Accounting prowess: from fearful to curious

I finished a labyrinth!

I was sitting on the floor playing with my kiddos labyrinth notepad, one he had received at a bday party. I did one, and then another, and then another.

OMG. These are totally do-able.

It blew my mind.

I had grown up thinking these were impossible to solve.

I had to be very strategic to solve them.

It wasn't true.

I could see where I was starting and most importantly - I could see where I wanted to go. So, I just put my pen to paper and used some common sense and some inspiration and some foresight. When I hit a wall, I backtracked and navigated to another trail, with my objective still in plain sight.

Very similar to my coaching philosophy...

Here's where the universe has a funny way of working things.

A few days prior to that, my hubby and I had a bit of a wobbly moment on accounting. My hubby is super duper supportive of my coaching business. As we were talking shop, he asked me a couple questions on my finances. I shut down, I didn't have the answers.

Accounting terrifies me.

A dear manager of mine knows how hard she had to convince me to look at a Chart of Accounts. I was terrified.

That was the story I told myself about who I was.

So, as I'm sitting doing these labyrinths, the first thing that comes to mind was: if I can do a couple labyrinths, maybe I can wrap my head around basic 101 accounting. Maybe it's also not as impossible?

I have no idea where that link in thoughts came from, but I chose to embrace the idea I received, and got curious.

The next time I sat at my computer, I decided to update my L2 - Autopilot State about accounting. So I asked myself:

"What do I want to experience, why am I even looking at my accounts?"

I want to have visibility on my income, expenses, where are my biggest expenses, what is my expense rate per month, am I close to my budget, are there big expenses coming up? It would be really great for me to be able to see a monthly snapshot. I would love to know how and where I'm spending my money. I can pretty quickly see my income, but my expenses are a bit more nebulous, it would be nice to know. It will help me plan and optimize.

And suddenly, I was looking at it from a different vantage point. I'm not doing this for the taxman. I'm doing this for me, for my business. It went from feeling like an "ugggghhh" obligation to feeling like a sign of TLC to my business. And, as an added bonus, the taxman will also be happy.

Ah-ha, it was like the seas of confusion parted.

A friend mentioned she used Waveapps and highly recommended it. I checked it out, and went on a curiosity trail, looking at Xero and QuickBooks.

I played with all three.

Made a mess of my Charts of Accounts.

But started understanding how I can use the different categories to reflect what I had been doing. And it was kinda.. fun.. to see things starting to take shape.

I decided to go with Waveapps and am actually using it to help me stay organized and informed as opposed to being absolutely scared of it.

It was time to update that narrative, that belief, I held about myself - and I chose to listen to that soft "maybe I CAN do this" voice to update my story.

By understanding what was important to me about accounting, and keeping my objectives top of mind, my mind got curious, and helped me get to where I wanted to go.

Are there any areas of your work that feel daunting? Maybe they're not yours to do. But if there's something that is keeping your curious, then focusing on your intentions, objectives, and motivations for the task might help you find creative way to address what's on your plate.

9 coaching

We so quickly rush to action, what we "have" to do, what we're "supposed" to do. And when the action feels mucky and full of resistance, we just push through.

But maybe there's a softer, kinder, more enjoyable way to do things. Time after time.

By stepping back when you feel that resistance, instead of pushing through, and spending a moment with your intentions, objectives, and motivations, your mind might start looking at things completely differently. And start finding creative ways to get to that objective.

The action might even look the same from the outside, but your energy, your feelings, your outcomes might be completely different.

Bu updating your L2 - the Autopilot State to understand what you want to experience and taking aligned and right-sized action toward that objective, even if it seems like a mundane task at first, is how you will consistently navigate to that fulfillment, joy, energy, creativity, and performance - all aspects I associate with L1 - the Aligned State.