It's time for Show and Tell...
Starving Artists Find Food
Chapter 3
F.U.C.K Your Fears!
(Finally U Can Kick Your Fears)
F.U.C.K Your Fears!
(Finally U Can Kick Your Fears)
Entrepreneurs are not born. They are built. Molded. Shaped. They are people who either have or develop the ability to identify and solve problems. Talk to any successful entrepreneur and you’ll find out that they didn’t start a business for the money. They started a business because they do what they are—great givers.
The hip-hop and lifestyle mogul, Russell Simmons, says, “Good givers are great getters.” And he’s right. It’s a basic concept. Those who give understand that prosperity is a natural progression of learning and giving. In all religions, regardless of their dogmas, at least one rule is a universal fact: you get back what you give out—good or bad. You want money, love and peace? Give out money, love and peace, then see what happens. Being an entrepreneur applies the same principle.
To that end, starting a business can be a scary thing, especially if your motive is not in the right place. If you’re going to sell goods or products to make a lot of money, then you probably won’t make a dime—okay, you might make two dimes, but you will never make enough to be financially independent. But if you’re going to sell goods or products because you want to share your gift or talent with others without expectations, then you’ll probably be wealthier than you ever imagined.
Once your motive for being in business for yourself is in the right place, you have to start making a move. Making the decision to leave Corporate America and strike out on your own will cause fear to settle in and sometimes take over. She will become your homie. Your lover. Your best friend. She will convince you that the more it becomes real, the more you should stress about paying bills: rent or mortgage, utilities, child care, car payments and all your other living expenses and wants.
All of these factors scared the holy shit out of me when I made the decision to start freelance writing. I didn’t want to do it, but the pull it had on me was irresistible. I was looking for something different for my life, but failure, rejection, validation were all fears that wrapped themselves around me comfortably, like a cozy blanket. And those fears were valid. Your fears are valid. But once you identify them, you have to develop a plan to smash them and a goal to overcome them, then come out swinging. After all, fears are imaginations that you manifest in your mind and become comfortable with. Fear makes real life seem scarier than it is. Facing your fears—going toe-to-toe with your fears—can force you out of your comfort zone and into success.
You also have to use your fears as an opportunity to alter your perspective on obstacles and figure out how to challenge yourself to push past those fears. In a motivational speech I heard once by Zig Ziglar, he told a story about how mediocrity eases its way into your life, and before you know it, you’re complacent with being stuck in a life you abhor. He said, if a frog is dropped into boiling water, the scalding pain will force it to jump right out. If a frog is dropped into warm water, he’ll bask in it, content with the warmth. But if you slowly turn the heat up on the water to boiling, the frog will not sense the growing heat and be lured to his death by the gradual change.
What Ziglar means is, if you are not consistently challenging yourself to make better health choices, or workout or leverage your finances, you’ll become complacent and will not even realize you are losing everything one day at a time. Then one day, you will wake up sick, weak and broke and cannot remember how you got there!
If you want to learn how to step outside your comfort zone, you have to plan a strategy to tackle them one-by-one. Write them down on a piece of paper with two columns. On the left, list all your fears. Then on the right, write out how you plan to deal with those fears. Then force yourself daily to take on and take out at least one fear. (Or at least be consistent in working on them.) When you do this, tackling and overcoming these fears become just as real as the fear itself. You’ll quickly realize how doable it is to get past your fears and get on with becoming unstoppable!
After I made my list and grasped what I thought then was solid footing on freelance writing, I thought life would be a piece of cake. But then, new fears surfaced as I began to realize that this writing thing was more than just me engaging in something I love to do. This writing thing had somehow turned into a business. After contracting for several companies as a copywriter, I began to realize that it was more to being in business for yourself than just—being in business for yourself.
