So, you want to go into business for yourself.  You want to be your own boss, call your own shots, and set your own schedule.  What kind of considerations should you take into account before going into business for yourself?  There are at least a hundred but here let’s focus on just three: making sure your inner house is in order, your business idea is sound, and your commitment is long-term.  Without any of these three your chances for success will be greatly diminished.

Spring Cleaning Your Inner House

Being in business for yourself may seem like a great idea because it offers many aspects that may be attractive to the high sensation seeking highly sensitive person like opportunity for new and novel experiences, a sense of personal control that allows you to potentially stay ahead of boredom, and a certain bucking the system of wage slavery and corporate malfeasance that you find compelling.  In order to have a reasonable shot at success we must first ensure that we have done the personal, inner work on ourselves that sets up the conditions we will need to be successful on a sustainable basis.

By inner work I mean we need to be aware of the factors in our lives that limit us like Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs).  ACEs occur in childhood and may deeply impact brain development in ways that cause us to overreact to ordinary stimuli, experience less connectivity in important parts of the brain regulating emotional control, and deal with the world on a perpetual fight or flight stance.  ACEs need not have been severe or long-lasting to have had a profound effect on us as highly sensitive people.  Highly sensitive people may have been significantly affected by domestic violence in the household, personal experiences of neglect, abuse, or trauma, or similar events in the school experience.  The more ACEs we have the worse our anxiety, depression, and fear may be at taking risks, feeling confident we can master new tasks, or tolerating ambiguity which abounds in small business.

To heal from ACEs, and other events that have scarred us in life, it is important to first acknowledge that they occurred and that we may have been powerless during those times.  It is also important to learn to practice self-care in a way that places emphasis on our needs.  Too often self-care is sacrificed to satisfy the harsh demands of a society that neither feels nor values those who do.  Learning and appreciating that we are whole people with particular needs that need to be met before we can perform at our best isn’t whining, it’s winning!  If you cannot or will not take care of yourself (mind, body, and spirit) you will crash and burn under the weight of starting and running a small business.  Get your inner house in order first before tackling the demanding world of small business.  By ensuring that you have sufficiently addressed your inner issues you decrease your own anxiety and stress thereby enabling you to be a more effective entrepreneur.

Tips for spring cleaning your inner house:

• Reconcile any issues you may have that may be contributing to limiting your ability to function well in the world. This may require a great deal of reading, research, even booking sessions with a good therapist but will pay off in the long run.
• Set personal boundaries and learn to stick to them. If you let people run all over you now, what will be different when you’re in business for yourself?  Know how and when you allow people to unreasonably cross boundaries and work on being more firm.  This means learning to say no and not feel guilty about it.  You’re a highly sensitive person, not a pincushion.
• Know your strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps you are fabulous on the telephone dealing with customers (and, yes, many highly sensitive people make awesome performers) but don’t do as well in face-to-face situations.  You can choose to either work on your face-to-face skills (and, yes, they can be learned by even the most reclusive hermit if the desire is there) or find ways to get around it (choosing a business with less face-to-face for instance or hiring people who are good in those situations).
• Know and appreciate that inner work is never finished. There are always bits and pieces that crop up from time to time and will remind us (sometimes unpleasantly) of past ACEs.  In these times it is important to acknowledge how far we’ve come, how capable we have been in dealing with obstacles, and how we are doing our best at any given moment.  Never give up on yourself even if you are down for the count at times.  Tomorrow is always a new day.
• Develop a self-care practice that you take as seriously as your spiritual life. Our bodies are very simply biological organisms capable of providing a finite amount of clear decision-making time on a daily basis.  We need to know how our bodies work, when our peak times are (and they may be completely off-cycle with the world), and work with that instead of against it.  Get enough sleep, eat a well-balanced diet, get enough exercise and sunshine, and keep your emotional well-being in tune by developing one or more practices that calm the mind and keep you in tune with your body.  We enjoy good health as we age because we work at it, not because it’s a right.

Sound business idea

One we have effectively addressed spring cleaning our inner houses we need a good business idea.  There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of business ideas.  Anywhere there is a human need there is a business idea waiting to be filled.  Even where a need does not exist currently but will there is a need waiting to be filled (though we may need to obviously do some education).  Of the hundreds of business ideas you will note that some come with more inherent control than others.  Purchasing a franchise for instance may be a low risk way to get into a proven business winner but you will also cede a great deal of control to the franchisor and will likely be required to work in the business a set number of days.  Not for you?  Perhaps you’d be better off inventing a new business or adapting an existing idea.  We do not need to reinvent the wheel just to be in business.

Some great businesses are simply variations on a theme.  I once worked for a printing company whose business strategy involved not going after the big clients.  Rather, they chose to go after all the “leftovers” the big printing companies didn’t want to deal with (not enough profit, difficult customer, etc.).  They are a perfectly successful and thriving business yet started as a franchise that grew too big to constrained by the franchisor rules.  They rebranded, relaunched and today do very well.

There’s much talk in HSP circles about “finding your bliss,” “working from the heart,” or other feel-good catchphrases but I’d like to throw cold water on most of that by informing you that business is tough and few people care that you love what you’re doing.  Your potential customers come to you because you can fill their need (or at least they perceive that you can).  If you also like/love what you happen to be doing for a business that’s a bonus.  Life doesn’t have to be perfect and you shouldn’t expect that being in business will be easy or necessarily pleasant all of the time.  It shouldn’t be defeating otherwise why not just work for someone else and forget the hassle?  Be realistic about self-employment and don’t let your intuition take you from A-Z without understanding there’s a whole world of complexity from B-Y.

