Experimenting with Purpose in Business
Experimenting for 90 days, then evaluating if the decision made is serving the business well.
I’ve begun to view everything I implement in my business as an experiment. Nothing has to stay permanently the same. I like to give it 90 days and then evaluate if the decision I made is serving me well. There’s freedom here in the experimenting. It’s a practice in being committed, but not attached.
I’m staring out my door at a rosemary plant we have dubbed Henry. And I feel like I’m watching him wither away day by day. I’ve tried watering him less, giving him more sunlight, giving him plant food, repotting him. Nothing I’ve done has worked and it seems that my attempts will be futile.
Caring for plants is like this. There’s not always a rhyme or a reason to the success or failure of a plant.
Everything is an Experiment.
Sometimes experiments have success. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they work this year then the same method fails next year. (And with that knowledge I deemed gardening to be an infuriating endeavor!)
Or it could simply be an endeavor that always has new lessons for me.
Gardening is the ultimate lesson in holding things loosely. When I forget the power of “committed, but not attached”, gardening is there to remind me. Hold things loosely. Experiment, but don’t cling.
It’s impossible to do everything in a garden in one season. It takes years to bring a vision to life and it will never be perfect. This plant may want a shady spot instead of the sunshiny spot where it was planted, the water system may need an update, the native plants I decided on may become a bane to my existence. It’s ever evolving. A constant experiment.
Gardening reminds me of business in this way, if I begin to hold the vision too tightly I get anxious and frustrated when things go wrong. When things don’t happen in the time that I want it to I feel like I could lose my mind with frustration.
And yet, if I can detach myself from the expectation I have then my sanity returns and I feel lighter in anticipation.
I’ve begun to view everything I implement in my business as an experiment. My website isn’t set in stone, the products I offer are ever evolving, the outsourcing I do is flexible. Nothing has to stay permanently the same. I like to give it 90 days and then evaluate if the decision I made is serving me well. There’s freedom here in the experimenting. It’s a practice in being committed, but not attached.
What would it feel like to view the decisions you make for your business as an experiment? Would it take the pressure off of the decision to be the perfect solution?