Tomorrow night I expect to close a deal that will create me an income. I feel confident that it will be the first of a few deals that large. Not bad considering. Well, considering a few things actually.

Like this feels like my first ever real success,
Like its the only thing I have possibly ever done all by my self,
Like I’ve been an entrepreneur for so many years yet never had a break like this,
Using the words “I feel confident” hasn’t been that regular in my vocabulary for too long.

Almost five years ago I left corporate life. Since then I’ve trashed through a few small business ideas that were playing rather than real businesses whilst I worked out what I really wanted to do with my life.

I got divorced. I got qualified as a counsellor too.

But underlying this all, I realised that I did not believe in myself. I would put up new business web sites but not want to promote them because I didn’t want the exposure.. how self destructive is that!!

I had formed a learned behaviour that everything I did was a failure.

I would also find it hard to complete any project, I would get bored as I got nearer the end, looking for the next new thing, convincing myself (very well I might add!) that the next idea was going to be at least twice as definite to make me an income as the last.

This all starts a long time ago I am sure but there were signs of this learned behaviour in some troubled waters I thrashed through starting in the late 90’s.

I escaped from a distructive boss in a large corporate. He was arrogant and ignorant. I couldnt trust him any further than I could keep an eye on which cubical he was currently slivering into (note: my opinion of most of my bosses doesnt get much better from nowon). So ‘escaping’ is not a good way to describe a career development.

However I got into product management which was what I had wanted to do for a long time. Still with business Internet services so I was happy and excited.

Except I got into a team managing a some high profile services just at the time when they were going to drop through the floor.

All my ambitions to turn them around went up in dust and I ended up with nothing. However, since I wasn’t tarred with the same brush as the rest of the team, I survived as the blue eyed ’survivor’ .

I spent a number of years (and a couple of other bosses who weren’t half bad actually) trying to create some services based on the fact that my corporate had contracted with another corporate to purchase a lot of their software and so was committed to doing something with all that software instead of just dumping it in the stationary cupboard.

So my services were less about market needs and more about my corporate accountant’s needs. I sold nothing but was very busy still.
I got little achievement and fulfilment out of any of this. It was a bizarre time because the team I was part of felt quite desperate and felt that doom was only around the corner for us all at any time.

This part of my life I can not remember much about my children growing up. My mind was somewhere else. I was thinking about survival all the time. “What would happen if” scenarios were consuming me.

It’s a pity that no one told me, or if they did, I didn’t listen to the guy who told me that it all just doesn’t matter and that if you really believe in yourself, you know that you can walk out of this mess and find something far more useful to do.

The trouble was, I didn’t believe in myself. I was never that confident. I had done well to hide it by being brash whenever I needed to look confident.

I got a call from a head hunter and was offered more money to do what I wanted in a smaller company that was going places. Sounded like a good break. I could leave all this poo behind and go do what I really wanted to do somewhere else.

I was off. New boss, nice chap, knew what he was doing so I could learn from him. 3 months later he resigned and I had an idiot for a boss again. A right wally.

During this time I got a new partnership service to launch but on the day we launched it my company split itself into two meaning that I went one way and my lovely shiny new partnership service went the other and so was doomed. I had spent so much time on that and put my whole reputation into it.

I was back again fixing other people’s muck ups. The marketing guys had signed a deal for a lot of software that they weren’t authorised to do. they got sacked and it was my job to make a service out of it (I swear I didn’t put that on my cv).

I also had to work on creating a service from a deal the sales guy had put together telling the customer that we would make a service from it.

The sales guy didn’t get the sack however. I also was the one later on to sit in a room with two dodgy looking guys trying to tell them the deal was now off and that the head of marketing was way way too busy to meet to discuss it any further with them.

I left the company before it left me (which unfortunately was what happened to a few who didn’t leave in time) and jumped into safe shoes at a larger telco corporate again.

These guys actually had money coming in so I felt very happy… for six months. That was the time it took for me and my great little team to loose our really nice boss who I thought I could learn a lot from (yes, you’ve heard it all before two paragraphs up).

I ended up with a “cowboy” (to quote a great person I had the pleasure of being the manager in the previous job) of a manager who just wanted to do deals with the prettiest faces and leave us all in the office struggling to understand what our jobs were.

I never really understood my job after that. He gave me team members who openly confessed to their inability to do the job yet my cowboy boss was too busy managing his next promotion to take any notice of the issues he was ignoring.

A few years on this guy had been given the shove out the door himself and now promotes himself as a consultant.. as most who get the shove seem to do.

But enough about him, what about me? failure after failure. Im sure that if it wasn’t 5 minutes to 1am I might be able to paint a completely different picture of these last corporate years.

I met some great people. I had a lot of fun. Things were exciting sometimes. But I do regret missing my kids growing up in that time. I look a pictures and don’t remember anything about those times.

This is why, by this time, I was ripe for giving it all up and taking a chance on having a complete life change. All that I knew was grinding to a halt.

I didn’t feel I had the qualifications, the age or the understanding with what was being thrown at me to make a success of anything. And, oh yea, another sales guy sold something on the promise that we would make a product out of it. He didn’t get sacked, and I got the job of trying to make a service out of it again.

So failure sort of feels like it follows me around. Or rather, there is no success for me.

This is why, when I begun to take the time to really understand myself, I realised that I did have a habit, or rather a ‘learned behaviour’ of expecting failure and not expecting any success.

So back to the present. In the past few weeks I have been in discussions with a business about doing business with them. The initial excitement was incredible.

I had no idea my little business could achieve such an opportunity. Then over a few conversations it seem to become more and more real.

I got to a point where I had to accept that I had achieved this all by my self.

I had created this business. I had worked hard to design and develop the business and promote it and present it in a way that would make it attractive and functional for clients.

It was all my doing. It took a long time and I had to believe in what I was doing was going to make a difference to me some day if I kept at it. I kept saying to myself, never give up. Keep going, keep improving it. Stay passionate, and when you aren’t passionate, find the passion in it somewhere.

But most of all, believe in yourself. Believe that you are owed a break. Believe that you deserve to have success.

Believe that success will come your way one day.

This will change thing for me a lot. It will prove I can believe in myself. It will prove the success is a real possibility and that I can plan to succeed and not plan to fail all the time.

Do you plan to fail or succeed?

Filed under: Career Change, Depression, Self-Esteem & Anxiety, Personal Growth

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