What to Do When Low Rates Hold You Back

“I think there’s something you should know. I think it’s time I stopped the show. There’s something deep inside of me. There’s someone I forgot to be.” - George Michael, Freedom! 90

In 1990, George Michael wrote a song about breaking free. It’s one of my favorite songs, and the lyrics reach me each time. They talk about a man who has had it, one who wants to get rid of everything he was to rediscover who he is.

At the same time, the lyrics ask forgiveness, hoping that listeners and fans will understand and stay true. I find that touchingly sad. George Michael had let himself become what everyone told him to be – and forgot who he was to begin with.

How many of us do that? How many of us listen to others tell us who we should be or how we should act? How many of us portray faces for the people who listen to us in the hopes that they’ll continue to accept and like us?

When You Fall and Can’t Get Up

I received an email recently from someone asking how to break free of the problems he’d created for himself. A new writer, he’d fallen into the trap of high production for low pay in a sweatshop-style scenario.

He asked, simply, how to stop the cycle. How to raise his rates. How to get out of the problems he’d created.

The answer was fairly easy: Just stop. Decide that enough is enough. Move on to better things. I shared some advice for starting down a new road and gave a few tips I thought would help.

The issue goes a little deeper than that. When you’re caught in a cycle that you try desperately to keep up with, making a break isn’t so easy. You feel like you’re just digging a deeper hole instead of climbing out.

When you accept to be less than you are and forget that you’re worth more, it can be very hard to get back up again.

Finding Yourself Again

To find yourself again, you have to do two things: look to the past to know who you’ve been and look to the future to know who you want to be.

The writer and I exchanged some emails, and I asked the person to share more details about who he was. What were his values? What business ethics did he have? “Impress me,” I said.

So he tried to. He wrote a little about his history, attempting to astound me with years in this position or experience in that job. But as he wrote, I noticed the words began to change.

They grew more heartfelt. They sounded like a person instead of a job application. They rang true. I could hear the thoughts roll around the writer’s head. Who was he? By the end of the email, I had the sense that the writer knew a little more about the person he’d forgotten he could be.

Why not do the same? Why not take a piece of paper and write down a list of the values that you stand for?

Go somewhere quiet where you can think by yourself, and write down who you are as a person. What defines you? What ethics do you have? Who are you – and who do you really want to be?

Calling a Timeout

George Michael wasn’t very happy in the late 80s. He felt confined and caught up in other people’s expectations. He knew he had to do something, and Freedom! 90 explained that clearly: “Today the way I play the game has got to change, oh yeah. Now I’m gonna get myself happy.”

So George cast off everything he was tired of. The Freedom 90! video showed the smashing of a guitar, the destruction of a jukebox, a wrecked leather jacket. These symbols of George Michael’s past were his chains.

He wanted to be himself – and be accepted for who he was. George Michael stood up and called a timeout on his life. He stopped the game. He examined where he was and adjusted the play.

The writer who responded to my questions had to stop and think. He had to call a timeout. Who was he? Where was he at now? What game adjustments did he need to make?

He didn’t ask me for a job. He didn’t ask for work. I’d blown the whistle on him and he had to think about his strategies. And he realized he was grateful that he could stop and remember his values so that he could redirect his life.

Some people would call the revelation the deciding moment, the instant where the person knows that everything has just changed.

That remains to be seen, though. Will the writer smash his guitar and break the jukebox? Will he set memorabilia on fire and watch the flames burn the past? Maybe. Maybe not. I hope so.

George Michael did. He looked back, acknowledged who he’d been and who he really was. He turned his whole life around. He took a conscious decision to set himself free and he broke the chains that held him back in a very public way.

The lyrics of Freedom 90! shared George’s heartfelt worries – and his faith that people understood there was more to him than people could see: “I just hope you understand that sometimes the clothes do not make the man.”

He was going to be who he was. He had to try. Would he make it? Even he didn’t know. He took his hopes, faith, and courage in hand and he provoked change. These lyrics explain it best: “There’s someone else I’ve got to be.”

What about you?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqAedBXP6ys[/youtube]

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