“I hate being told what to do! I’m a rebel against structure!” Over the years, many clients have told me versions of this. And I may be the worst person in the world to advise around this, because my six-planets-in-Virgo self takes a lot of comfort, sometimes too much comfort, from structure.
This came up lately with a client who noticed that a self-imposed deadline around marketing and content seemed to have a role in helping them shift their energy, and to step into action.
Another client, in my Content Creation course inside the Learning Community, described how enjoyable creating content was becoming now that they had a structure they could trust and lean into.
I’ve come to understand structure as a kind of medicine. Too much, or imposed without care by others, and it constricts, it makes us sick, disconnects us.
However, too little structure can leave us feeling abandoned, uncared-for, and lost.
With marketing, which your business absolutely needs, structure can be a wonderful support. It can help you get it done, it can help you know how to get it done, it can hold your hand and your heart in wonderful ways.
And yet, marketing is about relationships, not about turning dials. Relationships need breathing space, and flexibility. To be healthy, your marketing relationships, and your relationship to marketing, cannot thrive with rigid structure.
I’m inviting you to step out of the binary around structure, that you either like structure or you don’t like structure, because I don’t think there’s enough truth in that binary for it to support us in any meaningful way.
Rather, if ordinarily you are reactive to having structure, schedule, deadlines, I would invite you to notice where structure feels supportive.
I’ll offer some suggestions to start: your skeleton holds your body up. Your body, the structure of your mattress and pillow, gives you enough support to rest. The structure of language, grammar and vocabulary, supports us in connecting with each other in profound ways.
With marketing, you may choose a schedule, deadlines, for creating content. You may have a structure to help track relationships as you reach out to others to start to weave a referral network.
What ways could the medicine of structure feel supportive in your business?
If you cling to structure too tightly, find yourself too rigid, let’s play with where a flexibility, and the ability to change or decrease structure feels helpful.
Again, I’ll offer some suggestions to start: Choosing to take a nap rather than “push through” a project just because you wrote it on your calendar. Lingering a little longer in a conversation, not just focusing on business, but talking about other things you care about.
With marketing, choosing a topic for content because it’s really alive for you in the moment, rather than strictly sticking to a content schedule. Reaching out to someone that you have an intuitive hit about, even if it makes no sense, or they aren’t on your list of potential referral partners.
The invitation:
Take a few moments to muse on your relationship to structure. Do you rebel? Or do you cling to it?
What ways could you lean in a different direction? Meaning, can you change the dosing of your relationship to structure, so it can be helpfully medicinal, rather than constricting or too loose?
What’s one thing you can experiment with this week in shifting your relationship to structure?
Learning structures and templates and approaches around marketing, around business, can be so helpful, so that when you choose structure, it aligns not only with your heart, but also is in alignment with what your business needs.
with love,
Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.
p.s. Help for more advanced stages of business
Many of our courses and offers help people in the earlier stages of business development. When a business gets well past the basics, however, courses aren’t really what you might need.
– Maybe you’re thinking of hiring a team.
– Maybe it’s about breaking through a ceiling of income or capacity that seemed like a LOT before, but you’re clear isn’t anywhere near your potential.
– Maybe you’re wondering about legacy, about training others in what you do.
– Maybe you’re having a deeper spiritual shift, and don’t want to lose the stability and momentum you’ve created, but you have to follow your heart.
All of these situations, and others, point to having individual, hands-on mentoring, coaching and healing. Strategy is needed, but strategy can’t be the boss. Spiritual healing and guidance is needed, but you need to trust that the business is not being abandoned. The systems of oppression are impacting you and others, and those need to be seen and accounted for in your path forward.
That’s the work, finding the path through all of this.
I have one, maybe two, spaces for new individual clients. We can do a deep dive business assessment, or we can do ongoing work, or a VIP day.
Take a look here:
Fill out the form, let’s talk and see if I’m the right support for you.
