Let me show you how.”

What do you think about hiring help versus doing things yourself? Join the conversation by leaving your comments.

Ken’s been through this before. I can think of four blogs he has started in the past as he’s played around with ideas, but eventually most of the ideas made their way to Mildly Creative. So of course I know what I’m talking about when I comment on Ken’s blogging.

(dramatic pause preparing to face the hypocrisy…)

I did it, too – that “creating a new blog for a new topic” thing, for a long time. I had a blog on real-life applications of basic marketing concepts for newly self-employed people which will be incorporated in my Demystifying Marketing and Anything But Marketing! training products soon. I had a blog on the specific skills and concepts used in coaching – which should become an information product but isn’t on my specific schedule yet. I had a separate blog for my Travel Log posts before I consolidated them into Twisting Road. Plus…

Enough true confessions!

You get the point. Been there done that, again and again.

So as I was preaching to Ken – actually just to the computer screen as I thought about writing my response to him – I realized I was about to do it again myself! This week I was updating my SteveCoxsey.com web site and realized I haven’t done much with my Steve’s Not Nice blog in quite a while.

I originally created Steve’s Not Nice on Blogger as “My Evil Twin Blog” when I felt like my first blog was too full of optimism and positive regard and hope and stuff like that. (I almost wrote crap like that!) I started having a visceral reaction, kind of like mild nausea and food allergies at the same time, so I needed to give voice to the part of me that isn’t upbeat and cheerful (that’s actually a very big part).

But I haven’t been using it.

I looked at how long it had been since I posted there and scolded myself, thinking I should develop a plan to use it for things that interest me that don’t closely fit into the theme of my business – worklife design around your inner genius, your core Self.

But just a day or so later, when I was preaching to Ken-by-proxy I realized it was time to move Steve’s Not Nice to Twisting Road. Yes, my business is about worklife design, but the process is self-exploration, self-discovery, trying things out in the playlab, and finding what fits and what doesn’t. It’s a whole-person approach. It’s a holistic approach.

I’m pulling myself together.

The scope of Mildly Creative is Ken’s journey, not the title of the blog. The scope of Twisting Road is my journey, not just one of the categories of my business’s products and services.

Steve’s Not Nice will be migrating here.

I’m sure the people watching and listening in this video were entertained. Most probably understood how much preparation and practice it took to make this incorrectly named “flash mob” happen, and how much hard work was involved.

But what would you have thought?

Wow! That was amazing. I wish I could do something that well, but I just don’t have the talent.

~ or ~

Wow! That was amazing. I want to be part of something like that.

My hope is that you’re inspired to develop your own talents, collaborate with other talented people, and put it all together for your tribe to appreciate.

**Many thanks to my podcast co-host Francie Cooper for posting this on Twitter.

Some guy will say, “I can design and build my own instrument made of PVC pipe and I can masterfully play rock music, classical themes, and movie scores on it. How can I make money doing that?”

But after a little thought, I think I could come up with one or two ideas…

But the swings were calling!

You can listen to the podcast that started all this by clicking here.

Since I’m heading to the Joyfully Jobless Jamboree in Austin next week I decided to take on a project to help me get experience with the technology. I’ll be recording audio updates and hopefully talking with attendees and recording those conversations. I plan to take time to upload audio files while I’m there so the attendees can enjoy this added component and those of you who aren’t there can enjoy the celebration.

I will even take my video camera and see if I can record and upload some video to the “Twisting Road Traveler” YouTube channel.

Like I won’t already be busy with the Jamboree! What, am I nuts?

But when I watched the video, I didn’t just see the surface. I don’t know if the originators of the gimmick intended any deeper meaning, but I saw one. It probably came from me – from my own experiences, values, worldview, and way of being. I work with people to uncover their natural gifts and talents and develop them so they can live and work authentically. I help people free themselves from the boxes and cubicles other people try to stuff them in and overcome their own limiting beliefs. I help them reconnect with the core of who they are, their individual combination of abilities and perspectives and beliefs and values. I help them find their inner genius and set it free – thank you Barbara Sher for defining genius for all of us as what we were born to do and can do especially well.

