Discovering Fun

The happiness you find in your own life leads to happiness, balance, and success in your biz. It’s about following priorities, being your best self, being open to where your path may lead. Follow your path. Find your fun. Let your business shine.

Welcome to Bliss for Business! If you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, or career-driven individual, tune in on Wednesdays to join Dani on an adventure to learn how to bring your work life in harmony with the thirteen Bliss Habits.

Until very, very recently, I was something of a hermit. I had friends, sure, but getting myself to do anything social was like pulling teeth. Born of equal parts social anxiety (panic attacks tend to put a damper on social occasions), the fact that I pour so much of myself into my business, and the simple truth that I was happier at home alone with a book, this stasis field of sorts was how I existed for most of my adult life.

But over the last nine months, I’ve found myself discovering new things. Heading off on new adventures that I didn’t think I would enjoy at first, putting myself into new experiences that I didn’t think I had the coping mechanisms for. I’ve spent three weeks living in a tent, selling wine at a hippie festival. I traveled to Chicago on a whim to meet a favorite author. I went to Los Angeles, where I roomed with people I’d never met before and crammed myself into a hotel with 3,500 new friends. I’ve started writing fiction again, for the first time in too long, and released a lot of things that don’t serve me as well as they once did.

And every single one of these changes has made me a better business owner and a better strategist for my clients. I’m better at my job when I allow room for and embrace new things in my life. And so are you.

When you see the possibilities elsewhere, when you take those chances, when you shift your focus just a little? That in turn lets you see the options for growth and change and possibility in your business. The personal impacts the business. Always.

—

This is not to say that I was unhappy before – I wasn’t! But when things started to change, when I was presented with some amazing opportunities, I could have gone into them heads down, with a “this won’t work, I’m going to hate it” attitude…but I chose to think “maybe”. Maybe I can do this. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe it will be extraordinary. Sometimes it was, and sometimes it wasn’t – but the triumph came in the trying, in the potential, not in the actual outcome. It is, as they say, the journey – not the destination.

The happiness you find in your own life leads to happiness, balance, and success in your biz. It’s about following priorities, being your best self, being open to where your path may lead. Follow your path. Find your fun. Let your business shine.

—

Author’s note: this will be my last “Bliss for Business” column, as I shift into the next phase of my business (and this new world-traveling lifestyle!). I have enjoyed my time here immensely, and am incredibly grateful to Kathy for the opportunity. It’s been wonderful connecting with the Bliss Habits community. I continue to write about business strategy at my website, and for the weekly Wicked Wisdom and Inspiration group – I hope you’ll join me there!

—

Dani Nelson is a geek and a hippie with a passion for helping smart, creative entrepreneurs make their businesses better. Her secret ingredients? Strategy, tenacity, tasty beverages, and two unshakable beliefs: that you (yes, you) have awesome things to share with the world, and that marketing doesn’t have to be awful.