What makes a sound business idea?   A sound idea is one you can quantify as holding potential.  That means you have data showing there are potential customers or you have experience working with these potential customers in a previous capacity.  Some ideas are time-tested and will always hold good potential, ie., the trades (car mechanic, HVAC repair, construction remodeling, cleaning, etc.), healthcare-related concepts (because people will always be sick at some point, perhaps you can prevent this in your idea), or require a service you can provide (notary public, pest control, home inspector, or home organizer).  The point here is you do not need a million-dollar idea because you don’t need to make a million dollars.  You just need to make enough for yourself and your family.  Perfectly viable ideas exist that you can build up into very good businesses that will allow you to escape from wage slavery, no control over your waking hours, and the madness that can be the modern workplace.

Your business idea should:

• Be doable given your financial means. Ideally you will start a business with no money borrowed from any source.  If that isn’t feasible you will have done your homework and have taken a well-calculated risk on your ability to pay back your loans.
• Be realistic given your skills, experience, and geographic area. You may have always been told that you can “do anything you want if you just try.”  I’m here to tell you that you won’t be becoming a lawyer without years and years of education and training beyond school.  If your dream doesn’t fit your skills, experience, and capabilities you don’t have a good idea.  Within that reality we must be realistic and admit that growth is an inevitable part of starting a business.  You may not know everything at this moment (even in the first few years) but you will learn.  You will make mistakes but you will learn and, in time, you will be a seasoned businessperson who has hopefully taken on a challenging idea (but not completely out of your realm of possibility).  The best business idea is one that works for you given your unique characteristics as a person.

Where you live may also play a crucial role in choosing a business idea.  Will your business cater to local people, will it be internet-based, or otherwise not bound by your location?  If it is a local business you will need to know your market, where the gaps are, and how you will fill them.  If your business is non-local you still have to know your potential customers because your marketing efforts will have to key into their needs and convince them that your business is worth a try.  Internet-based businesses suffer from many issues but one of the chief issues is the fierce amount of competition.  Think you have a great idea?  Check the internet and make sure there aren’t already a million others doing it better.

• Be something you do not absolutely hate. You may not love but if it works well enough you’ll find ways to either improve on it or find fulfillment outside of work.  No one ever said work is the end-all and be-all of life.  If it comes down to working in your own business as a way of not having to work somewhere else you find more unpleasant you have a winning situation.  Be realistic though, you do not need to love what you do.  It helps if you like it but love is optional and perhaps unrealistic in many areas of the world.  Acknowledging that this blog is read by HSPs all over the world I am sure many are shaking their heads in agreement.  Loving what you do is a luxury of countries with high qualities of life where people do not necessarily live hand to mouth.

Lastly, a good business idea is one with potential for growth.  Few things will end your business over time like stagnation.  If you’re cutting edge today you will not be in five years.  Entrepreneurs know that business concepts are constantly evolving to keep up with customer needs.  To do that you need to be in it for the long-term.

Long-Term Commitment

Depending on your age when you enter your new small business you may not think about the long-term but realistically business changes, customers go elsewhere, and you bore of treading the same pathway every day.  People quit businesses out of boredom and as much as desire to do something different as any other reason.  Some people will undoubtedly find being in business will alleviate many of the problems that brought them to entrepreneurship and be very grateful for what they have been able to achieve while others will need to move on to other things.  Regardless, once you have one business going it is relatively simple to set up another business and over time juggle several at once.  I am doing this very thing right now managing drtracycooper.com (a career consulting business for HSPs), a “real” job as a Program Chair for a Master of Liberal Arts degree at Baker University, and my newest venture ProHealth Advocates, llc which is a patient advocacy consulting business I will run the business side of but not otherwise work in.  I do expect to have to devote varying levels of time, effort, and energy to all three, plus continue to push for new angles and possibilities.  It’s likely I’ll start other businesses as well.  You should too.

You might think “this all sounds kind of rough and tumble for an HSP!”  Not at all, you have it wrong!  Highly sensitive people are emotional powerhouses who may use their emotional energy in creative ways to do whatever they like.  As an HSP you certainly have the qualities that would make a decent entrepreneur: more elaborate processing of stimulation in the brain, sensitivity to subtle cues, high empathy (possibly compassion too), high creativity (not just the art kind), and a keen sense of curiosity.  Put those to work for yourself and you can do quite well no matter where you are or what your situation.  You are an innovator, so go innovate!  Even if you don’t feel like you have a grasp on the above qualities you are likely deeply conscientious which can still take you far in many circles.  However, you choose to look at Sensory Processing Sensitivity what you really have is a marginally rare personality trait shared by over one billion people.  Don’t get too stuck on it and don’t let it define your life.

Long-term commitment to your new business/s means you are willing to:

• Face failure when it happens, laugh in its face and try again.
• Invest your life energies into something that matters to you and not be an observer.
• Work to overcome your fears and anxieties while also working to embrace your creative nature. Business is scary but so is wasting your life in a job you hate.  You only live once and for a finite amount of time; make the most of it.
• Tolerate some ambiguity to allow for a space in which your business can grow. As a creative person, you know ambiguity is necessary to facilitate room to grow.  Linear thinking will only take you to C from A and B.
• Develop friendships with other entrepreneurs HSP or otherwise. Nothing will sustain you more than knowing you’re not alone.

