But if you are like many of the folks I’m talking to these days, the year has been a challenging one to say the least.

I know entrepreneurs who have lost their confidence, gotten jobs to supplement their business earnings, and are having a hard time seeing past this moment in time.

Watch  this video as I share my ideas about some mindset tips to help you stay focused and keep going.  And I’d love you to put your ideas on how you stay inspired in the comment section.  We are all in it together, so let’s share and help each other.

And if you can’t see the video – click on this link:    http://bit.ly/6KMPmb

A room full of grizzly looking, sleep deprived entrepreneurs sitting around wondering what happened to their dreams of success.

One by one they start to share their stories:

“Hi, I’m Amy.  I am an email addict.”  I sit down to work on the projects that would make me money, but every time that email alert pops in, I’m bouncing to check on who could have possibly contacted me.  So by the end of the day, I’m drained, overwhelmed, and have accomplished nothing!.”

Next is Dave, who has the tell tale dark circles under his eyes.  “Hi I’m Dave, and my life has become unmanageable as a result of the distraction of email.  My problem is that I can’t sleep until I know every email is done, sent, or responded to.  Its freaky…in fact, if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, or can’t sleep, I will head straight to my computer to finish off the email that came in when I was away.  And can I share my biggest shame?  I secretly get a little bummed when it’s about one in the morning and I hit the send/receive button and nothing comes.  I’m a mess.”

But the saddest one of all is Ray, who sits in the corner, barely able to hold his head up.  “Hi, my story is sort of similar but it’s not just email that’s causing me to get off track and waste hours and hours and hours.  Mine is that damn Facebook and Twitter.  In the old days I’d give myself about thirty minutes to ’surf the web’ as we used to call it back then, but with the inventions like Tweetdeck, I’m screwed!  Now it takes all the energy I can muster to get anything done.  And you want to know the worst part of it?  As a coach, when I’m supposed to be listening to my clients on the phone, I secretly pop in and check on the tweets while I should be listening to them.  They are paying me good money, and I can’t even be present because I’m so addicted to distractions.  What they heck should I do?”

Now obviously this is a fictitious “12-Step meeting for email addicts” but many of you will read your own story in the three characters above.

The fist thing I want you to know is that you are probably (unfortunately) among the norm.  We love distractions!  Our cell phones have alarms, our Outlook tasks pop in to alert us, we get reminders of teleclasses, and all sorts of things that intrude on our space.  So what’s a ‘focus challenged’ entrepreneur to do about all this?  I have a few suggestions below.

1.  Turn off the email alert -yes….in Outlook you can stop the function that tells you every time an email pops in.  You may notice a huge void, but that’s the goal!

2.  Discover the cost of being interrupted constantly – I recently got ’spanked’ by my VA.  OK, not literally, but she scolded me because I haven’t yet contacted all the affiliates I need to promote my upcoming Happy in Business Mastermind program.  See I can tell myself the story that I’m so busy, but the reality is that the distraction of email/social media probably cost me at least a weeks worth of work in connecting with people that I need to.

3.  Schedule chunks of time for distractions – Give yourself certain hours where you’ll be on Facebook, certain times you’ll tweet, and certain times you will check your email.  It really is about discipline.   Have you planned your time?  Do you set up a schedule the night before of what needs to be accomplished, or do you just jump on the computer and just start responding to emails?  That is the kiss of death for any hope of productivity, so START NOW.  The deal is that you control your time, and not other people’s calls, requests, or emails.  Think like a singulary focused million dollar business owner.  Would they ‘twitter’ their time away?  Probably not.

4.  Purge, purge, purge -  Do you really need 67 ezine subscriptions?  Take one whole week and everything that you would be tempted to say, “I’ll get to this later” GET RID OF!!!! You can always re-subscribe, but the enormity of getting hundred and hundred of emails a day leads to overwhelm.  (Don’t want to hurt someones feelings by unsubscribing?  Here’s a trick – set up a message rule in Outlook to send their email directly to the delete folder.  That way you don’t have to see it, and they don’t have to know you left their list.)

