Doing the Work You Love: Fear is your Friend.

Tip of the week

Doing the Work You Love: Fear is your Friend

By Talane Miedaner

Many people don't do what they love to do because they are afraid. And often those fears center around money. As Nick Williams says, "Money is essential to life, but is not the purpose of life, but our money fears are usually the reason that we don't do what we want to do with our working lives." On the other hand, I think of fear as our friend. Fear is designed to prevent us from taking life-threatening or dangerous actions, like jumping off the side of a cliff for example. Fear is a good thing. We need fear; it is there to protect us.

With that in mind, when I'm working with my clients and they say they are afraid to pursue something new or different, I always ask why. Is it because they are afraid they won't make enough money to support their family? Is it because they don't know if they'll be good at this new thing and successful at it? These are two very legitimate fears worth addressing.

The first fear can be alleviated by having two year's savings in place. When I wanted to quit my bank job at Chase and go into coaching, my own coach said I needed to stick it out until I had two year's of living expenses in place. It felt to me like an eternity, but now I'm glad I had those savings because it enabled me to start my coaching business with no money stress or worries and gave me time to write my book while keeping up my Manhattan rent. Since most businesses fail in the first two years because of lack of capital it makes sense to have this buffer in place before you quit your day job. In the meantime, I took coach training courses, worked with clients at a rookie rate for practice, got my lifecoach.com website up, ordered business cards, etc.

All this takes time and isn't generating money--yet another reason to keep the day job as long as you can. And, if, like so many, you have been laid off or downsized, even then, go ahead and get a job that pays the bills while you build your dream career in your spare time. This handles the fear of how to survive and gives you time to get the training you need.