- Guest Blog by Lani Morris
Staring into space, totally exhausted and wondering if you will ever feel energetic again – that’s often the first stage of the holidays. Then energy returns and with it, the chance to reflect over the past year, and possibly even think about the year ahead.
We get enough head space to ponder a bit: what do I really want from my business?
I’ve run my own small business for over forty years. I still remember the day that I realized that in small business we can actually design it the way that works! For us, as well as for our staff and our clients.
So this is a time to take stock and ask a few key questions.
If I could have a business the way I really want it, what few things would be most important to me?
Many years ago I answered this: have four months holiday a year. I have always been really creative and decided that in order to stay creative I needed breaks, times to re-create. It may well seem totally impossible, but one CEO of a small business said to me, “If you can’t be away from your business for six months and come back and find it doing well, then you aren’t running it properly.”
Why is time off so important?
Being at the point where you can’t take a day off is not only a sign that we haven’t designed our business as well as we could, it is also a sign that we have gone way out of balance.
I work with the Map of Meaning, a simple framework that draws into one picture all the key drivers that together make work and life seem worth doing. Rigorously researched around the world, it points out that we need to find some sort of balance between these drivers, in particular the need to resolve the tension between doing and resting.
Doing without stopping drains us, and ultimately causes us to lose interest in our work.
A colleague who is a fitness trainer points out that muscles actually grow, not in the time when we are punishing them with exercise, but in the time when we are resting. It’s the same with our selves. The daily grind produces an ability to endure, but less chance to grow, to have those insights that help us take a huge leap in our way of working.
Understanding how resting and reflecting can help us take those big leaps of development, seeing that resting is a necessary part of being successful can help us plan in time for rest in the year ahead, not as an indulgence, but as part of our business fitness.
Life is too short and too magnificent to waste.
The older I get the clearer this gets. How many more springs will I see? How many more swims in the sea will I have? How many more times will I listen to a loved piece of music? How many more stimulating conversations with my daughter?
Take this time to plan your business to be a place you love. Work out what you hate and find a way to stop doing it. Ensure that your systems are working for you as optimally as possible and book an appointment right now with the Helm team to discuss if there are more improvements to be made.
If you want to know more about the Map of Meaning contact Lani by email, or visit her website.
