I walk three miles every weekday.
This isn’t something I enjoy. It’s not something I do because I’m trying to get fit. It’s not even something I do voluntarily.
I do it because we found an amazing preschool for my three-year-old son 1.5 miles from where we live, the bus service sucks, and I don’t yet have a driving license in the UK. (Or a bank account, but let’s not go there.)
My husband asked if I’d be okay walking that distance every single day (uphill! downhill!) and I channeled every Indian mother in the history of the universe and said, “If I don’t make the sacrifice for my child’s education, what will I make the sacrifice for?” (Then I came home and had the shocking realization that I had become my parents. Oy.)
Anyway. So I never thought I’d walk two miles a day, let alone three (lying in bed and eating crisps is more my style so you marathon runners can stop looking at me like that), but I was put (shoved, more like) in a corner and all right, I now walk three miles a day. I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I don’t particularly mind it either. And I buy myself a 10p book from a used bookstore on the way back, which eases the pain a little. (Last month, I realized I’d spent a shocking £2 on books this way.)
Last year, after we took a massive gamble and left behind everything in India to move to the UK at considerable cost, we got hit terribly hard when two months into it, my husband lost his high-paying job (you know, the one that was paying our rent and humongous bills while I finished my novel).
There it was, another corner, another stressful situation and now there was a finished novel, but there was also debt and monthly rent and oh my God has anyone ever mentioned how expensive London is?
Corners. I’ve come to realize that anything that was ever worth building was built either in a corner or just after coming out of one.
Suddenly, there was no choice. My husband and I had to make rent. Returning to India or being homeless were both no longer options. This meant that I had to double what I was making as a freelancer and he had to find another job. Quickly. Like, immediately.
I did. He did.
Turns out, once you have the direction, the drive, and… this is important… the right tools and information, it’s not as hard as you might like to believe.
And this is the funny thing: In business, once you start hitting the high numbers, it’s damn near impossible to go back to low numbers again (unless you have a stroke of bad luck or make bad decisions, obviously). Your mind, your ego, your new-found knowledge simply won’t let you. When you’re used to making $3,000 a month, you’re going to aim to hit $5,000 next and $1,000 will seem like a failure, even if that is what you were making six months ago.
That corner? It’s the best thing to ever happen to you. Because it forces you to grow, it forces you to make decisions quickly and then it forces you to make immediate changes if things aren’t working.
Maybe you were pushed in a corner recently. Maybe you’re in a corner right now. You might stay there a while. The only way out is to grow.
How are you going to grow your writing business today?
How are you going to grow yourself?