Category: Balance

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Balance

3 things to give up to take control of your life and work as an entrepreneur

Just keep juggling. Right?

Do you ever feel like you’re juggling a dozen different tasks and responsibilities, desperately trying to find that elusive work-life balance? As an entrepreneur, achieving equilibrium between your personal and professional life can seem like an impossible feat. But here’s the truth – it’s not about achieving balance; it’s about finding harmony in the chaos. In this article, I’ll address three key things you need to give up to regain control over your life and work as an entrepreneur.

1. Embrace the Unbalanced Life:

The first thing to give up is the idea of finding a perfect work-life balance. The reality is, there is no “balance” in the conventional sense when you’re navigating the demanding world of entrepreneurship. Embrace the fact that you’ll often be off balance, and that’s okay. Life as an entrepreneur is inherently unbalanced because your work is your life and vice versa. The key is to find a rhythm that works for you. And change your rhythm when the music changes!

2. Prioritize and Delegate:

The second thing to give up is the belief that you can do it all. Trying to do everything yourself will lead to burnout and frustration. To live a longer, more peaceful life, you must learn to prioritize your tasks and delegate when necessary. This doesn’t mean giving up control; it means strategically allocating your time and resources to the most critical aspects of your work and life.

3. Put Yourself First:

Lastly, it’s time to give up the habit of putting yourself last. Neglecting your own well-being is a recipe for disaster. If you’re running on empty, you won’t find success in your personal or professional life. Remember, you’re not being selfish by taking care of yourself; you’re ensuring that you have the energy and resilience to tackle your entrepreneurial challenges effectively.

Join me on Monday, November 6th, at noon Eastern for a deeper dive into these topics during our Wisdom Warriors session. We’ll discuss strategies to tackle these issues head-on and create a more fulfilling and harmonious life as an entrepreneur.

Bonus!

In the meantime, let’s GET STARTED & talk about task prioritization. As “Productivity Guru”, I often find that keeping things simple works best. During a recent session with my “Discover Your Greatness” cohort, we explored different techniques for prioritizing tasks using the Productivity Success Cake system. I encouraged participants to identify what truly matters and focus their efforts on those areas.

One participant had a specific question about keeping certain tasks visible without cluttering their workspace. We brainstormed solutions, including using clear folders and other organizational tools. The key is to find what works best for you and ensures that you stay on top of your priorities.

Remember, perfection is not the goal. Embrace the idea that you can focus on one thing at a time. Start your day by identifying what’s important, beyond the surface level. By doing this, you’ll uncover the answers you need to achieve your goals.

I look forward to illuminating your path to success and providing some personalized hot seat coaching during our Wisdom Warriors session. If you prefer to observe and learn from others, that’s absolutely fine. Feel free to share what’s challenging you in your pursuit of a peaceful, easy life where you feel in control.

Let’s work together to make your entrepreneurial journey more manageable, fulfilling, and enjoyable. Your path to a harmonious life begins with taking these steps, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to join us on November 6th)

In the meantime, hit reply and tell me what’s getting in your way of having a beautiful, peaceful, easy life that you feel in control of? 

I can’t wait to see you.

Categories
Balance Boundaries Get Organized More time in my day Organization prioritize Time strategies

What’s your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?

Time Management – Sleep

“What’s your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?”

This question was asked recently in one of my groups. I was looking at the responses, and what I was noticing was there was a very large percentage of answers having to do with time management, focus, consistency, and believing in ourselves.

Some of the responses were….

  • Balancing family time and business time;
  • Just plain old time management;
  • Managing my own time, not enough time in the day, 
  • Getting rest; I never sleep.  

For this article, I am focusing  on time management: sleep because several people brought up SLEEP in their responses. In this series, time management for the distracted entrepreneur, this week we are  in the health layer. Next week I’m going to move up to the environment layer, and today I’m going to stay in the health layer with a focus on sleep.

Many times I hear: “ I want to get more things done in my day.” When I’m coaching people, whether it be in my Discover Your Greatness through the Productivity Success Cake program, or high level one-to-one, what ends up happening is an “unpeeling.”  We peel back the layers of what is going on. So for example if my client wants to get up earlier….we have to start with bedtime.

Get a slice of your Productivity Success Cake here

Now you can see that time management in the day actually begins the night before. Since we are talking about the night before, we want to talk about Sleep. So today, that’s why I want to focus on Sleep. 

I’d like to leave you with a practical tip and a thought provoking question. First, the question.

If I say I’d like to go to bed by 10:30 PM, for example, what’s preventing that? And usually the answer is “things that are important” to you. So maybe you are spending time with loved ones watching TV or maybe you are doing projects late at night because it is light out later. Whatever it is, you value THAT THING in the moment over getting to bed. 

Now for the practical tip.

