Balancing head and heart in your business

One of my most inspirational clients is James*; he was in his mid-thirties when he had a heart attack five years ago.  He decided to use the opportunity to re-evaluate his life.  Deep down, he already knew he hated his job: the long hours, the stress, the short deadlines, the office politics were taring him apart.  It's a familiar story to many of us.

So he decided to change his life.  Over the next three years, he explored different complimentary therapies, looking for one that really inspired him.  When he found it, he left his job to study full time.  It was a truly brave, inspired decision: he was responding to his inner voice, which he had denied for so long in his previous career.  He's now over half-way through his degree and balancing setting up his business with study.

In our session last week, it became clear that he's so focused on making his career a success this time around, that he's trying too hard.  He's getting in his own way.

He's repeating the exact pattern he had in his previous job, with long hours, high stress-levels, and short deadlines.  Last week's session was a stark reminder that, 'no matter where we go, we take ourselves with us'.

Many business owners start business with the desire to create a greater work-life balance, only to discover, six months down the line, that they are working longer hours and doing less of the things they wanted to do.  The business owns them.

New beginnings are only new beginnings when we change our inner circumstances first - not our external circumstances.  Until we look at the patterns we hold inside us, we will unconsciously recreate them where ever we go, regardless of what we are doing.

I've known many business owners who say "Once I've signed this deal', I'll spend more time with the family... go fishing... take the time to meet someone special..." Yet they never do it.

The secret is simple: do what you mean to do.  Don't plan to do it.  Do it.

The means are the end.  The destination we arrive in, cannot be different from the path we travel to get there.

We do not achieve a goal and then transform into the person we wish to be.  We have to live that process of transformation, day-in day-out.  Only then, can we be sure that our dreams become reality, because we have created the habits that support that dream along the journey.

*Not his real name.