So when I saw Jewel dressed as “Karen” in a business suit and a fake nose, I saw a symbol of people who force themselves to fit into corporate guidelines and corporate dress codes, uncomfortable with some aspect of who they are (the fake nose) because it doesn’t match other people’s standards for how they should be. She became the shy, self-doubting, repressed woman uncomfortable with her own inner genius – maybe even a little afraid of her own inner genius.

This really cool thing happens when the crowd senses Karen’s insecure vibe. They become a chorus of encouragement, chanting, “Ka-ren! Ka-ren!” as her friends try to get her onstage. They want her to try. They want her to succeed. They are on her side. That’s the way it is when people find out someone wants to stretch her wings but is a little unsure. Close friends and family might tend to dash her hopes – in her “best interest” – but people who don’t know her so well believe she can do it, and definitely believe she has the right to try.

When Jewel starts singing in her Karen costume, you see the magic. It looks like she reaches way down to her toenails when she sings. I believe she reaches way in when she sings, too, to her core self, where her innate gifts and well-developed talent and comfortable self-acceptance all reside in alignment. She’s not “performing” in a showy way, and she’s no longer holding back being Karen. She’s being Jewel.

It’s definitely hokey to say, “Inside every Karen there’s a Jewel waiting to shine.” That’s an oversimplified exaggeration. But I think inside every person there is a core self, with natural gifts and talents, that can shine when that person learns comfortable self-acceptance, lets go of the restraints, and starts developing and expressing the core.

Want to set your inner genius free?

Valerie Young of ChangingCourse.com is opening her Profiting From Your Passions Career Coach training program to new students. She brings in limited groups so she can give them the time and attention they need for a few months as they start learning the materials and settle in to the supportive community.

I like to brag about the supportive community because I regularly get ideas and resources and encouragement from them. Sometimes I’m part of the helpful crowd, whenever I have something helpful to say in response to other people’s questions.

Valerie asked me to record a video about my experience specifically as someone trained in the ICF model of professional coaching prior to taking her program. I was eager to explain how Valerie’s approach, her step-by-step system, and her creativity-sparking techniques are a powerful complement to broader coaching skills. But I wasn’t sure about making a video.

So I jumped right in! I recorded the video (it only took me 7 tries to get through it without bloopers) and created my own YouTube channel! I named it Twisting Road Travelers to encourage me to come up with more things related to the Twisting Road theme of uncovering your natural gifts and talents, cultivating them, and designing your life and work around them.

I am really excited I took this step. I don’t know what future videos I will add or what direction my ideas might go, but it’s a new way for me to talk to people about authentic living that flows from the core self. That’s what energizes me, so that’s what I need to be doing!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Lest you think I’ve gone a little histrionic here, or maybe a touch manic, proclaiming a book on the study of play to have the potential to transform my life, I share this quote:

When we stop playing, we stop developing, and when that happens, the laws of entropy take over – things fall apart. Ultimately, we share the fate of the sea squirt (*) and become vegetative, staying in one spot, not fully interacting with the world, more plan than animal. When we stop playing, we start dying.

The quote includes a reference to the sea squirt (*). Earlier in the book Dr. Brown has explained that the sea squirt, a simple life form, has a primitive brain in its youth and moves around showing play behavior. But as an adult it chooses a spot, attaches itself, and stays in one place. It does absolutely nothing but filter food from the water. No longer needing to “think” in any way, it digests its own brain.

It seems play is the engine of growth and development through the lifespan. When people settle into ruts and stop exploring and developing themselves, they become rigid in their thinking and their patterns, and they start losing their abilities. Cognitive psychologists have known for decades that new learning and novel problems stimulate the brain and keep people’s minds more adept as their bodies age. Those who only do the things they’ve learned in the past lose cognitive functioning (thinking, remembering, problem-solving) more quickly than those who learn new things and try solving different kinds of puzzles, including numbers, words, and shapes. Heed the sea squirt!

When we stop playing, we start dying.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey