There is one important person who is key to your business success. It is YOU.
The world is screaming at you for your attention. Deadlines, unfinished projects, bad debts, family, kids, emails and the list goes on and on… are all dragging you away from who you really are.
A tired, unhealthy, de-motivated YOU is not good for your business. Even after you obtain so-called success in your business, if you are too ill, unfit or absolutely exhausted and nothing more left in your tank, what have you actually achieved?
Just like many entrepreneurs, I am also a victim of this.
You may have sacrificed YOU to achieve business success.
You are Number One!
Looking after yourself is the most selfless act you can accomplish. Unless you get better, you cannot get to a position to help others get better. And that includes your business.
The safety announcement in an aircraft insists that you put on the oxygen mask first, before you start helping others around you.
So, here are 21 ways to take care of yourself first!
- Value yourself more than anything else. Unless you value yourself, no one is going to do it.
- Let go. Don’t be too attached to the outcome. Do what ever is necessary (action). But remember the outcome is mostly beyond your control. So don’t be too paranoid about the outcome. Simply let go.
- Have a personal vision for your life. That is how you want to live your life. Let that vision guide you.
- Focus on health. Deliberately do things within your control to be healthy. Eat natural wholesome foods, drink plenty of water, get plenty of fresh air and look for the good in everything.
- Focus on fitness. Nature takes away what you don’t use. Fit and healthy lifestyle is worth its weight in gold. Take regular exercise and get your heart pumping. Your fitness is totally within your control.
- Live a life of service. We are here in this planet to make it a better place. The only way we can do that is to live a life of service to others.
- Live by deliberate values. Have higher values that guide your life.
- Set higher standards for yourself. When you live a life of high standards and walk the talk, you become a natural leader for the people around you.
- Focus on better relationship with your family and friends. We are not wired to live by ourselves. Rich relationship with our close one does enrich our lives.
- Surround yourself with people who lift you higher. High frequency people uplift your spirit and inspire new possibilities. Go out of your way to find ‘high frequency’ people. At the same time, walk away from people who bring you down.
- Own your goals. Make sure you goals are your own and you are not doing it for others. When you go after goals set by others and your heart is not in it, your energy will be drained.
- Spend time doing what you do best: As Charles Schwab puts it, “A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm”.
- Learn to say NO to things that is not important to you. By saying NO to things that are not important to you, you are protecting your energy from being drained out of you.
- Ask for help. We cannot move forward in life without the help of others. Asking for help is shows strength and courage and moves us nearer to our goals faster.
- Make rest and relaxation your priority. Resting is something you don’t store for another day. Resting and relaxing your mind and body builds your strength and energy levels to perform better.
- Optimize your environment. Set up your environment to help you. Say for an example, you want to meditate every day but struggle to find time. But you also have time to watch few hours of TV everyday. In this case, your environment (living room) is set up for watching TV rather than meditation. Changing the environment means either getting rid of the TV or changing your routine, that allows you to meditate daily. Surround your environment with things – objects, photo’s etc.. that inspire you!
- Master your psychology. See every situation as it is but not worse than it is. If your marketing is producing poor results, see it for what is. That is, your marketing is not producing what you expected. Don’t go around saying I am (or we are) not good at marketing. When you see it for what it is, you can start to improve from where you are rather than being negative about it. Look at every situation as a lesson towards progression to the next level.
- Keep a journal. Maintain a journal to express your feelings. This is a very powerful tool. By giving shape to your feelings (in print), you are freeing yourself from carrying with you.
- Keep track of your achievements: However small, keep focusing on your achievements. Over the weeks, months and years you will be surprised what you can achieve.
- Stop criticizing yourself. When you criticize yourself, you diminish your power. None of us is perfect. You can only do what you can with what you have where you are! So don’t go lowering you energy by putting yourself down.
- Be grateful for every bit of your life. The good and the bad. That is what made who you are today. The air we breathe is given to us unconditionally. If we don’t get oxygen for two and half minutes, we will die. How many of us do you think actually pay attention to the air we breathe and give thanks for the oxygen that is available in abundance. We take it for granted just we do with everything we already have.
+ Ravi Peal-Shankar
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