Initially I thought I could just write all day until my heart was content. But when invoices began piling up, clients became far and few between and disorganization took over, I wanted to quit. I was overwhelmed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking an accounting department was supposed to handle my invoices; a marketing department was supposed to be responsible for acquiring new clients for me and an office manager was supposed to…well, mange my office and all the clutter I’d accumulated. Boy was I wrong!
When my whole life, including my business, was going to hell, I realized, that all that responsibility fell solely on me. Suddenly, a quote I had read by Albert Einstein glared in my mind: “Genius is 1 percent talent and 99 percent hard work.” I soon discovered that it doesn’t matter how passionate you are with your talent or even how good you are. What determines whether or not you’ll succeed or fail is just that—your determination. What are you afraid of? success?
In the space I’ve provided at the end of this chapter, write down some of your fears about starting a business and be prepared to deal with them. Make your list! Determine how each one can be addressed, then start on your path with some executable plans and solutions.
Copyright ©2011 by delmetria millener
Reprint edition ©2016 by delmetria millener
The hip-hop and lifestyle mogul, Russell Simmons, says, “Good givers are great getters.” And he’s right. It’s a basic concept. Those who give understand that prosperity is a natural progression of learning and giving. In all religions, regardless of their dogmas, at least one rule is a universal fact: you get back what you give out—good or bad. You want money, love and peace? Give out money, love and peace, then see what happens. Being an entrepreneur applies the same principle.
To that end, starting a business can be a scary thing, especially if your motive is not in the right place. If you’re going to sell goods or products to make a lot of money, then you probably won’t make a dime—okay, you might make two dimes, but you will never make enough to be financially independent. But if you’re going to sell goods or products because you want to share your gift or talent with others without expectations, then you’ll probably be wealthier than you ever imagined.
Once your motive for being in business for yourself is in the right place, you have to start making a move. Making the decision to leave Corporate America and strike out on your own will cause fear to settle in and sometimes take over. She will become your homie. Your lover. Your best friend. She will convince you that the more it becomes real, the more you should stress about paying bills: rent or mortgage, utilities, child care, car payments and all your other living expenses and wants.
All of these factors scared the holy shit out of me when I made the decision to start freelance writing. I didn’t want to do it, but the pull it had on me was irresistible. I was looking for something different for my life, but failure, rejection, validation were all fears that wrapped themselves around me comfortably, like a cozy blanket. And those fears were valid. Your fears are valid. But once you identify them, you have to develop a plan to smash them and a goal to overcome them, then come out swinging. After all, fears are imaginations that you manifest in your mind and become comfortable with. Fear makes real life seem scarier than it is. Facing your fears—going toe-to-toe with your fears—can force you out of your comfort zone and into success.
You also have to use your fears as an opportunity to alter your perspective on obstacles and figure out how to challenge yourself to push past those fears. In a motivational speech I heard once by Zig Ziglar, he told a story about how mediocrity eases its way into your life, and before you know it, you’re complacent with being stuck in a life you abhor. He said, if a frog is dropped into boiling water, the scalding pain will force it to jump right out. If a frog is dropped into warm water, he’ll bask in it, content with the warmth. But if you slowly turn the heat up on the water to boiling, the frog will not sense the growing heat and be lured to his death by the gradual change.
What Ziglar means is, if you are not consistently challenging yourself to make better health choices, or workout or leverage your finances, you’ll become complacent and will not even realize you are losing everything one day at a time. Then one day, you will wake up sick, weak and broke and cannot remember how you got there!
If you want to learn how to step outside your comfort zone, you have to plan a strategy to tackle them one-by-one. Write them down on a piece of paper with two columns. On the left, list all your fears. Then on the right, write out how you plan to deal with those fears. Then force yourself daily to take on and take out at least one fear. (Or at least be consistent in working on them.) When you do this, tackling and overcoming these fears become just as real as the fear itself. You’ll quickly realize how doable it is to get past your fears and get on with becoming unstoppable!
