Equipped, Encouraged and Engaged

What are you proactively doing to: 

1. Become Equipped
2. Feel Encouraged 
3. Stay Engaged

I had many conversations with business owners as they start a New Financial Year, and the two most dominant answers I received when I asked “how are you going?" were "Busy" and "Tired".

This July I reread “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Steve Covey. The two habits that slip most often in people's lives when they are busy and tired are habits 5 and 7. Habit 5 is ‘Seek first to understand and then be understood’ and Habit 7 is ‘Sharpen the saw’. 

So why do these two habits slip first?

When we are busy and tired we don’t want to take or make time to understand others, we just want them to understand us and do what they are told! We don’t have time to slow down and hear them out. We are running so fast that other people and what they want or need fall victim to our busyness rather than being an asset to our business.

When we don’t "Sharpen the saw", we are expending effort with blunt or dull equipment and we become too exhausted from working twice as hard. 

These two habits are two of the most vital habits we need for maintaining energy and relationships and being at the top of our game. To deliberately let them slip hurts us rather than helps us. If we want to stop being busy and tired we need to recapture these two habits and cherish them in our lives. 

The three vital ingredients, “Equipped, Encouraged and Engaged”, often fall and fail in the life of people who are busy and tired.

Being Equipped is connected to sharpening the saw, Encouragement is connected to seeking first to understand and then be understood, and having Engaged people around us and supporting us will help us carry the load and we will be less tired and less busy. 

What habits have you let slip which keep you on fire and engaged? Recapture them and “Planalife you want to live in through a Business on Purpose”.   

Once we discover we are doing something that is hurting us, “Change” should be our response not more of the “Same". Something changes WHEN something changes. Reconnect with habits 5 and 7 and take control of your life again. Circumstances often change when we change from the inside out. What happens to us is not as important as what happens through us. 

Every difficulty we face can stop with us. When we carry forward or take home our problems and challenges we let our families be affected by someone or something that has nothing to do with them. We are perpetuating a problem rather than purifying or filtering the problem. What if we could neutralise the effect of these issues and be the one who changes the circumstances through maturity and emotional intelligence? 

If you are busy and tired all the time you will have less capacity to absorb issues and problems and are far more likely to react rather than respond. So, you may be at the point where “busy and tired” has become your normal. It’s not normal! It is time for a change. Many people I meet who are busy all the time are feeling sick and tired of being sick and tired. 

It may be time to plan your life as well as your business. Have you completed a plan of how you will relax, replenish, refresh and renew yourself over the next twelve months? Do you know how to refuel yourself and wash your thoughts just like you wash your body and clothes? Each morning do you carry a residual of yesterday? 

It is so important to face a day with a clean sheet. Free from guilt, regret, tension, frustration and yesterday's mess and anxiety. To look forward to this day being the first day of the rest of your life. Developing the right layer of stress called EUSTRESS is a very important key that opens this type of life. 

If you are having difficulty with this I would love to have a conversation to help you plan a life you want to live in and love living life. 

If you feel CAPTIVE to your current life, you will develop COPING mechanisms. You need to discover how to CHANGE so you can live life with COURAGE and CONFIDENCE. We have many tools that can help you. 

Please let me know what you think. I would love to hear your thoughts… Ian