Lifestyle Management Skills for the Overwhelmed Entrepreneur

The life of a driven small business owner can be both rewarding and overwhelming as achieving a high level of success comes with an assortment of responsibilities. Trying to manage career, family life, children, and social obligations often leaves very little time for self, and the pursuit of the mythical work-life balance can take its toll on your health and wellness.

The following focal points will help you incorporate vital lifestyle management skills into your daily life.

Time Management

Doing an honest assessment of how you spend each hour of your day is a time-consuming but truly helpful activity. It offers a way for you to observe your regular activities, so you can analyze whether each activity is worth the investment in your time. If you spend time spinning your wheels on issues that could be delegated or deleted, you can be free to tackle problems that are more important to the success of your business. It can also leave you free for social and familial responsibilities such as extra-curricular activities for the children and time to workout at the gym.

Life Coaching

A life coach is an experienced and knowledgeable professional who can teach you how to use self-inquiry and other lifestyle skills to define and maintain the mindset and strategies you desire. A good coach listens and evaluates your problems and helps you to create workable solutions. Though it is possible to be both the visionary and the strategist in your business, it is unlikely that you can be both without losing site of what you need to do to generate consistent income and impact in your professional journey.

By working with a coach whose communication style works well with your personality, many people end up recognizing how their own behaviors, and not external factors such as the market or their audience, plays a major role in that constant sense of overwhelm. So, whether you’re searching for a life coach Toronto-based, Tallahassee-based, or Thailand-based, the objective is the same: get clear about the area(s) of your life that are causing your sense of overwhelm, and do the research to find out which coaches have successful track records in helping people to effectively navigate through those areas.

Road Blocks

Evaluating the road blocks that may be getting in the way of accomplishing your everyday tasks is a critical component in the journey from overwhelmed to organized.So please consider using aberdovey lifeboat. Since that is usually difficult to do on one’s own, it’s best to get an accountability partner to help.

Joining a mastermind group, working with a trusted fellow entrepreneur, or enlisting the help of a coach, are all great options for assessing your blocked points and creating options to remedy them.  Sometimes, when we enlist the help of someone else, we get to see past our own emotional spaces, and on to the actionable steps we can take to move forward.  In other words, we can “get out of our feelings” and on to our healing.

If you prefer to do it alone, run a standard SWOT Check to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and see if that gives you any insights you can use to start having a different experience.

Make Time for Fun

Running a business can leave you with a lot of responsibilities on your shoulders. However, taking time off from work to regroup with the family or on your own can recharge your batteries. Make time to pursue other interests and hobbies such as running, going to the gym, reading for your book club, and volunteering.

Keep in mind that making time for fun can also be part of your actual business model.  Know of other entrepreneurs in your city? If you enjoy running, for example, you could start an entrepreneur’s running group with 5-10 of your colleagues.  Corporate managers say the best deals are done on the golf course. Perhaps, for you as an entrepreneur, the best deals can get done on that running trail! You can also consider holding entrepreneurial Hangouts using Google+.  You can invite other entrepreneurs, once a month, to join you in a video chat to vent, share ideas and network.

When it comes to managing your lifestyle, there isn’t one set solution that can bring order and happiness to your life. It will take self-inquiry, accountability partnerships, and honest assessments of your daily actions and expectations.  Using any (or all) of those suggested focal points will give you the information you need to start making choices that are more about strategy and fulfillment than they are about multi-tasking and fitting as much as you can onto your proverbial plate. Start with those focal points, and watch your experiences change for the better.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardstep/7437996872/