[ 11 Jan, 2023 (Wed) ]
Sorry if I haven’t been posting anything in recent days. I guess I just wasn’t in the sharing mood lately. When I decided last week that I wanted to start sharing my “Weekly Devotions” aka my personal spiritual reflections from the Bible, I alluded to the fact that I knew the possibility that I might struggle with it. By saying that I wasn’t 100% confident, I knew there was always a possibility that I’d struggle to be consistent with it.
But that’s not really what I want to talk about today though. But thinking about it also helped me to relate with the many other things that I am also struggling with.
My Recent Anxiety & Financial Woes
If you really want to know the truth, I have been dealing with some heightened anxiety lately, largely due to my failure to pay for my annual health insurance. I’m not sure how health insurances work in other parts of the world, but I assume the basic stuff are mostly the same anywhere. Here in Singapore, even though our medical system is considered the best in the world, but so is the cost of our medical costs (I mean, in terms of being the most expensive). That’s where the health insurances comes in. In Singapore, if you don’t have a proper health insurance coverage, the last thing you want to do is to end up in the hospital. There was this joke that my mum used to make, she would say things like, “You know what, it’s better to die a quick death, than to have a lengthy stay in the hospital; or to have long-term medical care.”
The reason for that saying is because without proper medical/health insurance, the medical costs/bills alone can bleed one dry pretty quickly. For me personally, this would be the first time in many years that I couldn’t pay for my insurance premiums. For the past 8 years, I’ve been paying around $510 per year for my health insurance. But this year, due to my current financial challenges, I’m about to default on my payment for the first time. My health insurance could (and most probably would) end today.
In the last two days, I began adding something to my personal prayer. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to pay for my health insurance, and that it would default in a few days, I knew I had to accept the possibilities that a miracle wasn’t going to happen in time. I mean…I was still trying to pray and ask God for a miracle, but I also understood that God doesn’t always do things according to our timings. But whatever the outcome would be, I had to trust that God knows what is best.
The other thing that also came into focus in the last few days, was the attention to my own health and fitness. I have for the past few years, lost the self-discipline and will to workout regularly, and to moderate my eating habits. I have, in the most genuine terms, let myself go. Even without weighing myself now, I kinda know that I’m mostly likely at my heaviest. My entire body is out of shape right now, and my fitness is not where it was a few years ago (or where it could potentially be).
While staying fit and eating well isn’t a 100% guarantee that one won’t fall sick, or end up with long-term medical needs. It does help to reduce certain risks that comes with a poor lifestyle and fitness. So, I’ve accepted that while I won’t be able to fully prevent those medical possibilities. I can do something about reducing those risks in the near future.
Besides, I know that as long as I can start earning some money through my consulting/training gigs this year, I will be able to set some money aside to start committing to an annual health insurance plan again. My prayer to God is that in the meantime, while I try to pick myself up again, that He will watch over my health and protect me from accidents and any other health risks. Yeap, I’m asking Him for His protection over me.
[ 12 Jan, 2023 (Thu) ]
Starting Over as a Consultant
You know what else is challenging right now? Yeah, I’m referring to my current efforts to start over as a consultant. Sure, I’ve had my successes and breakthroughs in the past, but Lord knows, I haven’t always been very consistent in my efforts. For me, over the past two decades, I’ve only been freelancing on a periodic basis. I would do it for a few months, maybe a year or two, and then I would stop for a while, and then I would try to get back into it later. This whole start-and-stop routine is what I was referring to when I said that I haven’t been very consistent.
Making It Permanent
As I attempt to share what I’m currently going through, I am also trying to find all the right words to describe how I am feeling about the whole experience. If I gotta be honest, this would be the first time I having these thoughts. Thoughts of making it permanently as a consultant. I have, for years, tried to make the comparison between my life as a freelance consultant versus my life while working for a company (and answering to someone else). And more often than not, my thinking and ability to anticipate potential pitfalls would far exceed the individual(s) that I’m answering to. Put simply, when it comes to problem solving and looking for a solution, I’m always 10 steps ahead of those around me. In that context, it does make it rather frustrating to work with people who do not value my feedbacks and suggestions. I cannot stand working with/for people who cannot admit that they don’t have all the answers.
The other clear distinction that I’ve managed to identify between my work as a freelancer versus when I’m under full-time employment is my performance. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I have a perfect success rate, because that would just be lying. But I can definitely say that I have a much higher success rate when I’m working as an independent consultant (with the occasional outsourcing of work to third-parties). One of the reasons why I would experience a much higher success rate working independently, is because I can proactively avoid a lot of the mistakes and pitfalls that I can anticipate ahead of time. The very same things that, if I were working for someone, they would not pay attention to, or listen to my suggestions. Like I said before, those individuals that I may be answering to would sometimes think they have all the answers.
Another reason why I have a much higher success rate working on my own is this – when I manage to [proactively] avoid those potential pitfalls/challenges, it helps me to reduce the time/costs involved in reacting to those pitfalls later in the project, and in doing so, it also helps to create more time later in the project to enhance it and make it better than what was already committed to the client. In doing so, it has been how I was able to add value to the client during the course of the project. In those instances where I would be successful on a project, it’s because I’m able to produce something that exceeds expectations.
This is Not Going to be Easy
Sure, there’s always going to be a part of me that hopes that things would work out more smoothly. I want to refrain from hoping for things to be easy because in reality, things aren’t always easy. I’m doing my best to stay grounded in reality, but still maintaining some level of positivity.
Trying to restart my efforts as an independent consultant won’t be as easy as I would like to hope it to be. That said, I know from my own past experiences that once I start securing the first few opportunities, it would start to make things smoother later. One thing that does make working independently easier is “momentum”.
Whenever I close my eyes and look back on my past experiences, I am reminded of what it would feel like once the momentum started kicking in. For me, right this very moment, I just need to get over the hurdle of securing my first consulting gig for 2023. For those of you that work in sales, you might be familiar with the statement, “breaking the egg”. It refers to being able to close your first sale/deal. So that’s what I’m going to focus on right now.
Focusing on What I Can Control
In closing, I do want to say that after spending the last few weeks struggling with my own anxiety, I think I’ve managed to find some level of control over my life. It’s a work in progress. So, instead of focusing on what I cannot control, I will turn my attention over to the things that I can.
And one of those things that I control is to continue being a content creator. As a content creator, I can publish content online that would “promote” topic discussions around my field of specialization. The obvious goal, is to gather attention from the target audience, in the hopes that as more people read and comment on my posts, it would entice potential clients into giving me the opportunity.
Even though technically, I won’t be starting from scratch as an independent consultant, I still have to do the necessary work to “break the egg”. I find motivation knowing that once I’ve managed to secure the first client, being successful at that the first few gigs will help to generate some level of interest, while also improving the odds of word-of-mouth recommendation. Looking back on my past freelancing experiences, one area where I’ve always been more successful at, is less self-promotion and more word-of-mouth. I’ve always disliked the whole “self-promotion” thingy. I feel almost uncomfortable when it comes to trying to tell people how good I can be as an independent consultant. I prefer it when it’s past clients telling potentially new clients the kind of value I bring to the project.
But hey, I’m going to do my best not to get ahead of myself here. Everybody’s gotta take their very first step before they can think about taking that next step.
I’m curious to find out from the WordPress community, are you also a consultant yourself? If yes, could you share with me in the comments section, what would you say was (or has been) the single biggest challenge for you? And what have you been doing to overcome that said challenge?
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