When I began doing research to open my Etsy shop, I got a
lot of advice about what to sell, what to do and how to do it. But the best advice I ever got actually came
in a quote. Howard Thurman (a minister
known to have influenced Martin Luther King Jr) said. “Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do
that. Because what the world needs are
people who have come alive.” That quote
made me come alive. If I was going to
open an online shop, I probably should open one that excites me; that gives me
pleasure; that makes me come alive.
If you are going to do something creative whether it is
starting a business or a piece of art, do something that makes you come
alive. In business it is good to follow
the trends. Trends tend to show what
people are interested in buying. But you
can also have too much of one trend. If
you have one shop that specializes in tote bags because bags are the ‘in’
thing, that shop will make money. But if
you have 2 or 3 shops selling bags, the sales are going to be less for each
individual shop.
And what if some of those shop owners don’t really like
selling tote bags, they are just following the trend of tote bags. That shop
owner is not really going to be excited about his or her inventory. And
customers tend to sense that. The same
is true in anything we do. Are we doing
it because it is the ‘in’ thing or are we doing it because we can’t stop
thinking about whatever ‘it’ is?
It is OK to do trendy things but don’t keep doing it if it
isn’t giving you pleasure. What is the point in that? A couple of years ago I tried improvisational
quilting (in this case sewing random pieces of fabric together without realy
knowing what the end product will look like.
One style of improv is the traditional crazy quilt block.). Now I often
make things up as I create so I thought this would be the best class for
me. Oh was I wrong. I like to have an idea of what things will
look like in the end. And at least the way this improv quilting was
being taught didn’t do that.
So even though a lot of quilters in my guild were interested
in it and talked a lot about improv quilting, I didn’t stick with it. I didn’t even finish the project I started in
the class. It didn’t make me come
alive. It actually gave me a headache
(haha).
If you are going to spend your time doing something for
business or creatively, do something that has you smiling all the time. Do
something you can’t stop thinking about or keeps you up at night with ideas
swirling in your head (I say that only because I was up early this morning
writing ideas down for this blog.)
If you are doing what makes you come alive, you are then a
role model for others to do what makes them come alive. And then they in turn might influence others. And as
Rev. Thurman said “what the world needs are people who have come alive.” So start giving the world what it needs and
do something that makes you come alive.
©2019-Cheryl Fillion
No comments:
Post a Comment