5. Have an assistant handle your email -This is where I am.  And truthfully, I am FIGHTING this one!  Because I admit that I’m like a crazy email junkie- the more the better in my book.  But I know what it costs me in terms of productivity.  So next week my inbox will be managed by Renee, my ass-kicking VA.  Actually the email won’t even come in to my Inbox.  It may take a few weeks to sort out, but she’ll only send me the high priority items, and the rest will be handled.  Out of sight, out of mind is the key.  Why did I finally surrender here?  Because I know that I will be so much better of a business owner when I’m not distracted and hitting that send/receive button every five minutes.  I’ll be able to do my weekly newsletter, write more articles, and gosh…maybe even have a life.  What a beautiful thing!

Those are my five tips.  Shoot me an email and let me know if you have any other ideas.  (And yeah, I’ll tell Renee to deliver that one to me!)

Blessings,

That’s all it took to turn her around.  One sentence.  Five well chosen words.  Here’s the story.

I was doing a group coaching call the other night when one of the women asked a question.  Now truthfully, this woman is amazing at what she does, but tends to ’spin around’ in her head a lot, so gets herself overwhelmed.

She’s a consultant and she asked me about how she should handle a proposal.  Now normally, I’d jump in and coach her on the how…but not today.

See, my intuition told me to go in a different direction.  So instead of answering her, I simply said:

“You know what to do.”

She missed it at first, so tried to get me again to tell her how to handle the proposal, but I wouldn’t budge.

“You know what to do.”

What happened next was amazing.  She stopped, got back into remember who she was, and immediately had a solution.

The reason I share this, my dear readers, is that the breakthrough for her occurred when someone who knew and respected her, “called her out” to be more in the strong, brilliant and resourceful person she was.

My coaching challenge for you this time is to make sure you have the people in your life who can give you this kind of feedback.  The folks who don’t let you spin around in confusion or overwhelm, but stop and remind you of your magnificence.

It’s all good!

And by the way, in June I’ll be opening up my Happy In Business Mastermind Coaching groups.  Stay tuned….

Ah, the circle of life. I’m in it. Really working on ‘birthing’ many new elements of my business, and at the same time looking at the upcoming death of my beloved dog, Colby.

In my last newsletter, I mentioned that he had surgery and now he’s having complications which are causing him to slowly deteriorate. It’s been tiring and sad, and again…the stuff of life.

So what do you do if you are ready to go full steam ahead with your goals and then Life throws you a curve ball? Here are my ideas about how to get through with grace…

1. Accept the situation. If you are like me, you can power through anything. We entrepreneurs sometimes thrive on a bit of change and adversity, but running a million miles an hour to get all your tasks done will only cause you more problems later on. The first thing you must do is to accept the emotional, physical, mental or spiritual challenge before you. It took a month of sleepless nights and finally hitting the wall of overwhelm for me to finally realize just how hard handling all of Colby’s health challenges has been.

2. Give yourself the space you need. Is it a good cry? Time to get mad? A night at home with a glass of wine just chilling with a friend? When life gives you a challenging situation, you need even more time to recharge. Tune into your intuition and notice what you desire. What would ‘fill you up’ so you can keep moving through this? This is the time for some self care.

3. Be realistic about your availability. One of my clients lost her dad last year. She spent many hours taking him to doctors’ appointments and was very loving in the way she devoted herself to him in his last months. But her business didn’t take off the way that she had hoped it would. There were many times she would beat herself up for being behind in her marketing tasks, or the calls she was supposed to make. I kept reminding her that taking care of her dad WAS her business right now. So we worked out what she could realistically expect of herself with all the things she was dealing with. The key here is gentleness…

4. Don’t compare yourself to others. Very often if you have a value of putting family first, you can have a successful business, but it will take you longer. So many of my mom-preneur clients compare themselves to the single guy who has no ties and can work 60 hour weeks. Sorry, but if you are going to have a values-driven business, comparison here will only make you fall short. If you are tempted, compare yourself with how in alignment you are being with your own values, and not someone else’s idea of how many hours you should work.

5. Clear your plate. If you are dealing with something ‘big’ then right now is not the time to be doing anything other than what you have to. Really find the places to delegate, say no, or postpone commitments you have made. When I had my ‘melt down’ I realized that trying to be in a 5 day intensive coaching program was just adding to my stress, so I let it go. Did I feel any guilt for quitting? Not really because I felt myself relax and find more peace in that moment. That’s how you know you have made the right d ecision.

6. Get support. A biggie in my book! Who is in your life that you can turn to? Who can help you remember your strengths, show you what is working, and navigate ways through the overwhelm? That’s one of the biggest gifts my clients take away is the knowing that they aren’t alone as I shine a light for them during these times. Another thing to consider is to make sure you are extra aware of sleeping, prayer, exercise, eating well, and finding joy where you can.

