Your Self Saboteur is costly to you and your business. Utilise these 3 Strategies to Stop Being the ‘Busy’ Business Owner
OR more to the point do you love your job so much it’s eating you for breakfast? Often the curse of the business owner, executive, leader or manager is the fact you become the busiest person. So much to do and no time to do it!
These symptoms may be familiar. You are the first in, just so you can get some of your work completed. You feel inundated with information, emails, calls and even text messages all leading to the ‘ever-expanding inbox’ in your head. When you do have lunch it’s often at your desk or place of work. You regret the open door policy you once championed with hardly any time to breathe between impromptu visits. You have time-sensitive projects and tasks to complete all of which create anxiety and ground rush. Oh and if that’s not enough you’ll be the last to leave the office to head home in time for dinner whilst you crack open your laptop for the evening stint!
If this sounds familiar then your job is quite literally eating you for breakfast! Here’s the tough question how long can you remain at this tempo before something gives? Let’s be clear something will give, you’re not a superhero, you might think you are, sadly I can assure you that you are not. So something has to change before you drop the ball.
So what’s caused this love-hate relationship. I love what I do, I just don’t seem to be able to find the time to do it. In my experience, there are 3 key factors in play here:
Firstly your inner saboteur causing lots of interFEARence.
Secondly, this almost always results in poor or no self-discipline.
Finally an inability to think with clarity, to visualise what needs to be done and by when. Which just serves to reinforce your inner saboteur.
Let’s Get Back to Loving your Job
Now there are numerous strategies and tactics, tricks and hacks to overcome these challenges. The challenge here is the fact that your self saboteur is too strong and too loud, resulting in no discipline, no think time and no change – A SELF prophesising cycle. So I could offer a multitude of solutions in principle that would be great, you just would act on them. So let’s go a little deeper.
1) Your Inner self Saboteur
We each have an self saboteur, in fact, we have multiple levels of saboteurs with the ability to sabotage our lives on many different levels. There is in fact one governing saboteur the Judge (ref Shirzad Chamine’s New York Times bestselling book Positive Intelligence), who is always at work, check out his website . The Judge, that voice in your head, will constantly be judging you and your ability, sowing seeds of doubt deep into your consciousness and subconsciousness over time.
The judge will also have a view on others and make immediate assumptions as to who they are, their value, do I like them, would I trust them and so on. Incredibly judgmental and unhelpful. That’s not all, your judge will also have a view on your environment and how you fit or don’t. As you can see your judge is a major factor in where you are right now.
The good news is you can start to quiet your self saboteur, although it will be difficult at first and will take a high sense of self-awareness and practice. In the simplest terms, you need to listen out for your saboteur, for some of you that may be quite easy as it’s the loudest voice in your head. In order to start to manage your judge, you need to break its patterns and habits of turning up, and not allow it an audience with you.
You do this by recognising when the judge turns up and then label it. Treat it as a 3rd party, you can verbally acknowledge the judge by saying ‘Hey I hear you judge, but that’s not going to happen, your input is not necessary.’
Then take a moment to turn your attention to something very different with intense focus, before continuing with your desired path. Essentially you will start to break the pattern of your judge’s interventions and will get to a stage where you can control your self – saboteur – not the other way round.
2) Self Discipline
The biggest challenge faced when the judge is running rampant is our inability to apply self-discipline to what and where we should focus our attention. We often just focus on crisis management, putting out fires and spinning plates. We run out of time, become anxious and lose sight of the bigger picture. In turn this often leads to extended time working through lunch, working from home and an inability to switch off. A prime environment for your inner saboteurs.
At the moment you are able to identify your saboteur tendencies and label them you have heightened awareness, and this is the opportunity to strengthen your self-discipline, to take positive action.
The key is to commit to what you know you should, that could be stopping and turning your focus to a priority, it could be saying no, it could be not responding to an email that’s just dropped into your in box. You get the idea.
When you think of self-discipline as the execution of a few simple disciplines executed every day you’ll see that your ability to take control is not too far away. You just have to be consistent, committed and tuned in. You’ll soon discover that you have the ability to take control. To quieten your saboteur.
3) Thinking Time
A constant often overlooked yet recognised as being so valuable is thinking time. In positions of leadership and management thinking time is critical, in all likelihood it will be why you are in the role.
You have the ability to think with clarity, solve problems, think through decisions and focus on the future. The challenge when your job is eating you for breakfast is you merely focus on the now. In fact, you perpetuate now, trapped in a seemingly never ending cycle with your inner self saboteur.
As you start to manage and quieten your inner self saboteur and evoke greater self-discipline you will find you are able to engage once again with thinking time. Thinking time is so valuable as it a key link, in what I call, the cycle of prosperity.
It allows you to contemplate the future to establish what needs to be done and by when and most significantly better ways of doing it. New ideas, innovation and creativeness all of which are not accessible when your job is eating you for breakfast!
The Cycle of Prosperity
The cycle of prosperity is a self-perpetuating, ever-expanding, future-focused process of abundance and growth. The challenge is to create heighten self-awareness and manage your inner self self saboteur, to consistently apply self-discipline and to allow and enjoy thinking time.
From these 3 cyclical elements, you will start to return to the level of excitement and joy you have for what you do without the job eating you for breakfast. If any part of this article resonates with you Let’s Talk.
