Archive for the ‘Work/Life Balance’ Category

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Striving for perfection can keep you from enjoying life, undermine your relationships, severely drain your energy and your self-esteem. For many it's a habit, started early in childhood, and can be difficult to change, but a little bit of effort can go a long way toward changing the pattern of perfectionism.

Here are 8 strategies for stopping the quest for perfection:

1. Weigh the cons and costs. List all of the ways in which your perfectionism is hurting you, your family and friends. This exercise will help motivate you to make a change.

2. Take note. Try to document your perfectionist, negative thoughts throughout the day. If this is impractical, then at the end of the day think back on your day, remember any feelings of failure or inadequacy, and write down your thoughts at the time. That way, you'll become more aware of these detrimental thoughts when they resurface.

3. Think positive. Mitigate your tendency to focus on the negative by making a conscious effort to notice all that is good about your own and others' efforts. If you notice something negative about yourself or your work, find five or so positive qualities to counterbalance those thoughts.

4. Change your inner voice. Silence (or at least muffle) that negative self-talk by taking some concrete steps to change your focus. For example:

* Keep a journal of your thoughts and examine them later
* Stop negative thoughts in their tracks by literally saying "stop" in your head when such a thought arises
* Keep a rubber-band around your wrist and snap it when negative self-talk starts
* Replace negative statements with milder, neutral or positive statements
* Change negative statements to questions - for example, "I can't do this!" could become "How can I do this?"

5. Take baby steps. Instead of setting unreasonable goals as perfectionists tend to do, reduce your big goals into smaller, bite-sized objectives, and reward yourself when you meet them. This will help you forgive your mistakes more easily, helps you to enjoy the process, and actually increases the likelihood that you'll achieve your big goal.

6. Stop and smell the roses. Focus less on results and more on the process of reaching your goals. Some ways to do this might include joining a group working toward the same goal or keeping a journal of your feelings and what you learn along the way. Even if you don't meet your goal, you can look back and see what you have gained in just working toward a goal.

7. Take criticism constructively. Instead of perceiving criticism as an attack and reacting defensively, receive it as a helpful suggestion for improving your performance. Then your less-than-perfect performances can become stepping stones toward achieving excellence.

8. Look at the big picture. Concentrate less on the little imperfections and more on what matters. For example, giving a birthday party for a friend matters much more than the fact that your dishes didn't match your tablecloth.

So give yourself a break, embrace your gifts and talents, and correct those little lies that run through your head. A concerted - but not necessarily perfect! - effort to change your perfectionist habits will go a long way toward achieving your ultimate goal: a happier you.

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As a small business owner, finding good help can be a challenge. Qualified candidates are more likely to be attracted to large companies than small businesses because of their high profile and better pay.

If you are very small or just getting started, you probably can't afford to hire someone even part-time but, having office help would free you from the busywork and tasks that get in the way of the stuff that needs to get done to bring in the revenue.

One way that you can get good help is by creating your own free powerful support team by capitalizing on the power of academic internships.

Who Are They?

Most interns are college students (though there are some high school students looking for internships) who need more school credits for graduation, or simply want to get work experience. But some are past students or displaced workers who would like to either build skills and experience or try to break into a new field. Both of these groups can be a key asset to your business. And they are often open to working for little or no pay, so they are less costly than bringing on a regular employee.

Interns Can Help With Everyday Tasks

Most interns have little or no actual experience in their field, so they're best suited to small tasks initially. But, don't relegate them to the role of gopher. They'll just need to work their way up to the more complicated tasks.

Interns can start out doing the busywork and paperwork you dislike Or maybe it's the administrative and clerical work you may put off or ignore. Once they've mastered that, they can grow into tasks that are more complicated. The timing will depend on the intern's skill level and your needs.

Here’s just a short list of what my interns do for me:

***They manage my email and answer my phones
***Keep my calendar organized and confirm my appointments
***Update my website and manage my social networking
***Help me publish my ezine and post articles to my blog
***Keep my database and email list updated and growing
***Develop processes for running my business smarter

Oh, yeah, and did I mention they do it for free? They need and want experience, skill building, and knowledge for the next stage of their career. I get help. They get another resume entry, everyone wins!