You can do this with an Android, or with an iPhone. If you take that home button on the right hand side, and you do three clicks, you get a red tone to your screen, and that red tone blocks out the blue light.

The blue light keeps us awake at night. It lights up a certain part of our brain that doesn’t allow us to rest. So if you are  looking to get more sleep, focus on sleep for the next week or two…the SLEEP slice of your cake.

Try it, and, if you’re having trouble with it, you can always send me an email.  You can also join the UnScatterMe Facebook Community and say, Hey, I’m having trouble with the sleep slice. Does anybody want to  join in with me and we can support one another? 

We are all in this together…. baking our cakes! If you are REALLY  interested in getting faster, consistent results, please know that there is an opportunity coming up to go even DEEPER into the cake process so you can truly level your life up beyond what you might have imagined.

So, if you are wondering “how do I really get more support with this?”

Mark your calendars for the 5th of September, because we are going to be doing Time management for the Distracted Entrepreneur in a workshop format from 11:00 to 1:00 Eastern. There is a fee for this meaty opportunity. And half goes to my favorite charity!

I will be putting the link in the comments below and you will  want to sign up for that and you can start now. So start with your sleep. Try out the red light idea, and let me know your results!

If sleep is not your issue, try something else on the health layer of that cake, and see how you do.

Start with a strong foundation of health, so that I can help you with your time management. See you Sept 5!

Book your space on the Time Management Workshop here

Categories
Balance Positive Thinking Productivity Time strategies vacation Wellness

Why having fun is not bad for you

The counterintuitive way to get more done

Happy summertime!

It’s interesting – FUN has been coming up a lot lately.  I received an email from somebody  asking, ‘Should business be fun?’   This company takes six figure people and brings them into the seven figure realm…and they were asking the FUN question. There are loads of reasons why fun is so poorly considered, and they generally come from our upbringing. 

You might hear, in your head:

 “You must work hard and it must be difficult.” 

“You must sit for that exam.”

“You must have your nose to the grindstone.”

However, when you sit back and you take a look at the true success, in all the way (not just money and prestige from the outside), what do you see? Do you see a person who is happy inside and out, and you want to be him or her? I doubt it.

For example, look at students in Korea – look at their happiness levels and their success on their terms. Sure- they’re more successful perhaps in their grades in an overall way, but are they happy? What’s their mental health like? Consider then those living in Sweden, where the children are allowed to play  – there’s more flexible schedules and parents have more time to be with them because of the social safety nets that there are. Those folks-  generally speaking- are more happy. I believe that if we’re unhappy, it’s really impossible to be successful, truly successful (depending on your definition of success). 

I define success as being fully aligned with who we are in the world and how we want to show up in the world and we’re able to do, be and have the things that are important to us.

Watch the video

It’s true in our business, and it’s true in our lives. 

The above argument shows that having fun is NOT bad for you. In fact, it will help you get more done. Please absorb these 3 points about fun and getting things done, and why they’re important. Then take some action on at least one of them. Hit reply and tell me what transpired 🙂

  1. FUN is embedded in the 3 pillars of success from my dear friend Susan Cowan: MOTIVATION, CHALLENGE, AND NOVELTY. Fun is so important in all of those, and particularly in motivation. If it is not fun for you, the motivation is going to be almost nil. It’s therefore very important that your task, dream, or desire  is fun for you in some way.
  2. Fun is embedded in our culture. We live in an entertainment culture. People like to play games. Children like to play games; adults like to play games.  There’s “words with friends” that folks play remotely. For people that are scattered, maybe they have AD/HD, games are really important. They raise our dopamine level. Dopamine is a feel good hormone. AD/HD has lower dopamine levels so therefore it’s really important to have that. 
  3. We are in a fun deficit in 2023. 2020 had a low level of fun. 2021 the same thing. In 2022 we started emerging and started to have some fun. But we’ve got two and a half years of fun not happening.  Now, people are back integrating. We’re having a lot of fun. Slowly but surely the cloud of unfun is lifting and we are finally saying “You know what? We get to have fun because you know what we do?” I’s important to have fun because when we have fun, we get it done. 

Yesterday I was on a free webinar regarding a new software I was checking out, and the woman who was giving the webinar, the leader of this new software, said ‘Flowi is fun’. In other words, “the technology (Flowi) that I’m showing you won’t just be another burden.”

So I ask you this, how can you make your life fun? 

I try to do it every single day. That’s why I made my productivity success signature system into a cake – because guess what? When’s the last time you frowned while eating a piece of cake? 

Go and have so much fun. Have your cake and eat it too. 

Go, go dance in the sunshine. 

Pretend you’re a little kid again, at least for five minutes. Raise up your hands and scream and be so happy. 

You’re going to be more of a magnet to the people that you want to have magnetized around you. 

Your stress levels are going to decrease. 

