It's My Life Inc.

Single-Minded

One of my favorite clients visited me recently.  The sessions are a lot of fun for both of us because we toggle between business planning and personal growth.  What I noticed recently is that my client also toggles his personality depending on which subject we are addressing.  We talk about personal goals and he is calm, content, and focused.  We talk about business and all of a sudden his speech becomes rushed and his demeanor stressed.  Why does he change into a frantic stressed being when we talk about business?

In his personal life, he has been making incredible strides.  He has defined what he desires his home life to be and how to integrate his hobbies and passions into his free time.  Plus he is learning how to turn off the work day so he can have more unencumbered personal time.  He is so much more aware of how his old beliefs were holding him back and has adopted new beliefs bringing peace, calm, and joy.  There is one more belief system we need to address.  We need to examine the belief that work, career, or business ownership needs to be stressful, that deadlines and responsibilities necessarily change individuals into robots.  We need to address the unconscious switch that turns him into a slave of his work instead of being an individual participating in work.

Do you find yourself being one person at work and one person at home?  Do you lose your calm demeanor when a project is brought up?  Do you feel yourself changing your personality, speech, actions, and reactions depending if you are with a friend or a colleague?  Many individuals have a difficult time defining who they are, what their purpose is, and how they want to live.  For some, they are able to define all of these key components to joyful living, but then do the opposite once they enter their place of business.  How can one be single-minded whether they are at rest, play, or work?

Awareness:  One of the first ways to bring the two halves us together is to gain awareness when we are in the workplace.  Do we change?  How do we change?  Does it feel better or worse?  There is no need to take action.  Just gaining awareness that we are different is amazingly powerful.  Until we have visibility, we have no possibility to make changes.

Uncover:  The next step is to uncover the underlying belief making us act differently in the workplace.  Do we think we need to be more cold and calculating?  Do we buy into the myth of no pain no gain?  Do we believe stress is a normal and acceptable part of working?  Then see if you can uncover where this belief came from or why it is significant to you.  Did your father profess that nothing good was every achieved easily?  Do you correlate business success with personal worth therefore making much more at stake than just your quarterly earnings?

Rewrite:  Now it is time to replace that old belief with something which works better for you.  Think of three people you know or know of who are successful in business but don’t spend their days stressed.  Think of those who are successful but still human in the office.  Think of how joyful it could be if you could not only be productive but joyful at work.  What beliefs would you need to have to make these things true to you?

As a recovering Type-A, the idea that work could be productive and fun (or at least not stressful) was beyond my comprehension.  What I know now is that the more I enjoy my day, the more efficient and effective I actually am.  Plus I see my business growing in amazing ways it never did when I tried to force things to happen.  Try rewriting your beliefs as well and see if being single-minded improves your business as well as your personal satisfaction.

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