After I made my list and grasped what I thought then was solid footing on freelance writing, I thought life would be a piece of cake. But then, new fears surfaced as I began to realize that this writing thing was more than just me engaging in something I love to do. This writing thing had somehow turned into a business. After contracting for several companies as a copywriter, I began to realize that it was more to being in business for yourself than just—being in business for yourself.
Initially I thought I could just write all day until my heart was content. But when invoices began piling up, clients became far and few between and disorganization took over, I wanted to quit. I was overwhelmed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking an accounting department was supposed to handle my invoices; a marketing department was supposed to be responsible for acquiring new clients for me and an office manager was supposed to…well, mange my office and all the clutter I’d accumulated. Boy was I wrong!
When my whole life, including my business, was going to hell, I realized, that all that responsibility fell solely on me. Suddenly, a quote I had read by Albert Einstein glared in my mind: “Genius is 1 percent talent and 99 percent hard work.” I soon discovered that it doesn’t matter how passionate you are with your talent or even how good you are. What determines whether or not you’ll succeed or fail is just that—your determination. What are you afraid of? success?
In the space I’ve provided at the end of this chapter, write down some of your fears about starting a business and be prepared to deal with them. Make your list! Determine how each one can be addressed, then start on your path with some executable plans and solutions.
Copyright ©2011 by delmetria millener
Reprint edition ©2016 by delmetria millener
How It Feels to Be Eccentric Me
A pastiche in the fashion of Zora Neale Hurston's essay, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"
But I am not tragically eccentric. I am who I've become. I've become a searching, semi-conscious, nap-frocentric, flip-flops in the winter wearing, doing-things-my-way, more of me to love, uniquely weird, black, vegan, Buddhist. As a continuum of my anthropology, I am a writing my ass off, conflicted-feminist intellect. They call me red. They call me thawriter. They call me…d. I am here to look, listen, learn then leave.
No, I do not weep at the world. I do me. And believe me, being me takes work. Sometimes it’s stressful, lonely and empty. But then the noise comes and I ask myself about those negatives, “Do I care?” Let me think…No.
Someone is always at my elbow reminding me just how eccentric I am. But what is it they think they see? Is it my innate curiosity to always want to learn new things? Or how I’m pitifully unpretentious? Or how I brag? Nope. Because I don’t. My life is a journey. And it has humbled me and given me peace beyond what I can even process. I sneak off to spend time with Jah. There’s a long streak of fire deep down in me. Like the incense I burn when I’m searching for Nirvana. I crave it. Long for it. Because I know it holds my peace. But in order to get to know me..a little..you need to get to know me. A little.
The position of my eccentricity is simple: Daily, I self-medicate with new words and new knowledge and new information. I love as hard as I work. I work as hard as I love. I'm passionate about people, the dynamics of family, animals, kids, education, the environment, music, women, relationships. . . maybe I should just say, I'm passionate about life. I'm a naturalist, purist, vegetarian, chemical-free environmentalist with a dry sense of humor, an infectious laugh and my heart is a dime store—I’ll give it to you free. Until you abuse it. I am earth. I am wind. I am fire. I am water. What you see, is what you'll always get.
I do not always feel eccentric. Especially when it comes to family. I love my kids. I love my dude, my co-pilot. I can't help that I cheat on them all with nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. I've neglected my children to mingle with participles, predicates and clauses. I've missed family celebrations to spend time with books, essays, research and investigation. I've starved myself on adjectivals and appositives, and binged on literature, poetry, mechanics, conventions, structure and all things grammar, reading and writing. My veins bleed ink onto the pages on which I write. My fingertips blister from the puzzle pieces called letters on laptop keyboards that I embroider into words. I WRITE for the very reason I breathe.
©April 2016 by delmetria millener
But I am not tragically eccentric. I am who I've become. I've become a searching, semi-conscious, nap-frocentric, flip-flops in the winter wearing, doing-things-my-way, more of me to love, uniquely weird, black, vegan, Buddhist. As a continuum of my anthropology, I am a writing my ass off, conflicted-feminist intellect. They call me red. They call me thawriter. They call me…d. I am here to look, listen, learn then leave.