Your health is going to increase.

….. and it’s free. 

It’s free to have fun. People want to be around you. You’re going to get more done. You’re going to enjoy it more. You’re going to be more in alignment. At the end of the day, you’re going to be more successful. 

So don’t forget the fun. 

And hit reply to let me know, how are you going to have fun today? 

Categories
Balance Boundaries Confidence Growth

How to say NO clearly and comfortably

In our last blog post, we talked about the reasons why you should say NO sometimes and how that little word can help you gain clarity in your own goals.

In this post, we’re going to look at key ways that you can say no and mean no, but do it kindly, too.

1. No excuses.

It’s often the prevarication around the word NO that causes all the problems.  Because we feel uncomfortable in refusing a request, we often feel we need to provide excuses or beat around the bush, rather than plainly saying “no”.  It’s this evasion that provides the window of opportunity for others to mistake our NO for a YES and, before we know, we’ve agreed to the request we were hell-bent on refusing!

Instead, just be straight.  Don’t stall or hesitate.  Your refusal is enough.  You can offer a brief explanation if you wish, but don’t feel duty-bound to.  Be assertive, yet courteous.  A response along the lines of, “I’m sorry, I can’t right now, let me come back to you when and if I can” resets the power dynamic in the conversation, putting you in control.

2. Boundaries are there for a reason.

Your personal boundaries are set by you and give you the best compass of whether you should say yes or no to a request.  How will the other person feel if you say no?  By looking at, and understanding, the dynamics of your relationship with them, you will see that a good relationship can withstand your refusal to one task.  If you feel the relationship will suffer by your refusal, then surely that says more about your relationship than anything else?

3. Put yourself first.

Be firm in your refusal.  Don’t feel compelled to say yes simply because the other person won’t like a refusal.  It’s essential you put your needs first.  If you constantly try and please all of the people all of the time, you’ll simply end up pleasing no one!  In order to be the best version of yourself, you need time and space to grow and this means having the wherewithal to say NO when that request takes you too far off your own track.  Besides, in order to give to others, you need to have something to give, so feel comfortable in saying no.

In summary, remember that YOU come first.  Don’t feel bad about furthering your own success by saying NO to others. 

You’ll often find that a firm, polite NO will increase the other person’s respect for you and allow them to see things from your perspective. 

Go on, give it a try!

Categories
Balance Confidence Goal Setting Time strategies

3 ways to make sure your “No” is not hurting you

Picture the scenario: You’re at the office water cooler, when a colleague breezes by and adopts that puppy-dog expression, which signals they want something.  As it turns out, “something” has come up and they can no longer do the presentation at the department meeting on Friday.  Would you mind taking over?

You have no background on the task.  You are snowed under with your own work and yet, instead of refusing, you hear a voice say

“Sure! Happy to help”…

Sound familiar?

It’s happened to us all.  That conviction that we would rather inconvenience ourselves than we would let anyone else down.  We just don’t like feeling we’re the bad guy (or gal) and feel guilty over prioritizing our own wishes and wellbeing.

But, I’m here to show you why it’s okay to say “NO” and how you can do so and still sleep at night.  Here goes:

1. How saying NO to others is really saying YES to yourself.

“When you say ‘Yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘No’ to yourself.” ~ Paolo Coelho

Let me ask you a question. When you take a look at your to-do list, how many of the things on that list are for you and how many for someone else?  Sure, it’s nice to be needed, but doing too much for others not only leaves the situation open to abuse, and can also leave you over-extended, while you rush to fulfil those obligations or responsibilities – and even resentful, with no “you” time left in the day.

That’s not to say that you should point-blank refuse to help anyone.  The key is one little word: discernment and learning to say ‘no’ when it means saying ‘yes’ to yourself.  Practising discernment is key to building and maintaining those healthy boundaries that we have discussed in previous blog posts. Ask yourself, will saying YES to any request will get you nearer to your own goals and success, or will you simply be helping someone else get nearer their own?

2. What to do if you’re not sure what you’re saying YES to.

Again, we’ve probably all been in a situation where we have put our own agenda to one side and picked up a task for someone else, only to find that the task is WAY BIGGER than we originally thought (or were led to believe) and how does that make us feel?  Resentful? Put-upon? Stressed?  Check, check and check. 

Communication is key here.  Never be afraid to ask those “stupid” questions and check the fine details of the task ahead.  After all, if you’re going out of your way to pick up a job that is someone else’s responsibility, the least they can do is ensure you’re fully armed with the information and equipment you need to succeed.  It’s perfectly okay to ask for further clarification before you decide whether to accept or decline a request, too.  Far better to have clarity before you decide than to say “yes” blindly.  It’s perfectly acceptable to request time to consider your answer too.  “Let me check and get back to you” is all you need to say.  No need for reasons, but this magic little phrase will also give you the option to refuse without looking/feeling bad.  “I’m sorry, I checked my diary and I have something else on.” lets you off the hook pain-free.