Beginnings

Starting a new business requires that we know ourselves, that we are not needlessly hauling harmful emotional baggage behind us, and that we develop sound business concepts that we can commit to for the long-term.  As creative, sensitive individuals HSPs and HSS/HSPs may be in a unique position to innovate, create, and occupy a position in the world that is unique to us.  Though your business need not be the next great idea it may be one in which you can thrive in the fullest possible sense of the word.  To thrive means you have found a balance and work hard to maintain it in all facets of your life.  Thriving implies engagement with challenging tasks and, as such, means you take on risk.  Minimizing that risk through careful research and planning coupled with a flexible, creative approach to concept evolution will keep you in balance no matter what happens in the world.

If you are astute and refuse to allow yourself to be defined by a label you will transcend yourself and become a new possible self; one that may potentially exceed your dreams.  Starting a business is a complex task, or series of tasks, but HSPs are used to complexity.  We live and breathe complexity in our daily lives as we process the whirlwind of stimulation that modern life surrounds us with.  It is through a desire to engage meaningfully with our capacities in a calm, rational way that we may find entrepreneurship offers us the greatest opportunities for growth and development.  To be an entrepreneur means we assume all the risks but we also enjoy all the rewards and if life has led you to self-employment you should endeavor to do it with all the creativity, energy, and enthusiasm you can muster.  You may just find that you’ve found your best path in life.

Tracy Cooper, PhD is the author of Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career, and Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person.  Dr. Cooper also offers consulting to HSPs and HSS/HSPs on career transition and many other issues.  His website is drtracycooper.com

What you know about high sensation seeking highly sensitive people is probably wrong.  Have you read that highly sensitive people are crybabies?  That we are closet introverts preferring to spend our time hidden away?  Do you think highly sensitive people are weak, fragile, or unpredictably emotional?  Moreover, do you think that high sensation seeking highly sensitive people are just about skydiving, bungee-jumping, and insane, extreme thrills?  Boy, do you have it wrong!

There may be a germ of truth in all of the above statements but there is much more to the traits known as Sensation Seeking and Sensory Processing Sensitivity.  There seems to be a very conscious effort on the part of many people to narrow our ability to branch out and challenge ourselves in the workplace.  How do they do this?  By misunderstanding (or not understanding as the case may be) the well-researched, peer-reviewed scientific information, well-researched books, and other materials that may inhabit the market at any given time.  Worse, some people then choose to pick a kernel of truth and latch onto it while extending it to incredible levels in their search for an identity that makes them feel special or unique.  It’s not enough to embody a marginally rare personality trait that is quite beautiful in its own way (Sensory Processing Sensitivity) we instead feel the need to tack on half a dozen other pseudo-traits or blow them out of proportion often moving beyond the realm of scientific knowledge into New Age platitudes (empaths, Indigo children, etc).

What does it matter that we stick to scientific accuracy regarding personality traits?  Because the really good information has been well-researched utilizing strict protocols where data are collected, analyzed, and interpreted according to a systematic method minimizing personal bias.  This method is further enhanced by the peer-review process which serves to weed out inaccurate information and ensure the work meets rigorous standards for accuracy and completeness.  When we stick to the actual constructs of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Sensation Seeking we see that these individuals may possess an extraordinary propensity for one of the most empowering endeavors available to us in the modern age: entrepreneurship.

It has been suggested many times that working for ourselves may be the best compromise that allows us to create our own working conditions, choose who we deal with (customers or clients), and self-create the types of meaningful lives we seem to require.  In my book, Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career I covered a broad range of possible vocations and careers, even covering what is now becoming a hot topic: the trades.  I minimized any emphasis on entrepreneurship for a very specific reason: I did not want to make working for ourselves a panacea to our workplace woes that may entail more risk and anxiety than many people are prepared to face or endure.  There is no doubt, entrepreneurship is hard!  Don’t like having too much to do at work?  Try entrepreneurship where everything is your responsibility, where failure will be all on you to interpret, and where uncertainty is a fact of life.  That being said, entrepreneurship may be one of the most interesting, most meaningful tracks a high sensation seeking highly sensitive person may hop on to.  Why is this so?  Because entrepreneurship offers us the opportunity to engage three main capacities: creativity, personal control, and resilience.

Creativity

Creativity has been done to death!  There are scores of articles, books, and websites purporting to teach us to how to become more creative, unleash our creativity, or otherwise unlock a “secret” capacity all humans innately possess.  Creativity is nothing more than looking at a problem in a new way and findings ways to solve that problem.  You are as creative as the next person; you just don’t know it or have had it squashed by your culture so you don’t think you are creative.  In a former life as a fine artist, I used to hear non-art people say quite often, “I can’t even draw a stick figure!”  I always replied, “Well, how could you be expected to draw anything if you have not practiced?”  Drawing, painting, wheel-throwing pots on a wheel are all skills that can be learned through instruction and plenty of practice.  Once you understand this, creativity becomes an open resource you can cultivate within yourself in service to your needs at any given time.