No, I do not weep at the world. I do me. And believe me, being me takes work. Sometimes it’s stressful, lonely and empty. But then the noise comes and I ask myself about those negatives, “Do I care?” Let me think…No.
Someone is always at my elbow reminding me just how eccentric I am. But what is it they think they see? Is it my innate curiosity to always want to learn new things? Or how I’m pitifully unpretentious? Or how I brag? Nope. Because I don’t. My life is a journey. And it has humbled me and given me peace beyond what I can even process. I sneak off to spend time with Jah. There’s a long streak of fire deep down in me. Like the incense I burn when I’m searching for Nirvana. I crave it. Long for it. Because I know it holds my peace. But in order to get to know me..a little..you need to get to know me. A little.
The position of my eccentricity is simple: Daily, I self-medicate with new words and new knowledge and new information. I love as hard as I work. I work as hard as I love. I'm passionate about people, the dynamics of family, animals, kids, education, the environment, music, women, relationships. . . maybe I should just say, I'm passionate about life. I'm a naturalist, purist, vegetarian, chemical-free environmentalist with a dry sense of humor, an infectious laugh and my heart is a dime store—I’ll give it to you free. Until you abuse it. I am earth. I am wind. I am fire. I am water. What you see, is what you'll always get.
I do not always feel eccentric. Especially when it comes to family. I love my kids. I love my dude, my co-pilot. I can't help that I cheat on them all with nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. I've neglected my children to mingle with participles, predicates and clauses. I've missed family celebrations to spend time with books, essays, research and investigation. I've starved myself on adjectivals and appositives, and binged on literature, poetry, mechanics, conventions, structure and all things grammar, reading and writing. My veins bleed ink onto the pages on which I write. My fingertips blister from the puzzle pieces called letters on laptop keyboards that I embroider into words. I WRITE for the very reason I breathe.
©April 2016 by delmetria millener
Ephiphany: There's Always a Window
A vignette from my novel describing the changes I began to notice in my daughter as she blossomed into a woman.
It’s 7 a.m. and I could no longer sleep. I’m sitting by the window with a cup of tea—thinking. The sky is overcast because the morning can't yet let go of the night. The day—a Saturday—still, not yet quite stirred. Suddenly, I see my daughter emerge from our town home. She has a duffel bag, bulging with clothes. She doesn’t see me in the window; she never even looks back. Almost like safety, family, unity, peace, love, protection doesn’t matter or exist because we’re to her back. She doesn’t even flinch as she walks rather swiftly around the corner to the waiting car, looking left to right for...what? Finally, the white car speeds around the corner. As it passes by, I wonder if my daughter even looked up to see me in the window.
Watching her reminds me of when I was 18. Was my mother in the window with coffee or tea, watching me? Now that I’m thinking of it and doing it myself as a mother—I’m sure she was; because there’s always a window. She sat in it and watched me make mistakes that I didn’t think she knew about because I never looked back at the window. If I had, I’d have seen her watching, heart sinking, mind channeling me to stop and turn around and look up, just to know she’s there. Just so I’d know, in case I needed to talk or if I needed an ear—all that was there. In the window. All I had to do was turn around and look up at the window to see trust, comfort, a reflection of my own tears in my mother’s eyes, begging, pleading, telling me that whatever pain, confusion, turmoil, trouble or abuse that was escorting me around…I never had to go it alone because my mother was right there—in the window. Like me, now. Chelsey, turn around baby. Look up! I’m in the window. I see you. Did you know? There’s always a window.
