You know how to make money doing what you love. But. Your dream also burns you out.
You often feel tired and like there is “never enough time”. You’re frustrated, fed up of hustling and of working so very hard.
I know. I’ve been there! I felt like I knew how to make money, but it was really hard.
I was burning the candle at both ends.
And yes. It was exhausting!
There was something I needed to change. The trouble was, I had no idea what it was!
And then, one day, I LITERALLY burned out. I fainted in the Church at my friend’s wedding, and spent two miserable weeks in bed.
But guess what. Things changed (Read: I changed).
Today, I work with gorgeous clients who are getting life-changing results and I feel deeply valued.
As well as growing my business with absolute ease and grace, I am living my dream lifestyle.
I feel good having found my balance again. I have plenty of time for myself, including my self-care and for all those people and things closest to my heart.
So today, I wanted to share a few things with you that helped me get to this amazing place of ease and flow. Here goes!
1. Decide to be at ease & create a new story.
When you’re working so very hard, you can find yourself stuck in that cycle of ‘never enough time’. You’re frustrated and find yourself working harder and harder, just trying to keep afloat.
That story of ‘never enough time’ and ‘hard work’, is not serving you. Instead decide to be at ease. Let go of the frustration and hard work.
Start telling yourself a new story where everything is always working out for you and growing your business is easy and fun. You’re working in a way that’s perfect for you so it energises you and lights you up. This will start to become your new reality.
2. Swap hustle for inspired action.
It can be easy to get into the habit of working down an extremely long to do list, which just seems to grow. One of my clients even had a to-do corner — Talk about setting yourself up to fail before you’ve even started!
Having all that ‘stuff’ to do means you’re never fully present, as your mind is half on the next task. You find yourself working flat out just to try to keep on top of everything. The cycle then repeats.
Take step one a bit further. There is power in decision. So decide to end the hustle and take inspired action instead. How?
Try this visualisation exercise: Sit quietly for a few minutes at the beginning of each work day. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Imagine you are at ease and everything is working out for you. See yourself in the picture and imagine how it feels to be fully aligned doing what you love. Listen to the sounds around you and notice what you can see. Really feel into it for a few minutes.
Then ask: ‘What should I focus on today?’ You might hear — take the day off, focus on generating calls or finish your new opt-in. Whatever it is, do that first and the rest will follow.
3. Write down your ideal week & start living it.
This is something that everyone talks about, but not many people actually do! However, it is life changing. Take your power back today by deciding how YOU would absolutely love your week to look. Be sure to include your social activities, such as date nights and also time for self-care e.g. a manicure or massage.
A great thing to do is to have themed days where you have one main focus. For example:
Monday — Get in Touch with My Business Day
Tuesday — Content Creation Day
Wednesday — Coaching Day
Thursday — Coaching Day
Friday — VIP Days or a Play Day
Then take your ideal week and actually start living it! You have the power to design and live the life you’ve dreamt about for so long.
4. Focus on your 3 (maximum 4) key money-making activities.
With so much going on it can be easy to fall into firefighting mode, trying to deal with everything as soon as it comes in. You feel like you’re constantly hustling and more and more comes in. STOP.
a) Write down all the activities you are doing in a week and identify your 3 or 4 key money making activities. These are the activities that when you do them consistently bring you clients and/or money. So it could be Mindset, Energy, Sales, Marketing… Commit to taking actions in each of your top 3 (maximum 4) areas every day. Then consider anything else to be a bonus. It really takes the pressure off, takes you out of hustle mode and enables you to take back control of your days.
b) Make a quadrant and prioritise all of your activities for the week, as follows:
Category 1. Urgent and Important (put your 3 key money making activities here).
Category 2. Urgent Not Important.
Category 3. Important (not urgent)
Category 4. Not urgent and not important.
Once you have done this put all actions into your diary except for those in category four. We’ll cover those in the next step.
5. Spend more time in your area of brilliance.
We all have things that when we do them time flies right? Well these activities are most likely in your zone of genius or your area of brilliance. You feel good, inspired and it’s easy. Note them down.
We also have things that when we do them time literally drags by so slowly and it’s soooo painful and draining. These are activities that are so far out of our area of brilliance they are really hard work. Note them down now. These draining activities along with those in category 4 (not urgent and not important) in the previous step can either be removed from your activities or delegated.
This frees up your time for more activities in your area of brilliance where you’re working with grace and ease.
6. Create your dream team. We can have it all but we can’t do it all!
A lot of us women grew up thinking we had to be independent and do everything ourselves. And because of our nurturing natures we look after everyone else. Until one day you think to yourself: ‘What about me?’
Learning to offload and delegate, means being vulnerable and asking for help. This can be uncomfortable. But when you do it, you’ll open yourself up to a whole new world of freedom and ease. Because that’s how a Balanced Millionista thinks.
Can you imagine the Queen trying to run the whole country on her own?! Of course not! She’ll offload pretty much everything so that’s who we want to be: A Balanced Millionista who thinks like a Queen.
We have already identified your areas of brilliance and those activities that drain you. Now ask yourself:
a) ‘In which areas of my life and business do I need help most right now?’
b) ‘Who can I ask for help right now?’
c) Create your dream team and hire the first person. (Hint: start with a cleaner or a Virtual Assistant for a couple of hours a week.)
Surrounded by your dream team, you will start to feel fully supported and the release of energy you’ll experience is amazing.
7. Take time to recharge and boost your energy.
In order for everything to flow beautifully and with ease in our lives and businesses, it’s essential to keep our energy levels high. One way to do this is to implement excellent self-care. Make a daily 10 minute (at least), non-negotiable appointment with yourself for self-care or ‘me-time’. You can call it CEO or Team meeting.
Do some breathing, stretching, yoga poses, walk around the block, star jumps, skipping, listen to some good music or get creative. It doesn’t matter what you do, just make it non-negotiable. And do something that makes you feel good and re-energises you.
It’s impossible to keep our energy levels high all the time, so we need to take time to recharge. When you’re in a good place and your energy is high, you’ll find you are more productive, able to make the best use of your time and you’ll find yourself staying longer in flow. This means you can create from a place of good energy, meaning more consistent sales and growth with ease and grace.
That’s it. That’s what I did. You?
Originally published at medium.com