Interns Can Help With Short-Term Projects

If you have a short-term project that you need extra help on, or if your company gets seasonal boosts of business, having interns is a super way to acquire the support you need at a low or no cost. They are often willing to put in extra effort to get a good reference or letter of recommendation from you. And because you don't have an employment agreement, they can stay on with you only as long as you need them.

Here are some projects an intern could help with:

***Preparing receipts and records for tax time
***Organizing a file cabinet or creating filing system
***Scanning important documents or photos
***Direct mail campaigns
***Moving or organizing your office

Interns are great for businesses, and small businesses, including solo-business owners, can benefit from hiring them. Whether you need a temporary extra hand around the office or someone to help with a small project, hiring an intern could be just the solution you're looking for. It's a cost-effective way to help others in your community get much-needed career experience and you get the help you need to stay focused on what's most important in your business.

I'm so super excited to announce my newest program, Creating Your Free Powerful Support Team.
Learn More and Enroll Now

I put together a little video for you about it. Check it out here:

I hope to see you there!
Deanna

You probably know them well.  Time Takers are the emotional parasites that steal your time and energy and give nothing in return.

They are negative, usually depressing people who will bring you down. They don't understand the meaning of give and take relationships, and will take and take and take until there's nothing left.  Then they'll move onto someone else.

There is no need to blame or confront these people yet.  Just identify these people, whether they be in your business or your personal life, and start to cut them out of your life or avoid them at all costs.

They should be easy to recognize.  They are usually contacting you for favors on a regular basis, promising you things and not delivering, and then not coming through for you if you ever ask for something from them.

If you're not careful you could wind up wasting precious time, energy and money on these people, so ignore them, avoid them and start to see them coming before they have a chance to enter your life.

It's the word that most entrepreneurs have a hard time saying.  It's the word NO.

For various reasons we find ourselves saying YES way too often, to our vendors, to our friends, to our clients and many others.  This is a drain on our time because we usually don't consider what's involved when we are asked for something that deals with our time.

The end result is normally not good.  We get bombarded with things that have nothing to do with making a profit and we end up putting our money making plans on hold until we can accommodate all the YES answers we've handed out.

Plus, it's draining.  All of the tasks you now must do just saps all of your energy and you're left with little motivation for the things that matter.

Instead, try saying NO more often.   You don't even have to give a reason.  Just say "sorry, I can't do that right now."  Or try the YES, NO, YES approach which goes something like:

"Yes, I'd love to do that, but I can't right now, so could you come back to me another time and I'll do my best to take care of it then?"

This makes people think you're not summarily dismissing their request and leaves the door open for future help down the road.

Another way to say NO is to avoid having a knee-jerk YES reaction to anything that comes along.  Practice saying NO to almost everything so you start getting used to how it feels.  It may be awkward at first, and you may annoy some people, but when you realize how much time you'll save it will become second nature.

You know, everywhere you go you hear about how important it is to have balance in your life, and how, without striking the right balance of work and personal life it will throw everything off.  I'm here to tell you that this concept is a myth.  Balance does not exist and is likely to never exist.  That may be difficult to hear, but let me explain.

Defining Balance

Balance in pure definition means, things are of equal size and shape.  It means you spend equal time, energy, and money on each part of your life AND it means that equal parts is desirable. Well, that's just not probable.  Do you want to spend the same amount of time working as you do spending time with your family and friends? Probably not!

Fitting it All In

When you have a "work/ life balance" it assumes that's all there is.  The time you put in working and the time you put in with your family or other personal issues.  Truth be told, your own happiness and fulfillment in life involves finding the right mixture of many ingredients, including (but not limited to) your work, your spouse, your friends, your kids, your hobbies, your personal development, your health, your dreams, your goals, your finances, your spiritual outlook, and the list goes on.

The Perfect Recipe

Like a chef, what YOU decide to put in this life stew to make it taste good on a daily basis is up to you, based on many factors.  It really has little or nothing to do with "balance." Things could be completely out of balance and still be quite content.  So your plan going forward should be to compile a list of the things in your life that matter most to you and start enjoying them, making time for them, and eliminating, delegating, or reducing the rest.  You'll find that this is much easier to do than to constantly be trying to balance.

Balancing Act

Ever spend time standing on a 4-inch-wide balance beam?  It's not easy.  It's much easier to stay grounded and pull all the parts of your life together that make you the happiest.