As an entrepreneur, things can get busy. Your business is running smoothly and growing day by day, but behind the smiles and extraordinarily vigorous days, it often might feel a tad overwhelming. If this was meant to be an easy journey, everyone would be doing it, but it doesn’t mean you have to feel like this long term. In a study by Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, 24% of entrepreneurs were worried and 45% were stressed. When you sense any sort of overwhelm or large stress levels taking hold, it’s time to reassess what you can do differently. This is the time to refocus and press intensely on the hard-reset button. Take a look at these suggestions if you’re ready for that all important change.
Take A Step Back And Prepare For a Reset
When you’re running your own business, you may find that an ‘off’ button doesn’t really exist. The phone is always on for calls – even when you’re not at the office -, travel is almost weekly, you’re attending network events on weekends and speaking at local business conferences whenever there is a spare date in the calendar. It can be enjoyable, yes, but also exhausting. Your body needs rest, and it isn’t being provided with any opportunity to do so. Sound familiar? When it gets to this point, take a step backwards. Turn down anything outside of traditional work hours for the moment, let your team know your phone will be off for a day or two. Let your body get the relax time it is craving; have some full on ‘you’ time. It may sound like an impossibility, but when will work ever stop being ‘on’? Never, hence the need for shutdown even just temporarily. Whatever you do that helps you relax – whether it be television, sports, reading – do it. You will reap the benefits and your body will begin to reset.
Take Some Time Off
If a hard reset demands more than just a day off, it might be time for a vacation. These are easy to forget about or easily overlook the concept of. Webster’s definition is: “a period of time that a person spends away from home, school, or business usually in order to relax or travel”. If it’s been a while since you had one of these, then stress and overwhelm could have definitely taken hold and you could be overworking. Even if you love your job with a fiery passion – and as an entrepreneur, this is very likely – the repetitiveness or just overload of the workday can be enough to drive you into strained mode. It doesn’t make you a bad entrepreneur by any means, it just means you need a reset. A vacation allows the mind time to relax, your body to reset and your general sense of wellbeing to return to its core. You’ll return to work with a clear mind and a real sense of determination, something that can easily wane if time off is never provided.
Delegate And Outsource
When you’re so busy that you barely have time to eat between waking up and going to bed, it’s time to delegate tasks and responsibilities to take some of the load off you. This can be challenging for some at first as they struggle with delegation, but the results seen from allowing someone else to take some of your workload are phenomenal. A Virtual Assistant is one option that many entrepreneurs look to. Perhaps you don’t necessarily have the need for a full time staff member, and that’s where outsourcing to a VA is ideal; you can choose a monthly time plan and structure that is tailored to what you’re looking for, and work with a talented Virtual Assistant who is trained in the areas you need help. Areas where they can help include executive admin, project management, email marketing and book-keeping; tasks that free up your time elsewhere.
Reassess
With all of the three suggestions above combined, ensure that whatever you’re doing to achieve a hard reset allows time to reassess where you’re going from this point. Perhaps you’re looking at all three and are struggling with the notion of having to do any of them. Or maybe you’ve achieved a reset but want to ensure that what was achieved during your downtime is permanent. At the end of the day your business is your central focus, but never at any point should running your business be at the sacrifice of your health. Without that, there won’t be any business at all. Take time to look at what can be done permanently to achieve a healthy balance of everything, whether it be outsourcing or taking a vacation once a year. The consequences will be worth their weight in gold.
