The Truth About My Business Journey.

THE WORK – Why some of us are not meant to succeed the way we think: a tale about the purpose of failing.

After multiple attempts of working as a designer at agencies in both England and Germany, and each time feeling like I was suffocating my soul, I surrendered to the idea that self-employment was the only viable way to go.

Not that this was new to me – at that point I had already taken over the family business – but the clear and unmistakeable clarity that I was faced with then still made me anxious.

No surprise, really, when you grew up surrounded by people who regularly questioned your parents’ choices about self-employment, and you have been faced with their strangling fear of losing-it-all each and every year of your childhood. With those memories at the forefront of my mind, employment did seem like the safer option, and at the same time the one that I simply could not will myself to embrace.

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Even though my soul was yearning for something deeper, I tried to follow the advice of former design school teachers and mentors, preaching that you have to serve anybody who knocks on your door when you start off, that you can’t be picky, that you have to work crazy hours, that you have to accept working for free, and that you simply have to clench your teeth and live through the hardship of being a junior designer. And then – if you’re lucky – after spending a bunch of years glued to your screen you might become a sought-after creator in the niche that excites you. Or, and that’s the more likely outcome, they said, you’ll just keep clenching your teeth for the majority of your working years and muddle through. Good luck.

So I set up my first freelance designer website, doing a bit of everything for everyone, hating most of it. I had some amazing projects, too – like designing an art book, which was incredibly rewarding – but most of the work I did I didn’t even dare to put on my portfolio because I couldn’t help but pray not to have to do anything like it ever again.

As I was watching my creative energy fade, I realised that I was yearning for something different. At the time, my spiritual journey had catapulted me into a whole new way of seeing the world and myself. I dropped my design work, and trained as a transformational coach. I loved what I learned, and seeing that I seemed to be pretty good at what I was doing, I contemplated trying again – creating that business of mine, that thing that I didn’t really know what it was going to be.

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In an attempt to bridge the gap between the fear I felt and the inevitability of finally building this “real” business, I stumbled into the labyrinth of courses on online entrepreneurship, business coaching programs, and the never-ending brainwashing of marketing gurus promising to sell me the one perfect strategy to get my business off the ground. I still feel that icky feeling, that panic, that unease when I think back to those days.

There I was, not allowing for a true-to-me vision to even come through, for I was so fixated on how to squeeze myself into a totally over-filled market. I didn’t even dare to think about what I was really longing for, because all I could see was that the business world was tough, that there was no space for what you want, only for what the market wants, and that I somehow had to mould myself into some kind of marketable, sellable product.

And again, I hated it.

But out of sheer desperation, I kept going. I tried to write those marketing texts that made me cringe. I tried to apply the formulae, the strategies. I took part in list-building-challenges, and the kind of quests that promise you success even when you start with zero followers on social media.

None of it worked.

I spent thousands on courses that taught me how to do business. I applied what I learned. But I kept staring into an empty void. Even once I had veered off the beaten path and went down alternative-but-still-mainstream, spirituality-based routes of business building, I couldn’t see any noteworthy-to-me results. Back then I felt cursed. Stupid. Useless. How could it be that I did what I was told works for everyone, and yet I didn’t seem to move forward at all?

Today I understand.

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It didn’t happen, because none of it was true to me. It was not my roadmap. None of it was my path.

The whole journey I went on was a road trip into what’s not me. It was a journey of exploration into a paradigm that I don’t belong to, a system I cannot be part of – because I am not meant to succeed within it.

I am meant to become the path towards something new. So many of us who struggle with the current capitalistic structures and patriarchal economic systems are.

We can’t succeed trying to build on the very foundations we are meant to revolutionise, adhering to the very system we are meant to shake off and reshape.

While most of the online business world is trying to direct us onto the slip road of the boss bitch highway, we’re meant to switch off the sat nav, put those boots on and forge a new path in the deep woods of possibility and potential. Our own path. One that respects both our soul’s intuitive hunches, as well as the environment we wander through and the other souls we encounter on the way.

And that path, for me at least, is not a fast one. It’s not about arriving at a glamorous destination that promises millions of dollars, followers, and fame. It’s about stopping at that birch tree to examine her bark, recognising her art and learning from her wisdom. It’s about laying down in the moss, staring at stars for hours, before moving on in the dark, facing the shadows of the night. It’s about watching the new dawn arise, tasting the morning dew on my lips and opening my arms wide to receive life, to receive my soul, to receive that which the universe has conspired to bring through me.

Today I understand that I had to fail. There was no other way. For had I succeeded, I would’ve wasted years doing work misaligned with my soul mission, not living my purpose, but someone else’s life.

Today I understand that failing was part of my purpose, because I had to feel who I am not to understand who I truly am.

Here’s to business journeys that take us into the enchanted forests of our souls, and that lead the way to something new, profound and beautiful.

With love,
Klara

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