Striking out on your own and setting up a new business can be mentally, physically and emotionally challenging. You will need to be both resilient and resourceful. Developing your own Health and Wellbeing Toolkit can make a huge difference to your eventual success.
Developing tools to help with decision-making is essential. You will inevitably encounter situations where there are multiple paths you could take. You may have lots of different ideas swirling around in your head about the impact those paths could have on your business.
From an energy point of view, this can be exhausting. Consciously and subconsciously, your mind will be picking away at these ideas, reviewing the different options. This continuous low-level mental activity can be stressful and take up energy, which can ultimately be draining for your body and which may leave you feeling tired, irritable and out-of-sorts.
Focus Wheel
This is a well-established coaching technique. Using the Focus Wheel allows you to:
Get ideas out of your head and onto a piece of paper, freeing up head space and boosting energy
Evaluate your thoughts in a visual way, so that you can ‘see’ the way forward
You need a pen and a piece of paper and to draw a pizza.
Say you’re considering a number of different ideas for the type of business you could start. Each idea has its pros and cons, you just don’t know how to weigh them all up.
Draw your pizza shape then label each slice of pizza with the name of an idea. Create as many slices as you need.
Ask yourself this key question about each idea: How excited am I about this idea?
Rate it out of 10, where 1 equals ‘I’m not excited at all’ and 10 equals ‘I’m bouncing with excitement’.
Stick with the number that first pops in your mind. You’re tapping into your gut reactions, don’t overthink it.
Identify the 2/3 ideas that excite you the most. Ignore the rest for now.
Tapping into your excitement is vital. Running your own business can be hard work. If you don’t feel excited about what you will be doing, it’s unlikely to be sustainable, as your enthusiasm for it will run out. And besides, why would you choose to do something that doesn’t excite you?
Now that you have your top 2/3 ideas, we need to repeat the process for each idea to drill down further and evaluate the pros and cons.
Draw a new pizza, and onto each slice name all the pros and cons of that idea. Then ask yourself: How significant is this issue? Rate each out of 10; 1 = not significant at all, 10 = highly significant.
Remember to go with your first number, don’t overthink it.
Again, you will find that there are 2/3 significant pros or cons with each idea.
Drill down again, i.e. repeat this process with each of the 2/3 significant pros or cons
Using this process and getting to the heart of an issue will give you clarity. You will then be able to make a decision about which idea feels right to run with and which areas you need to address in order to succeed.
Why bother doing any of this?
As human beings, we have evolved over millennia to deal with emergency situations. We have an excellent fight-flight-freeze mechanism that helps us cope with short term, stressful emergencies as a result.
Sadly, we have not yet developed an effective mechanism that deals with long-term, persistent, low-level stress, anxiety or worry. I’m talking about the niggling, persistent stuff that just sits there, day after day, wearing us down. Left unchecked, this energy draining contributes to all sorts of physical, mental and emotional issues, and it can eventually lead to chronic fatigue.
Working with a Focus Wheel is a great way of stepping in and dealing with recurring thoughts that are consciously and subconsciously causing you worry, stress or anxiety. You can redirect your energy and interrupt the behaviours that contribute to fatigue.
Another benefit that working with a Focus Wheel brings is a deeper connection to your gut instinct, to your intuition. This may not be an aspect of yourself that you have consciously developed, or even been aware of. You should never underestimate how important and powerful your instinctive reactions are. Your intuition is a survival mechanism and a great resource to tap into.
As a small business owner, you need to take your health and wellbeing as seriously as your business plan and cashflow forecasts. You ARE your business. If your health and wellbeing became compromised, your business would be, too. Developing your toolkit and boosting your resilience are vital elements towards the success of your business.
Combining Business with Health and Wellbeing
Fatigue is often an indicator that all is not well with our health and wellbeing. If not addressed, it can develop into a chronic, long-term fatigue condition. I support people to develop their individual Health and Wellbeing Toolkits, so that they remain physically, emotionally and mentally healthy. Having the skills to recover and channel your energy in a positive direction can be life-changing.
The result of my work is that my clients can make the transitions they want to live full and happy lives.
Suzanne Smith