Creativity is also much more than the fine or performing arts.  Creativity is a way of being that is exemplified by an openness of mind, a sense of curiosity (what if I did this?), and a willingness to enter the ambiguity of seriously addressing a problem.  All humans are creative but many are not able or willing to be open-minded, are far too busy (or tired) to be curious, and hate ambiguity (uncertainty of outcomes).  This leaves those people who are able to cultivate a rich, inner life where openness, curiosity, and ambiguity may find a working space (our inner studios).  Who are these people and how does this apply to entrepreneurship?  As I stated, all humans are creative (capable of looking at and solving problems in new ways, in fact, we are very good at that as a species) but many have been conditioned to not be creative in service to efficiency, productivity, and the profit motive.  Those three items may be fine in and of themselves but too much focus on them and we get narrow-mindedness, tunnel vision, and groupthink where nothing that is original or interesting can happen.  I argue that many highly sensitive people and high sensation seeking highly sensitive people are innately creative to a degree those without the traits are not.  I say this not to be elitist but to emphasize the potential gifts we may offer to ourselves and to the world.  High sensation seeking highly sensitive people are unique individuals in that we must stay ahead of boredom, have a deep need for the new and novel experience, may be more willing to throw caution to the wind and do something outside the norm, and, yet, are served by the pause to think instinct that so exemplifies Sensory Processing Sensitivity, have rich, deep, inner lives, may be deeply empathic, and may be more comfortable working on our own stuff, our way.

Highly sensitive people, by contrast, may be somewhat less interested in throwing caution to the wind.  They may be as excited by the new and novel and may feel a need to keep ahead of boredom but may prefer an environment that exactly meets their needs for stimulation (which can vary a great deal at any given time from person to person).  These descriptions being rooted in the research literature there is also an underlying need inherent within these two traits: a need for personal control over our environments (interpersonal and physical).

Personal Control

There are some situations that are hard to bear for creative people; the worst being a repetitive, mundane environment that lacks adequate stimulation to engage our often significant capacities to create and develop.  As much as creativity is directed at the external world of things it is also an internal world that may be best managed when we are able to exercise a good degree of personal autonomy.  By autonomy I mean self-choice of activities we engage in.  For the high sensation seeking highly sensitive person having a sense of personal control over one’s life (or autonomy) may be key to well-functioning.  Entrepreneurship may allow us to exercise the level of autonomy we may need in our lives to manage our sensitivities while simultaneously allowing us to ensure we receive the level of stimulation that is most appropriate for us.  Cultivating a sense of personal control may be quite essential for many of us who have tried to fit ourselves into the working world and found it lacking on many levels.  Dissonance may lead us to consider self-employment, especially considering that we may gain the ultimate sense of personal control over our lives we wish we had (and that may be an absolute requirement for highly sensitive people and high sensation seeking highly sensitive people).

As with any new endeavor we must be ready for failure and the many personal slings and arrows we will inevitably torture ourselves with.  Beating ourselves up over a business failure may be all too tempting as we replay what we should have done in our minds but the opportunity that lies in defeat is to learn from it how to create and run our next business.  That’s right, you will probably not do so well at your first business: be prepared for it, do your best to make it work, and, most of all, do not put all of your eggs in one basket.  If you’re going to be an entrepreneur you will face failure, you will face negative results, and you will endure the marathon that is running a small business.  The upside is you will have ultimate personal control over every business decision you need to make and you will be able to build a business that has meaning to you.  To prepare for this, we need to discuss resilience.

Resilience

You may think of resilience as that old notion of “bouncing back” from adversity.  Kind of like a rubber band hurling you at a wall again and again but the real benefit of resilience is our ability to grow and learn from the experience.  After all, we do not wish to repeat a painful experience.  Resilience, then in the context of starting and operating a business means we have to be prepared for the “hell or high waters” that may come our way and, rest assured, running a business will, at some point, entail both scenarios.  Being resilient means we learn from difficult experiences, adapt our methods, and grow as a result.  Resilience for the entrepreneur is essential and cultivating resilience means we must be willing to ‘hit the wall” more than once.  Luckily, and the reason I am now stating boldly that high sensation seeking highly sensitive people may do very well as entrepreneurs, is we have the unique combination of daring-do combined with reflective thought that allows us to effectively learn from mistakes, grow from the experience, and become resilient in our small businesses.  How so you might ask?  Won’t the sensitive side of us crumble to pieces at the first whiff of failure?  Aren’t we too fragile to take a risk?  Again, many people have it mostly wrong!  Here’s why: high sensation seeking highly sensitive people spend their lives bouncing back from adversity and learning from experience as a matter of being alive!  We may be some of the most resilient people alive.  Certainly, a business failure or challenge may frustrate us but we’ve seen it all before and probably far worse at the broad range of employers we’ve worked for.

Resilience for many of us who are high sensation seeking highly sensitive people is built into us, it’s a capability we have cultivated and, many times, perfected long ago as we weathered the storms of personal doubt, career difficulties, and the sideways looks from those who are unable to see the world and its many possibilities through other than a societal lens.  It is probably not a stretch, given the data I have gathered through the past few years of interactions with high sensation seeking highly sensitive people, to say that many of us never fit the box that culture had prepared for us.  We never were interested in their game but may have felt compelled to play it out of duty, responsibility, or simply not being ready to jump out on our own.  Now, as entrepreneurs, we have a unique opportunity that many of us should take a serious look at because it offers us the chance to live the kind of lives we know will work for us.  We may have done quite well in the workplace even but ultimately felt a deep, soul-based need to move beyond a predictable path to something auto-poetic and meaningful.

