[Part 4] Setting the ground rules for Enuff

Best choice is a long-term proposition

Enuff is guided by the mantra “making the best choices the easiest choices.” After using the past three weeks to set up a new distinction for what makes something “easy,” it’s time to put in some legwork on what makes something the “best choice.”

I can’t stress enough that the way I have decided to distinguish “easy” and am now going to distinguish “best choice” is neither right nor wrong. It’s simply what I believe will create a welcoming invitation to buck the trend of creating massive gaps in what we often feel we should be, should have, and should do versus what we actually are, what we consume, and the actions we take.

For me, there is no more relevant example of this gap than my inability to take an honest, wholehearted plunge in starting a business. Here’s my barebones website.

Back in college, I witnessed a friend of mine cocreate a business that has since grown and evolved into Noonlight:

“What began as an app focused on helping people walk safely from point A to point B, is now a suite of emergency response APIs backing some of the smartest home, health, and lifestyle products in the IoT market.”

Watching all of this unfold from the sidelines, it looked like magic. At that time, I saw entrepreneurship through a very narrow lens. I thought to be an entrepreneur meant you had to create a tangible product that someone could touch and feel (even if it was a mobile application). And, not seeing myself as an inventor of any sort, I wrote it off as an impossible path.

I found myself stuck in an uncomfortable limbo. I strongly desired to be out on my own, generating income (or lack thereof) solely based on my successes (or failures). But, if I didn’t think entrepreneurship was in the cards, what other possibilities existed?

There were some small insights along the way like the various freelance opportunities in the gig economy, but nothing was all that exciting. Then, during the first day of my second job out of college, I was introduced to the world of consulting—where people could solely be paid based on their knowledge and expertise.

Although most consultants are more like freelancers than they are entrepreneurs, it sparked a realization for me that entrepreneurs can provide an intangible, service-based product to consumers. That aligned with the general path I wanted to travel (whether on my own or employed).

Fast forward to today, and I have a strong idea for a coaching business that began showing some signs of something (even saying “promise” would be a stretch) in 2019. I made a little over $2,000 and had proof that people would stick with me for multiple months to be coached through various challenges they were having in their careers and lives.

This year (2020), with about six weeks remaining, I have made $0. This isn't a failure. To fail, one must try 😅. I have put almost zero energy in furthering the minor moments of success from last year.

There are many really good reasons I could use to mask my inactivity this year—adjusting to life in a van, a ramped-up workload once the pandemic hit, a “rebuilding” as I pivoted my coaching target audience. But, the reality is I have failed to fill the gap between what I think I want to do and what I actually choose to do on a daily basis.

To fill such a gap demands a shift in context. And, if I believe building a coaching business is the best choice for me, then I need to figure out how I can also make it the easiest choice.

Continuing down this rabbit hole of self-reflection, I realized I had subconsciously moved “making more money” to the number one spot of why starting a coaching business was appealing—a priority I quickly abandoned when I made a career change in 2016.

Money, as much as I am attracted to what it can provide, simply doesn’t sing to me powerfully enough to be a primary motivator. So, if the “best choice” for me from a career standpoint is not distinguished by money, what is my distinction? And, how might that distinction be used as a compass in all aspects of my life?

Seventh Generation Thinking

The best choice today should be the best choice tomorrow, next week, and 100 years from now. Such is the simple frame of Seventh Generation Thinking:

“The Seventh Generation Principle is based on an ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)* philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.”

We can’t predict what will be available to us in the future nor do we know what we might think is safe today that will be determined harmful a century from now. But, through the study of the planet’s historical record and the ever-advancing research about human beings, we do know plenty enough to make far better choices than we currently make—as individuals and communities.

To adopt the Seventh Generation Principle as a core distinguishing feature of “best choice” is to begin looking at the choices before you through a long-term lens.

This is an incredibly difficult shift to make. So much of what we have designed in the colonial world is in favor of short-term satisfaction vs long-term sustainability. To go against that grain is to immediately show up in the world as “other.” It can feel isolating and lonely, and noticeably annoying if you start questioning to others the minutiae of everyday living.

But, hey, if you adopt this principle and I adopt this principle and everyone else who reads this adopts this principle and all of us acknowledge the many Indigenous communities who have been living with this principle at the center of their daily lives for millennia, we’ll realize we aren’t so alone after all.