When Being Speechless Is A Blessing

3 days ago, I lost my voice.

That was hard enough, as I had a networking meeting and 1-minute sales presentation to do. I ended up sitting through the session as a passive observer, with the blessings of my mentor.

However, as I was to find out, in life, there is always a reason for the situation we're in, even an unpleasant one.

After the meeting, the team got together to hear out one of the members (let's call her Nelly), who needed a sounding board for her views.

Nelly was troubled over her lack of visible success and lack of sustainable income.

According to my mentor, Nelly's problem was one quite common among small business owners, especially if they had never been in business before.

They start out enthusiastically, thinking they have found the perfect escape from the rigours of the corporate world. However, once they run into obstacles, they give up before they've had a chance to make a breakthrough, and move on to the next venture, and the next, and find the cycle repeating itself.

Nelly was a perfect example. She had left her stressful corporate job to be a home-based masseur. However, she was making barely enough to scrape by, much less supplement the family income. So she ventured into an MLM business, distributing noni juice. But she found the income generated unsatisfactory also. Now she was wondering if she should join a friend who had invited her to market Diamond Energy Water.

Her spouse was losing patience with her lack of focus. He told her he was giving her 6 months to try out the new venture, and if she failed, she would have to return to the corporate world and get a "proper" job.

Her dilemma: Should she even try out the new venture? Was she even suited to the business world? Would she be better off just sticking with any old corporate job that came along?

I say it was just as well I had lost my voice that day. Otherwise, I would have lost the opportunity to really listen (which is very hard for me, because I get sidetracked easily). Everyone had something to say, but the most powerful contribution came from my mentor, who had just one question for Nelly.

"What do you really want for yourself?"

And one solution: "You have to focus."

She went on to dissect Nelly's dilemma. Nelly, she felt, is a visual person (in NLP lingo) who needs to see to believe. She has to learn to do the reverse: to believe that she will see (results, in this case). She also needs to focus on doing one thing well, whether it be massage or selling health products, instead of channelling her energies all over the place.

I felt as if my mentor were speaking to me.

On bad days, I ask myself what I'm doing, throwing away a legal career and trying to eke a living out of writing and career counselling.

Am I cut out for it?
What makes me think I'm good enough that people would want to pay me for my time?
What have I got to offer that others don't?
Am I doing too much?
What if my savings run out before I've established myself?

But I also know this:
If I do not risk everything now and try, I will never know if I could have succeeded or not.
And if I fail, so what? I can always move on to something else.
At worst, if my money runs out, I could go back to the law.

Or some job.

Any job.

Well, almost. :p