Changing Direction

I’ll start with a question – “do you think that you are essentially the same person that you were 10/15/20 years ago?”.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly changed a lot in those time frames. 20 years ago I was just going into further education, and making decisions about what direction I wanted my life to go in. I was utterly convinced that the world revolved around “The Rocky Horror Show” and that I needed no other clothing than black bikers’ leathers.

15 years ago, I had left college and was working my first job. I was engaged to be married to my wonderful husband, and thought that as long as we had love, money and success would automatically follow. I was listening to a lot of Jethro Tull and wearing power suits. Oh dear.

10 years ago I was a new mother. Our finances were in a mess due to me stopping working, and we had nothing resembling a financial plan. I was overweight, depressed and in denial about money. I wore a lot of beige because it didn’t show the baby vomit and the only music I had on was “Teletubbies”. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I’m in a *much* better place now, with financial plans in order and a solid path mapped out to our financial goals. I still listen to Jethro Tull, and would attend “The Rocky Horror Show” if it came to our local theatre in a second. I rarely wear beige anymore, though.

My point is that we change a lot as time goes on. We have different life experiences, meet different people and it moulds us into different people. The financial plans and capabilities that we had when we were 20 are a lot different to those that we might have now, so it makes sense to occasionally stop and look at what we are *doing*. A lot of people do the same things now that they did when they were 20 years younger for no better reason than “that’s what I’ve always done”. What sort of things am I talking about? Working a job that delighted you 10 years ago, but bores you silly now. Banking with a low interest, high access account because of how you needed your money to work when you were a student. Having the same mobile phone tarriff that you had 5 years ago because you like the number… These are all classic examples of things that we do now because we’ve *always* done them.

I’m betting that you have a whole bunch of skills which you don’t use on a professional basis. Things which people may well be prepared to pay money for. You’ve not used them before because… those are skills that you don’t use. I’m asking you to think about your skillset and try to think whether you are doing things in a particular way because that’s the best use ofyour time and enthusiasm, or because that’s just the way that you’ve always done things. Don’t be afraid to make a change.

Sometimes making a change can result in unexpected insights as well. Whenever my children claim that they can’t choose between two things (sweets, library books, tv programs etc.) I’ll choose one for them. They’ll either shrug and say “OK!” or they’ll kick up a fuss, in which case I’ll know that it was really the second choice that they wanted, but didn’t realise. I’ve done the same myself recently with a band. I was tired, and my enthusiasm for the music had gone. I thought I wanted to pursue other avenues and just close this one. Turns out that other people in the band were feeling the same way too. So we brought our bookings to a close and played the last gig last Saturday.

It went so well that it forced us to talk to one another and examine our feelings. Turns out that it wasn’t really the band and music we were fed up with, it was the frequency and type of bookings that we were accepting. We’ve made tentative plans to alter the personnel lineup a little (our soundman was indispensable, it turns out!) and will not be accepting bookings from agents or smaller venues anymore. This will drop the frequency of our bookings, but that’s just fine – fewer gigs for more money. Everyone is happy, and we’re not dropping an income stream. All it needed was doing things differently, looking at the problem in a different way and we’ve solved a problem so that everyone involved is happy.

So make yourself a cup of tea, sit down and think about what you are doing. Is it making you happy? The odds are *really* good that if it isn’t making you happy then it isn’t maximising your income, either. That isn’t some kind of hippy mantra, just a statement that if you love doing something, then you’ll want to do it more, or better.  Or both,  and that way leads to success.