NOT SERIOUS ENOUGH
I was once let go from a job in financial planning for ‘not being serious enough’. I’ll confess that I don’t regret it for a minute! I’d much rather be spending my time in delight. What does that have to do with the Big Fat Lie of “You Must Work More to Make More Money”? Well, as the saying goes, you are what you eat, and that definitely extends to business: you are what you spend your time doing. If it’s all heavy and serious, that’s what your life and your business become. I spent enough of my career working in serious places to know that we all deserve to be spending our time in delight. What I do today is show business owners how to move into lighter and brighter parts of their businesses.
What does spending time in delight look like? It doesn’t mean that you get to just kick back on the couch and spend your day laughing and lounging. If you’re running a business, you need strategy and direction, a set niche, compelling branding, and an easeful, elegant client pathway for people to discover you. Once you get those set up you can let them to do their magic for you. If what you’re doing instead is pouring your energy into working longer and harder to try and bring in more money, you won’t even be visible to your ideal clients. In fact, you’ll actually repel them because they’ll pick up how angry and frustrated you are.
OPPORTUNITY COST
If you’ve been buying into the Big Fat Lie “You Have to Work More to Make More Money”, it’s time to shift gears and start nurturing yourself in your business. People will invite you to do things that either deplete or exponentialize your energy; you need to start noticing what kind of opportunities make you feel like you want to do more of them.
When you say yes to one project, it follows that you’ll have to say no to another – that’s the opportunity cost. To figure out how you’ve allocated your time to what kind of opportunities, I suggest making a list of all the projects you’re involved with. Start noticing everything you’ve said yes to and ask yourself if your answer would be the same today. Do you still get a delightful YES to the things on your list? I recommend that you cross anything that comes in below a 7 out of 10 off your list. Be ruthless about cleaning it up.
COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET AS A PEOPLE-PLEASER
Sometimes when you’re working too hard and saying yes to too many things, it’s because you’re a people-pleaser. As difficult as it is to face, you may have to admit that part of what drives you to say yes is a desire to please others. Unfortunately, this behaviour will end up depleting you, rather than filling your days with delight. Saying yes to please others instead of taking care of yourself is the opposite of nurturing yourself in your business.
Look at what saying yes to each thing on your list has added to your life. Has it brought in great people or a sense of ease or elegance? Or have you been saddled with low-vibe energy, and made to feel less than yourself? When we operate from people-pleasing we create more of the same – clients who don’t respect our boundaries and expect us to work long hours and weekends. We end up tired and depleted, exhausted by the very business that is supposed to bring us delight. Our bodies respond by getting sick and tired and our clients feel our frustration and anger grow.
WHAT HAVE YOU SAID YES TO?
You don’t have to choose overworking and overcommitting. You can make a conscious choice to NOT to be a people-pleaser, but first you’ll have to move past the belief that it makes you feel good to make people happy, that you like being ‘a good girl’. You’ll need to ask yourself, what’s the end result of all those commitments you’ve said yes to?
Go through all the things you’re doing and ask yourself – what has saying yes to this added to my life? If it’s not making you happy, look at automating or replacing it. When you’re saying yes to things, they’d better have the signature of delight.
IS EVERY YES STILL A YES?
Noticing what’s in your body – without judgement – can be a tremendous help. I suggest taking some time to get curious about the information your body has to offer you. Your body has way more neurons than your brain, and you can turn to your body’s energy centres to determine what is no longer a yes.
I love helping my clients grow and flourish – but sometimes they say yes and figure they have to stick to it. I help them gather information about what’s still a yes and what’s turned into a no and then help them deal with what comes after that shift.
Changing a yes to a no doesn’t mean you’re flaky, or you’re a bad person. It simply means that the information has just changed. It’s okay to have yesses that have turned into no’s – you just have to handle them. Where you move out of integrity is when you refuse to face those hard decisions.
I can help with figuring out exactly how to have that conversation in your business. It’s just my total pleasure to help you serve yourself first and move forward in your life. I want you to make sure your yesses are still yesses – because they can expire!
Like me, you absolutely deserve to live and work in the energy of delight.
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