If You Don't Know How to Handle It
About 6 years ago now, my first Pure Barre studio was in the works. I had signed my franchise agreement, scheduled my move to COS, and was spending my days trying to graduate college and begin my future. If you’ve never read the story, feel free to scroll far back in the Business section of this blog to get the full scoop from 2014. If you told me back then that I would one day be closed because of a global pandemic, well, I wouldn’t have known how to handle that.
That’s a phrase I’m hearing a lot these days: we don’t know how to handle this.
We don’t have a grid for this.
This is uncharted territory.
And while all of that is true and justified, I can’t help but think about how I haven’t known how to handle most big challenges in my life. I certainly didn’t know how to run a business at 22 years old. Dating Ross for 8-ish years didn’t prepare us for the early hardships of marriage, and I don’t have the skillset to parent my child any more than the next person.
If you step back and take a breath, you’ll realize that all new seasons, both good and bad (and usually, every season is both) begin with a feeling of overwhelm.
The real issue is this: there are seasons we choose, and ones we don’t. When you choose a new season, such as entering into a relationship or beginning a job, you have a sense of control. I wanted this, you tell yourself, and you keep coming back to your “why” in times of uneasiness. But, when you’re thrust into a season that you never asked for, it’s a bit harder to find your footing.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about what my career will look like when the panic of this season begins to dissipate, and here’s the truth: I really don’t think it will be the same for a while. Habits and industries are shifting around, and the landscape isn’t going to look the same. I think that the boots-on-the-ground phase is actually going to begin when things start to shift and resume. And when I feel my anxiety rising over that, there’s a small voice in me that wants to scream I. don’t. know. how. to. handle. this.
I’m not going to wrap up this post by telling you that God never gives us more than we can handle. It’s untrue - that verse is misquoted too often because God allows us more than we can handle to encourage our reliance on Him. And while I know that to be good and necessary, I also think that there is something else that we need to take hold of, and it’s this - we feel like we can’t handle our businesses when we’re working too far ahead.
Some of the smartest entrepreneurs I know right now are pivoting and planning for a future we can’t see but are trying to decipher. And while I have tried to do the same, I’ve felt the most peace when I stop trying to forecast for months ahead and start focusing on the things I can do today, this week, this month to steward my business well. I never could have foreseen this season, just like I couldn’t have made up half of my biggest business challenges if you’d asked me back in 2014. The “stuff we can’t handle” that we all feel ill equipped to deal with is typically rooted in our fear of the future, not our inability to get through today.
I don’t know how to navigate what’s ahead, but I do know I can get through today. It might not be pretty or polished or look like the work I’m used to, but it’s keeping us rolling forward and setting us up for success the best way I know how. Instead of getting wrapped up in hypothetical scenarios, just steward the task on your plate . And you can do that - you’ve been doing it as long as you’ve been working on your business or your career. The lesson is in not letting the fear get to you, even if you can’t eliminate the thing that’s scaring you. And after all, that’s most of entrepreneurship, when we break it down.
Handle today. Do better next time. Keep moving forward.