Posts tagged Commitments
Beware of Self-Sabotage! A Warning for Entrepreneurs
Sep 30th
Do you sabotage yourself?? Think about this: Isn’t planning too much and over-extending, a form of self-sabotage?
As an entrepreneur, you are interested in many different areas but if you continue over-committing, you will hurt your business and your health.
Do you over-commit, because each pretty, shiny new idea sounds soooooo good? Then, when you fail to accomplish all of it, do you beat yourself up about it; feel like a failure, or at the very least, think of yourself as not very good at what you do?
Youhave created this stressful situation.
If you don’t take care of yourself, if you let the stress of trying to do too much continue, you will not have a healthy life or business.
Here are some examples of self-sabotage:
You decide that you need to start networking more. You begin accepting every invitation, to every event going on in the area. You are frantic once you start doing this, and do not relax enough to truly get to know anyone at any gathering. You get tired, because you are driving somewhere every day, and other commitments are suffering. You moan, “Networking is too much work! I am not good at this!”You have a project. You decide that you will commit the morning to it. The phone rings, and you answer what turns out to be a very long call. You finish the call and you have lost your focus. You throw up your hands and cry,” I will never get this done!”You need to re-prioritize.
It isn’t a matter of re-prioritizing the “to-do” list. It is a matter of re-prioritizing your life list.
List what is important to you.Put these items in order of importance.Look carefully at your top three. Are these the items that support you financially and emotionally? (Health should be included as one of the top three, because if you don’t take care of this, everything else will suffer.)To successfully stop the self-sabotage, you will have to change the way you have ordered your life up to now. Whenever you need to make a decision concerning the expenditure of your time, look at your life list. Will the activity support those items?
You need to recognize the fatigue and the crankiness that are symptoms of overload and stress. You must constantly re-evaluate and re-focus. Change takes time. You start with changing your thoughts, and this will lead to changing your actions.
One final note: Do not let yourself speak negatively about yourself. Remind yourself that you are an entrepreneur with many interests. That’s not a bad thing to be!
Time Management Tip – How To Deal With Time Vampires
Sep 30th
Time vampires are people; they can be difficult clients, co-workers, or relatives who take up a lot of your valuable time. They always have complaints, questions or they bother you with futilities. It does not avail you anything, try to avoid them as much as you possibly can.
Relationships that can move through arguments and challenging circumstances grow in productivity and trust. Dealing with these people will surely test your patience and perseverance so you have to learn the tools to understand the process of conflict resolution, from building clarity and mutual understand, to working with emotion and judgment.
Be calm, be patient, and be clear. Be explicit, and be very clear with the client, about everything. The more information given to the client in writing, the less likely there will be misunderstandings.
Be clear with the client about the expectations you have of the client regarding the client’s treatment of you and the treatment of your staff.
Be sure the client understands whom to deal with on which issues.If there is someone in your workplace who is driving you crazy then you should know how to deal with him. Difficult people exist at work, in all facets of life, and they come in every variety. And it is much tougher when they personally attack you or damage your professional standing.
While you probably can’t change such person, you can avoid being the victim by doing the following things:
- Identify problem people- Learn to know when a colleague is “toxic”. They must be those who talk constantly and never listen while others must always have the last words. Some coworkers fail to keep commitments while others criticize anything that they did not create themselves.
- Assess your situation- Take a deep breath and try to understand exactly what is happening to you. Realize that you are not alone.
- Take concrete action- Once you are fully aware of what is happening, let the coworker in question know that you are on to his or her game and that you will escalate it to a higher authority if necessary. Make sure to take action swiftly. It’s far better to tackle the problem while you can maintain some objectivity and emotional control.? Don’t sink to their level- You have to avoid doing dysfunctional approaches in dealing with them like sending anonymous notes, gossiping about the person, bad-mouthing him or her to the boss.
Dealing with a problem relative is a whole different beast rather than having difficulties with clients and coworkers.
A relationship that makes you feel violate isn’t healthy. You have to assert yourself to restore the balance.
Make sure you make your way in talking and discussing the problem with the person concerned.
Let him or her know you are bothered with what he or she does. Knowing where the problem rooted from will certainly help you in indicating what you necessarily have to do to solve the conflict.
If the person refuses to change, think deeply about your relationship with him or her.
You might find that you harbor one or more beliefs that perpetuate the problem. If your boundaries are reasonable, and the person is either unwilling or incapable of complying with them, you’re done because in most situations it would be foolish to continue such a relationship.
It will erode your self-respect and certainly affect your work.
You don’t want that, do you?
