Oh my days. What a morning. It is grey here in the Cotswolds and has been for days. Yesterday it was foggy all day. Today the fog isn’t as thick, but it is sort of almost drizzling. And to top it all off, a long way to the west, across The Pond, an old tangerine coloured light has been re-lit.

Where were you when you found out?

It was 8am this morning and I was online, in a co-writing space, looking to get a jump on a very busy Wednesday. Collectively we were all sagging under the news. There were many emotions. None of them helpful. It was good to connect, but we were beginning to drag one another down. And we had work to get on with. Eurgh. It was an effort.

And that is what has inspired me to write this.

As purpose-inspired solopreneurs, we have work to get on with. We are running our businesses to help people. A change in President ‘over there’ merely becomes a fact that we have to deal with; just another aspect of ‘the art of the possible’ that we all have to work with.

Most of my regularly engaged audience are British and female. I’m reasonably sure that all of them, regardless of gender or country of origin, are feminists.  There are plenty of reasons today to be glum about the potential shifts that are likely to affect us all. But none of us can influence that.

Using precious energy to change something we have no influence over isn’t very smart

Rather than eroding our capacity, what can we do instead?

We can connect with our purpose and use that to get clarity on our next set of actions. What do the people we help, need us to do? Probably they need us to look after our businesses, do our admin and deliver our services, just as we were doing up until we heard the news today. They also need us to look after ourselves, so we can do what we do, really well.

Also: it is in our gift to be the best version of ourselves as we go about our business.

In the face of our friends in America electing someone who has a differing motivations and life perspectives to us, what can we do?

By running our own businesses, there is much we can do and our best form of protest is to keep showing up and doing our brilliant thing to make a difference.