the crooked path still takes you somewhere, originally uploaded by karen lee hall.

Several years ago, my wife (we had just married) had a very similar conversation with me. I tend to be a "great interview" when talking to clients and possible employers. Since I've interviewed thousands of people for jobs, I can easily make myself look like exactly what people want for the job -- based on reading their job description, listening to their questions, and just paying attention. This means that I very often get job offers and am hired.

The problem comes when I start the job (or take the contract) and people find out what I'm really like -- which may or may not really be what they wanted.

I'm getting better and better at actually letting them see what I'm like in the interview. I get less offers, but the ones that I do turn into long-term engagements.

Concerning Molly's observation about her path to date, I'd say I value her comments a lot. That is what I look for when I want to do business with someone. Value and what they say makes sense to me in the moment! A Ph.D. is not required here I believe. It is what someone has learned from life and what they make of it, how they communicate it, how they add value to it.

This is a wonderful article and for me, great timing as I'm in transition..do I go back to work full time in an office setting with a weekly paycheck...or do I continue to keep plugging at what I really want to do which is start my own business...or do I go back to school to finish a degree and prep for something completely different? Geez! Your article has shifted my thinking BIG time!! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!!

I resemble that, Dick!

It took me years to realize that I was compulsively seductive. Not so much in the sexual sense as in the compulsion to get people into my charismatic field.

What a process it has been to notice and gently undo that. And the funny thing is that I get at least as many positive strokes by dropping my guard and game as I did when I worked to get folks to like me.

The big payoff: It's a whole lot easier to live with myself AND a whole lot easier to relax with my clients and customers.

Molly, thanks for using our school as an example. When we started our horse school years ago we never had the goal of becoming a corporate-styled school with an auditorium full of nameless students. That's just not us. We like getting to know our students as individuals and having the flexibility to lean a class to what each particular student needs. How could I have not noticed that being able to do this is a big plus and definitely not a hindrance?

Yet, until I read your book, I hadn't grasped what a big deal that is to a certain kind of student. Just yesterday I had a conversation with a potential student from Florida and sure enough, what most appealed to him is the intimacy of our learning environment. Thank YOU for helping me see that!

Molly, I'd say you have a PhD in life.
I wish the word "maverick" hadn't lost its luster. You're so there. Staying outside the school system has given you the freedom to zig and zag and follow your own intuition about where your path's taking you. So two of the most obvious gifts I experience from you are 1. That you DIDN'T take the usual route, but instead went your own way and are having a general (and successful) hoot and 2. That staying free of the "school box" has kept you relatively untouched by academic stories about how to work with people, which leaves you deliciously free to be your own marvelous self, instead of "an expert."
What gifts to the folks you work with! And, as with the finest of gifts, you don't even have to DO anything--you offer these through the magnificence of your own being!

Drat -- Melissa beat me to it! I absolutely agree! A PhD in LIFE is a million times more useful to your clients/readers than one in business or some academic discipline! I know this because I work with PhDs all the time in my day job.

What I am most grateful for about your "crooked path" is that when I finally read Chapter One of The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur (I started in the middle and read in both directions), I was reading My Life! Ack! ;-)

But then I went on to become one of the severely over-educated. I "needed" to know Everything. Somehow I thought this would help me Always be Right.

It has taken 35 years and the firm support of women like yourself to have me see that Being Happy is far more important than Being Right.

Cheers
Nona, in New Zealand

I, too, have had a non traditional life. At times I get caught in the trappings of my mind and fear that having chosen the road less traveled will lead me to despair, but, in truth, my experieinces and deeper knowing are far richer than when I was traveling on the comfortable bus. I lived in Mexico for 8-9 years, traveled throughout- mostly alone- didnt know a word of Spanish when I went to live there, traveled to Guatemala, Thailand and Peru solo and learned VOLUMES. I learned how to overcome fear (as well as terror), how to speak when there were no words, listening and speaking through really seeing into another's life....and heart. I wouldnt trade my life for anyone's (not that I could)...and am immensely grateful for each opportunity.

I love it. May each and every one of us come to see that our lives have been the perfect training for NOW.