We’ve been quite broad to this point with painting a wide swath of territory from establishing how high sensation seeking highly sensitive people may be well-suited to entrepreneurship; how creativity may be reVisioned to become something we may all develop within ourselves; how working for ourselves may finally give us the autonomy we so desire to finally discussing the tough, gritty reality of failure and the absolute need for resilience in the face of the many challenges that will undoubtedly come our way as people striking out on our own into often unknown and unpredictable waters.  Now, let’s be more specific:

• Do your research for any new business idea. This means you will probably not jump right into something immediately.  Rather, you will engage your ample capacities to learn everything there is to know about your proposed business field, especially noting where the gaps exist (these become your opportunities to provide a new service or product).
• Trust your intuition but not too much. Gut instincts may tell you something seems like a good idea but bear in mind if the facts don’t support it you are ignoring reality.  Intuition may be especially strong in those with Sensory Processing Sensitivity.  Thus, understanding and being aware that we are given to leaping over everything between A-Z (the starting and ending points we intuitively feel) may help ground us in the necessary details (curse those details!).
• Talk to other people about your proposed idea and be willing to hear a hard truth. Your friend who is very knowledgeable may be saving you from a business failure and potentially years of hard work.  In these instances, put your ego aside and go back to step one with researching your idea.  Adapt, modify, and change as needed: repeat.  This is where creativity comes in as you engage that capacity!
• Form an advisory committee of trusted people who are knowledgeable, trustworthy (in a personal sense to supply you unbiased opinions), and who are interested in actually helping you. Avoid yes-men/women.  Aim for three advisory members, no more than four.  Select members based on complementary expertise.
• Don’t rush into it! Minimize your risks, know what you don’t know, and be prepared for the long haul.  Remember resilience?  It’s not for the faint of heart.  Build your core business before you do anything else.  Without that core stream of income there is no expansion or growth.  That being said, be open to the clues that come your way regarding new opportunities and let those simmer on a side burner.  They will likely come in handy at the right time.
• Don’t put all of your eggs in to one basket! If possible, build the business on the side and retain your job until your business is viable.  If you are producing or selling a product this is especially true.  A service business will require much less of you in terms of overhead (use a home office).
• Don’t suffer alone. Talk to other business people.  Join the local chamber of commerce or other business organizations to build out your network and enjoy social support.  Your just highly sensitive, not a hermit.  You’re also likely a very good performer when you need to be, so do it!  In time, you will become more at ease in your social interactions in this new capacity as a business owner.  Networking will be a continual effort.
• Don’t let fear paralyze you. Anxiety is a natural state designed to alert us to the need to reconsider but when uncontrolled represents a limiting force.  Be willing to break through your own walls of fear.
• Similarly, don’t let analysis paralysis stymy your new business idea. Yes, you have a deep, reflective capacity but know when to make a choice and swallow that fear.  Entrepreneurship is definitely challenging but also rewarding in ways traditional employment can never be.  Minimize your risks but do take them.  No one gets out of life alive; all we have to lose is a bit of time attempting to do something we may be incredibly happy doing.  Is that worth the risk?

On a personal level starting a business can be hard on a family as structured routines may be interrupted and incomes less stable (at least for a while).  Similarly, your social life may take a beating as you devote yourself to building your business.  All that will subside in time and you will likely either find more time or adjust to a new reality.

Is there one type of business that high sensation seeking highly sensitive people would be best suited to?  No, that would be as endlessly variable as grains of sand because people differ so much in their interests and inclinations not to mention geographic area which may determine how viable a business idea is.  As mentioned at the beginning of this post we should refrain from pigeon-holing HSPs and HSS/HSPs as “most suited” to one career or another.  We are in all careers including self-employment but seem to statistically favor the helping professions.  The helping professions is quite a broad category including healthcare, education, and advising fields but creative and high-tech fields are high on the list as well.  Rather than attempting to fit yourself to what you think might be best for an HSP focus on crafting something that is workable for YOU!  Your business does not have to be the most meaningful activity in your life but it does need to be profitable, viable, and sustainable.

Some very good businesses can be created doing very simple things.  Today, I just observed an Amish man walking around our neighborhood offering his services to clean mildew and mold off of siding on houses.  I said right then, “Now there is an entrepreneur!”  That man has found a need (many houses with an obvious mildew issue) and had endeavored to fill the need.  Plus, he is willing to do the work necessary to make it a viable business.  You could very simply look at needs in your community and find a way to fill them.  Your business may not be glamorous but it may be profitable and free you from the sort of soul-sucking wage slavery and predatory corporate culture too common today.

As a high sensation seeking highly sensitive person, I know you.  You get bored easily and need to keep moving.  You are creative and like to think about things very deeply.  You are an odd mix of wanting to push forward with a “great” idea but simultaneously holding back to think it over.  You have a dash of devil-may-care about you and will do something out of character at times, just for the sake of doing it.  You are also an odd duck who needs to do things your own way in your own time, yet you may thrive on having a deadline or structure to force you to focus.  You have a tremendous ability to study “fascinations” until you are a virtual expert, then you move on to the next thing.  Your base of knowledge is deep and broad and it is likely you would make a great conversation partner if only people weren’t so irritating.  You LOVE the idea of having your own business, making your own choices, and taking calculated risks (you get a little tingle with some risk).  You also are excited by new situations and new people, yet you are drained energetically after a while and need to regroup in quiet.  You would make a fantastic creative partner in a business, yet you are quirky and possibly eccentric.  Working with you is to never quite know which person we are going to encounter: the quiet, studious hard worker or the impetuous one who wants to do something new and interesting like invent a new business model or toy with new ideas as if they were big puzzle pieces to be moved around and considered at length.

