Your business may

be your life, but your

life is not a business!

     Entrepreneur, right? So what does it take to jolt your brain out of that innovative thinking tunnel long enough to appreciate and enjoy some of the real-life reasons you exist on this planet to begin with? (Clue: This is not a Red Bull chug-a-lug contest idea!)

     Will a family birth deliver enough power surge to give you a wake-up call? Not enough? How about a couple of funerals? Maybe a fender bender or stepping in your neighbor’s Saint Bernard’s leavings when you’re running late and rushing to an important meeting? A nasty bill collector pounding on your door?

     Stop for a minute. You’ve read this far looking for some kind of answer or provocation or support or or assessment tool, but maybe you need to consider asking yourself more questions before you start looking for answers?

     When, for example, did you last stop to smell the roses? Literally. Be honest here; no one else is looking. When did you last interrupt your compulsive workday habits to sniff?

     When did you last push the paperwork aside to give your complete attention to a troubled associate, employee, supplier, or customer? Did it make you crazy to have to shift gears out of your head space and into someone else’s?

     After all, life is just a bowl of worries, you might think, so why get caught up in other people’s bowls? 

     When you make yourself too busy to socialize or too busy to deal with priorities, inventory your actions to make sure you’re not just doing tasks of avoidance. Do you find the expression, “Yes, but . . .” (or the sentiments it represents) creeping into more and more of your answers. Are your responses to questions starting to sound more like reactions, or excuses?

     If you can respond instead of react, you can never over-react!

     Are you breathing? Click here for the free 60-second exercise

     Your business may occupy most of your waking hours (and probably some dream time too!), but neglecting your health — eating, drinking, sleeping, and exercise habits — and neglecting your family and friends and neighbors and community, is not a good trade-off (unless of course you’re bucking to be the object of one of those funerals mentioned earlier)!

     The better you are at business, the more focused you are on your business, the more rewarding your business efforts, the greater the odds that you are setting a trap for yourself to start to think your life is also a business, or is part of your business pursuits. You will start making excuses to yourself about why you need to stay on the job, to the point of being a crispy, well-done burn-out.

     You may start to look on life, and manage and operate it as if it were a business. This is clearly not a healthy place for anyone to be. Breaks are more than pulling yourself away from the desk or workspace. Breaks are rests for your brain that are like investments, and that will pay back with ever increased energy, productivity, and innovativeness when you return to your career pursuits.

     You need ’em. Take ’em! If you can’t do it, get some professional help . . . no excuses.

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!