©March 9, 2013 by delmetria millener
It’s 7 a.m. and I could no longer sleep. I’m sitting by the window with a cup of tea—thinking. The sky is overcast because the morning can't yet let go of the night. The day—a Saturday—still, not yet quite stirred. Suddenly, I see my daughter emerge from our town home. She has a duffel bag, bulging with clothes. She doesn’t see me in the window; she never even looks back. Almost like safety, family, unity, peace, love, protection doesn’t matter or exist because we’re to her back. She doesn’t even flinch as she walks rather swiftly around the corner to the waiting car, looking left to right for...what? Finally, the white car speeds around the corner. As it passes by, I wonder if my daughter even looked up to see me in the window.
Watching her reminds me of when I was 18. Was my mother in the window with coffee or tea, watching me? Now that I’m thinking of it and doing it myself as a mother—I’m sure she was; because there’s always a window. She sat in it and watched me make mistakes that I didn’t think she knew about because I never looked back at the window. If I had, I’d have seen her watching, heart sinking, mind channeling me to stop and turn around and look up, just to know she’s there. Just so I’d know, in case I needed to talk or if I needed an ear—all that was there. In the window. All I had to do was turn around and look up at the window to see trust, comfort, a reflection of my own tears in my mother’s eyes, begging, pleading, telling me that whatever pain, confusion, turmoil, trouble or abuse that was escorting me around…I never had to go it alone because my mother was right there—in the window. Like me, now. Chelsey, turn around baby. Look up! I’m in the window. I see you. Did you know? There’s always a window.
©March 9, 2013 by delmetria millener
A Mama's Memoir: The Day I Lost My Balance
A vignette from my novel describing the hospital room where my daughter lay after she was shot.
The air felt cold, impersonal—icky, sick. The bed, imposingly enormous, was the epicenter of pain, hope, fear and loss. It held her body and gradient pinkish, pink, crimson, then bloody red sheets. Blood was the main event. It leaked, smeared, stained, soaked and dripped all over the room: on the floor, on the wall, on the bed, on the still body in the bed.
Then there was that annoying sound. The long beeps, the short beeps—all from the TV-like monitors: small, square, oval—were now my reality TV—a syncopated melody of death. They pierced, the intercom alerted, the lights flashed. Code red. Code blue. White. They all sang in harmony. They echoed because there was no softness to soak up the sound. No rugs, no wall hangings, not even a picture of some savior that was supposed to conjure peace. Just so many wires. They snaked down the walls, across the floor, over and through the bed—across it, underneath it. So…many...wires.
The standard white, ceramic tiled floor was morgue-cold and painted red with smears of blood, dried snot and other body and medicinal fluids. The popcorn puffed walls were so rough they pinched and scraped. They were dingy from years of neglect, weakened from fists of anger and strained from despair. The sole chair was small, but sturdy, and its padded, blue cushion had stains on it from body fluids, snacks, tears.
©Winter 2015 by delmetria millener
The air felt cold, impersonal—icky, sick. The bed, imposingly enormous, was the epicenter of pain, hope, fear and loss. It held her body and gradient pinkish, pink, crimson, then bloody red sheets. Blood was the main event. It leaked, smeared, stained, soaked and dripped all over the room: on the floor, on the wall, on the bed, on the still body in the bed.
Then there was that annoying sound. The long beeps, the short beeps—all from the TV-like monitors: small, square, oval—were now my reality TV—a syncopated melody of death. They pierced, the intercom alerted, the lights flashed. Code red. Code blue. White. They all sang in harmony. They echoed because there was no softness to soak up the sound. No rugs, no wall hangings, not even a picture of some savior that was supposed to conjure peace. Just so many wires. They snaked down the walls, across the floor, over and through the bed—across it, underneath it. So…many...wires.
The standard white, ceramic tiled floor was morgue-cold and painted red with smears of blood, dried snot and other body and medicinal fluids. The popcorn puffed walls were so rough they pinched and scraped. They were dingy from years of neglect, weakened from fists of anger and strained from despair. The sole chair was small, but sturdy, and its padded, blue cushion had stains on it from body fluids, snacks, tears.
©Winter 2015 by delmetria millener