You, my friend, are a creator and you should be creating and thinking and pushing yourself to do and become more.  You will never be happy with 9-5 but you will with 11-2, 6-10, and 12-3 as you stay up at those late hours unable to sleep because you are a night owl.  You, fellow high sensation seeking highly sensitive person, are an interesting and unique individual and this world needs people like you to build the businesses of today and tomorrow, to bring new and innovative concepts to market, and chart the way forward for a humanity that lacks your vision and compassion.  Let’s get to it…

Over the next few weeks, I will be guiding you through some of the pitfalls of entrepreneurship always brutally honest because I want you to succeed.

Tracy Cooper, Ph.D. is the author of Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career and Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person.  Dr. Cooper provides consulting services to high sensation seeking highly sensitive people at his website drtracycooper.com.  Additionally, he appeared in the documentary movie Sensitive-The Untold Journey.

Of the eight “signs” HSPs would likely embody the big picture thinking, autonomous, daydreaming aspects very well while the HSS/HSP would embody the above three plus risk-taking, defiant, spontaneous, playful, and resilient to a greater degree because of sensation seeking’s four aspects:

Thrill and adventure seeking

Experience and novelty seeking

Disinhibition

Susceptibility for boredom

The United States prides itself on being a beacon of innovation.

Prometheus Books, 2016, 351 pages

But there has been a substantial dive in the nation’s creativity in the last few decades, according to research by educational psychologist KH Kim, author of the new book The Creativity Challenge. Kim has tested more than 270,000 people, from kindergartners to adults, looking at (among other things) their ability to come up with original ideas, think in a detailed and elaborative way, synthesize information, and be open-minded and curious—what she considers creativity. Her research has found that Americans’ creativity rose from 1966 to 1990, but began significantly declining after then.

And that’s a problem. “America has an increasingly limited number of individuals who are capable of finding and implementing solutions to problems the nation faces today,” she writes. “If this trend isn’t reversed soon, America will be unable to tackle the challenges of the future.”

According to Kim’s research, the cause of the creativity crisis is a “gradual, society-wide shift away from the values that were the foundation of the American Creativity.” In the 20th century, global immigration to America brought different perspectives that helped fuel the country’s creativity, she explains. In turn, the American educational system encouraged creativity with its emphasis on intellectual diversity, curiosity, risk taking, and non-conformity. However, economic realities caused a shift in these values: Starting in the 1980s, cultivating creativity didn’t seem like the path to a stable job, and schools shifted to focus on improving standardized test scores in order to get funding, Kim writes.

The Creativity Challenge addresses how to combat this disheartening trend. Her book is a challenge for all of us—particularly those in leadership positions—to create environments that encourage creativity and all of the benefits it brings.

Eight signs of a creative person

One way to foster creativity is for managers, educators, and parents to understand the kinds of behaviors and attitudes creative people exhibit, and to recognize and support them. In other words, we have to recognize what creativity looks like in the wild—in the people we manage, in our children and students, and even in ourselves. Kim’s book identifies more than twenty behaviors that are common among creative people, based on decades of research that she reviewed. Many of them, particularly the following, can sometimes be misinterpreted as rebelliousness and impracticality.

• Big-picture-thinking: Creative people think abstractly, looking past the concrete details of the current situation and seeking new solutions. However, with their optimism and curiosity, they are sometimes seen as dreamy and unrealistic.
• Spontaneous: Creative individuals tend to be flexible and act fast on new opportunities, approaching them with an open mind and a playful perspective—which can come off as impulsive.
• Playful: Creative people tend to be lighthearted and have a drive to explore the world. On the other hand, this can also be seen as mischievous.
• Resilient: Creative people can pick themselves up after a failure and bounce back from challenges, refocusing on new ways to overcome adversities. Sometimes, this comes across as combative.
• Autonomous: Creative people often strive for independence in their thoughts and actions, relying on intrinsic motivation to pursue their goals. At times, such individuals can seem out of control.
• Defiant: Creative people have a tendency to reject existing norms and authorities in pursuit of their own goals. This allows them to see what others cannot see and develop solutions that push boundaries, which can seem rebellious.
• Risk-taking: Fueled by their optimism, many creative people are willing to forgo security in favor of uncertain rewards. To the average person, this may come across as reckless.
• Daydreaming: By daydreaming, creative individuals are able to envision new perspectives and solutions—but along the way, some of their ideas might seem delusional.

How to support creatives

The most challenging aspect of recognizing creativity is that it takes place behind the scenes: You may see someone daydreaming at work and not know whether they’re procrastinating or laying the groundwork for a creative insight. The process of creativity is somewhat invisible, even though its results are powerful.

