Self-Care is vitally important for all, and especially for those who run their own business or work outside of the home. Let me repeat, self-care is vitally important for all. Let me explain. I am a life coach, and how I open the gateway to new clients is with a complementary coaching session. During that session, almost every person I speak with sought out the complimentary session because of financial issues. What was right in front of their eyes was a crisis concerning their finances. Usually the crisis has been building for a considerable amount of time and currently they are looking at the possibility of losing their business, their home, and for some time they have been deceiving their family and themselves about the situation. Many times the situation is not that dire, but I have even had many people sign up for my marketing tele-classes for a business that is no longer viable. Often many are in the process of filing for bankruptcy or already have. Others are in the process of vacating a building, and other varieties of ways they are exiting their business in a less than successful manner. For these people this is a time of great fear, and great embarrassment in their lives.
During the course of the complimentary session, I find a majority of these people let their self-care go before the real money issues came about. They let their self-care go in order to have more time to chase after dollars, and yet the dollars ran in the other direction. Let me tell you why this happens. First, as most dogs can tell you, if they spoke our language, chasing is not about catching, it is about the thrill of the chase. Second, as each of these people let their self-care go, they began to feel worse and worse about themselves in little ways. As they skipped something that made them feel good, their attitude changed, pushing just a little of the positives in their daily lives away from them. As their self-care continues to dwindle their stress mounts, their energy and their health begin to fade. Their business starts to become a burden. They are not able to keep their focus and become reactive and more prone to putting out fires in their business rather than focus on the necessary actions they need to take to have a successful business. All their actions become fear related, their lack of confidence starts to show, and most people will not do business with them, and they are attracted to someone who takes care of himself or herself instead.
When I started my business, the platform I choose was on self-care, and self-care continues to be a big and important part of my platform today. The reason for that is it simply made since to me, that if I was not taking care of myself, then I could not know whom I was, not really. I was simply acting or reacting the way I have been taught throughout my life. If I wanted to know MY values, who I was with no labels, and build a strong personal foundation for me, those around me and my business, that self-care was where I needed to begin. From there I could define MY values and align my business with my values, and create my business plan. I think that most people listening can understand this and see how self-care supports their business, but let me take this a few steps further and then I will define what self-care is, because I think there is a misconception about the term ‘self-care’.
The majority of the people with whom I speak, do not know what their values are. When I ask many about their values, list their favorite cash assets or phases that define their current labels, such as family, friends. I hear things such as ‘Oh I value my home, my family, I love my car, it is so great and I have never had a problem with it, it never lets me down, and my husband’. Those are typical responses when I ask ‘what are your top 4 values’. As many of you know values are phrases that help you define whom you are no matter who is around you, who you are related to, what is in your bank account, or what you own. To make this clear, if someone is hard to deal with, we call him or her an ‘ass’. An ass without money is a bigger ass with money, the bigger they are the bigger an ass they become. So looking at the issues in our society right now, I think most people can put this example into use when looking at some of the less than popular choices some of the corporations and politicians are making right now. You recognize these people whose walls are crumbling down. People taking advantage of bailouts, people in the spotlight caught having affairs, and the other woes of the famous. What this all boils down to is that most people open a business, enter relationships, and step into big picture situations, creating dilemmas, because they do not know who they are. You cannot make a business, a relationship, or anything else work long term unless you know whom you are. Understanding that many people who open a business do it to make money, I think most people have a great misunderstanding as to what a business can do for them, and who works for what. If your goal is just to make money, then go out and get a job. The fact is that many business owners could make more money working part time for MacDonald’s than they can in their business. If they do not know who they are, and do not know what inspires them they will not be able to sustain and grow a business. You have to have a passion for your business to keep you going, and many times the flames of passion are short term and burn out, just like a crush, or an infatuation.
The third thing that most people do not have when I talk to them is a business plan, or if they do, they wrote it just for getting funding and do not take it seriously for running their business and defining the actions they need to take to make their business successful. There are many resources to fix this issue, once the self-care and values issues are address, and this by far is the easiest one to fix. Okay, so what we have are people trying to run a business and manage their own lives who do not take care of themselves, do not know who they are and don’t have a plan. This huge problem grows and grows. You may be laughing now, because this sounds very ridiculous, but if you are honest, many of you have just heard me define your life and your business. Now that you know what the problem is, go to my website or email me and we will set up a complimentary session and help you get things together for yourself. It is the first step and it is just that easy to get started moving in the right direction to live the life you love.
Now let us define self-care because there are many misconceptions about what self-care is, even amongst coaches, and others who provide aspects of self-care, but not the whole picture. Self-care is everything you do to take care of you. It includes, grooming, hygiene, health, fitness, nutrition, stress elimination, finances, image, dress, dental, and everything else from the simple daily routines to major procedures you may need. It includes gratitude for what you have, and rituals to help you focus on what you want to improve in your life. If you are great at diet and exercise, but have a filthy car inside that no one can see unless they are getting into your car, then you are great in one area of self-care and not so great in another. People can define what their self-care needs are for themselves. For example, I do not go get my nails done. I do not like having my nails done, I think it hurts sometimes and the idea of getting my nails done causes me stress, so that is not in my definition of self-care. I also have a weight issue, something I cannot hide, and this is where I am not in integrity with my self-care. I cannot say that I can self-define that I can skip this issue in self-care, because the consequences are too great for other aspects of my life and other self-care topics. I think most of you see the point I am making. Self-care is about taking care of the whole you. What it is not is just fitness, or diet, nor is it about ‘work-life balance’, which is what I heard so much of when I first started coaching, ‘oh, you must talk about that squishy topic of work, life balance’. Self-care is the very bottom line of the foundation on which you build you life and business. This is why self-care is so very important, and why I started my business on this platform, to help you and to help me.
I hope that today you decide that you are important enough to take better care of yourself no matter how well you are practicing self-care currently.
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