Things to consider when building a business
If you recall a few posts ago I talked about how the space you come from really changes everything. I'm just going to now make some commentary about pushing and relaxing and draw some similarities between building the body and building a business as to me, the micro is a reflection of the macro and vice versa. With the human body, we know that it is important to exercise. Exercise is vital. It gets circulation happening and since life is movement this is a wonderful thing. The simple act of walking dialates blood vessels and more nutrients can be delivered to the muscles and skeletal structure. Bone density grows. We burn fat. But just as important as exercise is resting. Resting allows for a balancing of energy to take place. Perhaps you may have overworked the legs and so the body will work at keeping a balance and delivering some of that leg workout to the arms. Rest is vital to recover. In business, it works the same way. Exercise could be considered the act of building more systems or working on improving the products. Or it could be marketing or networking or simply paying the bills. If however, like with the body, you continue to keep pushing without rest you will in fact burn out. Perhaps this isn't always the case, but it is generally what ussually happens. The question is - are you resting? Do you take time in your business to let it breath. Do you take time to let it do its thing or do you keep pushing it as though its in a non-stop marathon? Imagine you are running all day non-stop and all night non-stop and on and on. Can you imagine the body to hold much reserves? It doesn't... somebody who did that would have literally no fat or reserve energy and would probably collapse. Are you getting my metaphor here? The equivalent in business is you wind up eating your reserves. Instead of building bone density, which could be considered your business systems or investing in stronger bones, you start chewing into that money to pay for people to remain stressed and continually pushing the marathon runner. Take a break. Truly sit back for a moment and come from gratitude. Not a weak dismal tiny moment... I mean really sit back and marvel at what you have accomplished and the simple reality that you are even in a position in evolution to have perception of all this. You could have incarnated as a street sweeper or a shoe shiner scraping for change to buy some rice - instead you are actually building a business and choosing to be conscious. Its a miracle - is it not? "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." ~ Albert Einstein To me, there is nothing inspiring about a struggler or a person who is frustrated or wants more than what is. That is not to say I don't feel inspired to experience something else but I feel when it comes to inspiring others nothing is more inspiring than a person who is happy in this miracle. If you take this advice, I believe you will notice a miracle in your business as I have seen time and time again. Here's the scenario... you have tried everything... the systems are in place... the marketing looks great... you have a great product and a great team behind you. You have tried everything but what you haven't tried is nothing. Try doing nothing at all other than gratitude. If its been a while since you've done this... try spending at least a whole day being grateful. Don't pick up any phones. Don't respond to emails. Put a notice on your web page that says you don't like auto-responders and you've taken the whole office out to an exotic island for the week and go do that. Be careful though - because if your business has the goods - prepare to come back to a long waiting list of orders or new customers.
Particularly now, in this recession, many are underemployed. Many work two part time jobs because they can't find a single full time job. U6 is over 17%. These people effectively have no time off that isn't in itself stressful. Part-timers generally don't get paid leave, make less, and don't get benefits. Taking time off is very costly. They need a vacation from their vacations.
It's very important to have a reflection period after engaging in activitiy, however, I think this is different for all people and businesses. Some need more, some less. Some are methodical about it while others are more organic. Some people who are very experienced have enough knowledge to pace themselves in their regular day-to-day that they require very little downtime. Others are such relentless hard-workers that downtime is actually stressful to them. They need to be doing something.