With that in mind, Kim offers some suggestions for supporting creativity:

• Offer creatives the resources they need. Innovators are like plants, Kim says; they are hungry for resources so that they can grow and develop. This includes offering them the time and freedom to explore informal activities that might inspire them, from continuing education at work to alternate assignments at school. If an employee wants to spend a work day visiting a new exhibit at a museum, you might let them—perhaps they’ve fallen into a rut and need something to spark their next project idea.
• Foster diversity. Environments that are multicultural and open to diverse languages, ethnicities, and sexualities make room for different perspectives that challenge our pre-existing thought patterns. Leaders should aim to avoid creating a community that is culturally homogenous and conformity-based.
• Encourage mentorship. Kim suggests that mentors are beneficial to individuals’ sense of creativity. “They eventually push mentees toward new opportunities to discover their own uniqueness by taking intellectual risks or defying the crowd,” she writes. Leaders can structure their organizations in a way that encourages more experienced workers or students to mentor others.

With these guidelines in mind, we can work to develop environments that are structured to foster creativity, which in turn will benefit organizations and help society confront today’s challenges with much-needed fresh ideas.

“Human beings have an unprecedented ability and potential to create, and many find that in the act of creating they fulfill their true purpose in life,” writes Kim.

Sensitive and in Love-the Documentary

Will and Diana Harper, the director and producer of Sensitive the Movie are making a new film about high sensitivity and relationships. They are currently looking for sensitive people to interview for the film who have been married (or in partnership) and the relationship didn’t work out due to a lack of understanding of the temperament between partners. They are also interested in interviewing people who are in relationship where the couple was able to work out the differences in temperament between partners.

Excerpt from Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career:

“Flow is a concept developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi to encapsulate the experience we have when we are engaged in a task or project that causes us to stretch our abilities, to be fully engaged and aware in the moment as we pursue a challenging goal. The experience of flow can take place while performing any task whether it is work, performing, parenting, sports, or any other activity that fits the criteria of causing us to become fully absorbed in the moment in pursuit of that worthwhile goal. When we are in such states we lose all sense of self-consciousness, lose track of time, and push ourselves to grow. This capacity was likely evolved as a survival mechanism long ago when those individuals who learned to push themselves toward challenging goals achieved a survival advantage over those who did not. In short flow and the desire to be in a state of full engagement of our capacities is inherent in our species. For HSPs, the need to be in a state of flow seems to be even more imperative due to a temperament that is innately creative, curious, exploratory, deeply conscientious, and complex.”

Have you been considering changing careers?  Now is a great time to begin seriously plotting your exit strategy.  With the winter solstice’s arrival, we begin the upswing (at least for those of us in the Northern hemisphere) toward longer daylight each day and, implicitly, greater personal energy.  One writer described the winter solstice as the return of Yang energy (Yin representing the counterbalancing energy that dwindles until the winter solstice).  With the return of Yang energy (or simply greater sunlight if you prefer) we have an amazing opportunity to ride along on the upswing.  What’s holding you back?

Many highly sensitive people may find ourselves feeling anxious about change.  Change and anxiety go hand in hand in many senses but anxiety that is paralyzing prevents us from making the changes we may already know we need to make to improve our lives.  Make no mistake, anxiety serves a purpose in alerting us to the need to consider or reflect on our proposed change before making a choice.  Reflection and deep consideration are hallmarks of sensory processing sensitivity.  Without deep processing of all stimulation, our trait would be of little value.  With deep processing comes an examination of the situation including how the change will affect us personally (how we experience change), how it will affect our families, and how the change will affect our careers.  Within each consideration, anxiety will exist regarding our desire for positive outcomes and an avoidance of negative results (which go hand in hand with change because change always involves some level of risk).

There is a certain security in knowing what to expect but routine that does not vary significantly may also be stifling or limiting in time.  For sure, we all have to earn money to pay for our daily living but within that we are also more than pawns in a never-ending game of exchange of monetary resources (money) for goods and services.  Our societies may be set up on a monetary basis but we know as highly sensitive people (a number of whom are likely gifted individuals) that life is more complex than simply maintaining a rote existence akin to being a machine.  We know that to be alive, curious, creative, and deep thinking and deep feeling means we ask questions that are fundamental to understanding whether we should take one course of action or another.  We know that being creative demands of us that we occasionally shed our skins and emerge from often long processes of ambiguity sporting new skins of iridescent hues.  Much as the butterfly must undergo a chrysalis stage to emerge as a spectacularly beautiful, fragile sailor of the atmosphere we must be willing to enter a chrysalis stage at times where life may be uncertain.  Anxiety about entering such stages is entirely normal because we prefer definite outcomes, in fact, in Western societies we have been conditioned to think in a linear fashion where A+B must equal C.  I challenge us to do and be more.

Highly sensitive people experience stimulation cognitively certainly but we also experience stimulation somatically with emotions serving as the conduit through which we become aware of the need to focus on what is in front of us.  Emotions are messy and unpleasant at times and they create a ton of useless anxiety that may be very difficult to manage but they do serve as an activating mechanism to begin the deep processing our trait is known for.  Once we begin to feel and think deeply we often find ourselves stuck in loops that are difficult to break.  Is it a wonder that we may at times fear change even when we know it may be the best course of action?  Who wants to intentionally feel and think in a chronic loop of overlapping thoughts and waves of complexity?  It can be daunting, not to mention paralyzing.  How can we break through this wall?