3. Getting comfortable with NO

How can one little word make us squirm so hard?  If you want to get comfortable with saying no, then you first need to gain clarity in defining what you’re comfortable saying yes to and, conversely, what you feel better saying no to.  This is your life, your agenda, your needs and desires we’re talking about people! If you want to lead the life you want, then getting comfortable with aligning others’ requests with your own goals is paramount.  If you’re still unsure about saying no, give it a practice.  Think of one small thing that you can say NO to and give it a whirl.  Try it out and get some balance back in your life.

Hopefully, the look at the bigger picture of why it’s okay to say no sometimes will help you to achieve success in your own life. Remember that saying NO to others may allow you to say YES to yourself!

In our next blog, we’re going to be looking at some ways to say NO without upsetting anyone, without feeling guilty ourselves and without losing friends!

—

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  • Quick answers to your current dilemmas…in real time. Don’t know what to ask? No worries, we have a new HOT theme each month.
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Let’s see what might happen if you dare to just “read the blogs” to taking the steps to get you to where you want to go, but perhaps have not dared to…. until now.

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Categories
Balance

Counter-intuitive thoughts that will change your notion of balance

In our last blog, we looked at 4 simple ways to improve your life-balance, that were easily incorporated into reallife. We learned that there isn’t a one size fits all definition of life balance and now, we’re going to delve deeper into your individual notion of balance.

1. What Balance Really Means

What does balance mean to you?  If you defined this for yourself, then asked anyone else the same question, there might be areas of commonality, but the answers would generally be very different, reflecting your different ages, life-stages or even upbringing.

Life balance is a fluid concept; it’s going to change, depending upon the circumstances we find ourselves in.  Wrongly, we often associate life-balance solely with financial/material gain or success at work, “When I get my raise, I’ll…”

But, it’s so much more than that.  Ask yourself what you really want? Truthfully, and listen to the answer.  Throw away those preconceptions of what you think you should want and focus on what your gut is telling you.  Think about what is truly important to you and then ask yourself how you can go about achieving them.  It could be your work/life balance, well-being, being at peace, increased inner calm, fulfilment or a combination of these.

2. Being Off-Balance On Purpose

So, you have an idea of what would make your life complete. That one concept that, were you to achieve it, would make your world all warm and fuzzy and put your life in total balance. 

That’s great…But, what now?

Consider how boring life would be!  Does your life really need to be balanced?  Yes, we would all like a little order to the chaos sometimes.  We have all wished that some situation or other was different in some way, but how often do we forget that this is real life – it’s not meant to be plain sailing!  The majority of our experience comes from the lessons we have learned, and if life goes down a straight and even road, wouldn’t we miss the excitement of a few bumpy stretches?

Instead of focussing on attaining perfection, I believe we should celebrate our unbalance.  Because, isn’t it that which makes us different? Makes us human?  Aren’t the imbalances the things we will look back at when we are old and grey, with a degree of nostalgia?

3. Be Okay With You.

Remember, things are rarely what they seem.  And those things that lead to life balance can sometimes be the opposite of what we think.  Those “quick-fixes”, short-term solutions, habits or “lazy” reactions may seem like the million-dollar answer, but the effects can very often be quite different to what we imagined.  Think carefully of the long-term cause and effect of any actions and resist those quick or impulse actions, or (shock horror) those inactions.

Instead, consider whether perfection is what you’re seeking.  Really?  Are you sure that it’s not simply an improvement that will give you your desired outcome?

As humans, it is our imperfections, our idiosyncrasies that make us who we are.  And, it is precisely these that enable us to relate so well to each other.

Who wants to be perfect, anyway? You ARE perfect, after all.

—

Like this? You’ll love the Club!

Try on the Lunchtime Club (monthly virtual coaching group) on us for 30 days FREE!

  • Quick answers to your current dilemmas…in real time. Don’t know what to ask? No worries, we have a new HOT theme each month.
  • The solution to the #1 issue for Entrepreneurs: Collaboration! You can Collaborate with like-minded individuals for additional support…in real time AND outside of the group. Did anyone say accountability partner?
  • And even more goodies: You get MUCH more than live calls once a month! You get unlimited Access to past and new group session recordings – to enhance your learning and growing OUTSIDE of our monthly calls.

Curious? Learn more about this low cost, low commitment, high results, high energy program:

  • Click here if you have not worked with us before
  • Click here if you have been a client of ours in the last 12 months

Let’s get you more focused, organized, and productive than you have EVER been!

Let’s see what might happen if you dare to just “read the blogs” to taking the steps to get you to where you want to go, but perhaps have not dared to…. until now.

I’ll be there! I can’t wait to meet you.

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