Often, we need to seek the counsel of others who have proven themselves to be trustworthy and knowledgeable.  Often, our own counsel is one voice in what should be a choir of voices informing our choices.  Putting together your own wisdom committee may be essential to working through the complexities in a huge life change.  Why would we consider that our own counsel is sufficient when we are so close to the situation?  Why would we think that others may not be able or willing to serve on our committees?  Many highly sensitive people may have experienced adverse childhood events (ACEs) that make trusting other difficult.  If you have experienced ACEs trust may never be easy to give but the reality is trusted others may be the key to fully understanding and appreciating whether and how we should move forward with a change we are considering.  Your wisdom committee may consist of several knowledgeable people who you know well (and who know you), but there may be others you need to recruit with specific knowledge of an industry or a given local area.  Why would anyone serve on your wisdom committee?  Because you will be willing to serve on theirs!  It’s a reciprocal situation of give and take.  You may feel less than enthused about asking others to serve but rest assured those who are willing to serve will feel no hesitation in helping you; those who hesitate will be of no value to you.

Highly sensitive people are typically highly intuitive and perceptive.  Many of us may be quite used to following our gut instincts but gut instincts may be quite wrong as well.  This is where your wisdom committee will allow you to objectively assess a situation and reflect on your “instincts.”  Facts and empirical experience have a way of informing a situation so we may base our decisions on more than gut instincts.  Intuition does play a valuable role in decision-making but we must temper it with realistic assessments that may run counter to what we are feeling.  One of the hazards of being a deep feeling person is we feel everything more deeply than may be warranted.  Having a wisdom committee that can reign in our instincts in service to a larger gain may be just what we need at times.  There are other considerations that may weigh heavily on choices we make: our families.

Few of us make decisions in a vacuum.  Most of us have spouses or significant others and children or extended family who may factor in a great deal in the decision-making process.  What becomes of our kid’s educations if we move to take a new position?  How will our partners adapt or adjust to being in a new area or do they even wish for us to make the change?  What if we have an extended family member we are a caregiver for?  What happens to them?  These questions are all valid and should go into the mix of aspects that we should consider and plan for.  No decision we make will occur without affecting the lives of those with us and around us.  Again, this is where your wisdom committee comes into play in offering objective views from a variety of viewpoints.  Cumulatively, once you have these viewpoints you have a richer tapestry of hard-won knowledge from competent professionals and trusted others to base your choices on.  What happens when we have input from our wisdom committee?

Once we know how others think and feel about our proposed change/s we must be willing to enter a chrysalis stage to allow for a period of reflection in which we weigh the many factors involved in any significant change.  Career may seem like the most important issue in life on some levels but beyond a point, career serves no function.  The sum total of who you are is more than the career choices you have made or will make.  Life consists of many layers of complexity that exist in a time and place.  Wait a year and circumstances may be entirely different.  Career, then, is one layer of complexity, albeit a thick layer that does demand our fullest focus and energies, in a larger mosaic of interrelated and interconnected webs of complexity and synergistic dynamisms.  Depending on the stage we may be at in our career may determine much regarding a change.  Early career people may benefit from (indeed need to make crucial changes) while mid-career people may be focused on finding a niche within an existing career that offers more variety, greater creative challenges, and pay.  Late career people may need to weigh and balance issues of health and/or desires to work on the most meaningful contributions.  Wherever we find ourselves in career stage (perhaps you have had no one particular career) we will need to do our due diligence in accurately assessing and evaluating the best information we are able to collect.  When we confront anxiety with this “case” we may find that it retreats to some extent and we begin to feel more confident and at peace (at least tentatively) with our decision to make a change.

As 2016 draws to a rapid close and the winter solstice offers the promise of new light and life we are afforded the opportunity to connect with the natural upswing of natural daylight in developing inside our chrysalis cocoons before bursting out ready to confidently take the steps necessary to effectively initiate positive change in our lives that is well-considered, well-timed and balanced between gut level instinct and rational thought processes.  Highly sensitive people may be quite creative people in forming and reforming our lives to meet our needs.  In that regard, we embody creativity in a deeper, more meaningful sense than is possible for a society that views creativity and creative people as impractical dreamers.  Dreamers we may be but dreamers of lives that are founded on more than the profit motive or superficial, trite notions of conforming to a preset, arbitrary, stifling “box” of beliefs, values, and norms that run counter to our best instincts for meaningful existence and creativity enacted.

Change is often anxiety-producing and we should move beyond bearing the weight of the world upon our shoulders alone.  In 2017 I challenge you to move beyond anxiety by forming your own wisdom committee to reduce your fears, enhance your choices for positive change, and develop confidence in your ability to control your life and contribute to the health and well-being of others through conscious, embodied action.

Dr. Tracy Cooper is the author of Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career and Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person.  Dr. Cooper consults on a one on one basis with people in career crisis and transition offering his unique vision and leadership in working through often difficult change processes.  He appeared in the documentary film Sensitive-The Untold Story with Dr. Elaine Aron and others articulating the current conceptualization of sensory processing sensitivity and the most significant aspects of the trait.

For a limited time, Dr. Cooper is offering a winter solstice discount of 20% on individual consulting and Thrive: The Highly Sensitive Person and Career and Thrill: The High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person, only at drtracycooper.com, as a way of extending his services and work to a wider audience.  Empower yourself in 2017 by investing in yourself in 2016!