7. Stay in the moment. This will end. Everything does. It’s only when we forget that and lose our perspective that we suffer. You can handle anything in the moment. Continue to bring yourself back to right now, and not some time in the future. And if you want to strengthen this concept, read Byron Katie’s book, Loving What Is. One of my favorites.

So just know that you aren’t alone…we all go through times in life when we can rock and roll, and other times when we are stalled. Take the long view. Don’t go it alone, and hold on to your vision. You’ll make it through.

© 2008 Therese Skelly

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEBSITE? Please do! Feel free to reprint this article on your website, own newsletter or message boards as long as you include the following resource information:

©2008 Therese Skelly. Discover a simple, yet surprising secret to getting unstuck in your small business by visiting www.AcceleratingYourSuccess.com and requesting a free copy of the audio, Master Your Mindset to Be the Master of Your Business.

]]> http://acceleratingyoursuccess.com/happyinbusiness/2008/08/12/what-do-you-do-when-life-has-other-plans/feed/ 0 http://acceleratingyoursuccess.com/happyinbusiness/2008/08/03/what-are-you-putting-up-with/ http://acceleratingyoursuccess.com/happyinbusiness/2008/08/03/what-are-you-putting-up-with/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:27:33 +0000 Therese http://acceleratingyoursuccess.com/happyinbusiness/?p=6 I was going through some old articles that I wrote for the newsletter I was sending out years ago when I was doing more Life Coaching. The article below is kind of funny, but to the point about the cost of putting up with things that don’t serve us. Hope you enjoy and can find some things you can work on.

Why gravy????

I have really bad “carpet-karma.” There is a little girl named Kylie who will be able to go to Yale if she wants to because her carpet-cleaning dad is making so much $$ off of my carpet messes. We should really just put him on retainer. It used to be the two little boys who trashed the very light colored carpet. Now it’s the crazy dog. He’s five year old lab-dane mix, and neurotic as hell. He’s also not the “brightest bulb in the box” if you will, but he’s wonderful with the kids and really a great dog. It only took Colby about two years of living with us to learn that he could just stick his long snout into the garbage and get his fill of goodies.

This article isn’t really about my goofy dog or stained carpet, it’s about a coaching concept known as “tolerations.” This defines all the things in your home, Business, life, relationships and other areas that you tolerate. These little suckers drain your energy and keep you stuck.

After two years the goofball dog found the garbage. We kept it in one of the under the counter cabinets that had a baby lock on it from the previous owners of the home. You know, one of those little latch numbers. Since it was at least a decade old, it no longer latched. The garbage can lid had broken and had somehow gone missing, so dear sweet Colby found the way to quite an assortment of non-kibble goodies. Here’s where I demonstrate living with a huge pain-in-the-ass toleration.

For some reason Colby decided that he needed to eat his newly caught garbage in the dining room. (Guess he was attempting to be more civilized!) So he would drag all the food from the kitchen to the CARPETED dining room. And, wouldn’t you know…there was always gravy or ketchup involved! It was a vicious cycle. I’d get the carpet cleaned, and he’d smear gravy on it. There were even times that the carpet was still wet from getting cleaned earlier in the day, and Mr. “big-hunter” dog would find the remains of the plate of fries and ketchup the kids had had. Of course he chose to enjoy this in his dining room! I’d get nuts, and he’d keep breaking into the garbage until one magical day…I got rid of the toleration and got a new garbage can with a lid!!! WooHoo. It only took me months and months…and I called the dog “not the brightest bulb.” But that’s what tolerations do…you get so used to living with the annoyances and inconveniences, that you forget that there is light at the end of the freshly cleaned carpet!!!

It’s such a silly story, but we all have loads of this stuff we deal with. You could spend hours and hours going from room to room in your home and find all the little things that bug you, but lets look at your business. Where are you leaking energy? Here are a few things my clients have struggled with:

Clutter
Clients who are behind in paying
Technology that isn’t working properly
Assistants or employees not doing a good enough job
Working with Clients that aren’t a good fit

Well, this stuff drains your energy.

So often we overlook these little things but once you take care of them, you will notice an immediate difference. It’s like trying to listen to beautiful music and trying NOT to listen to the background noise of the TV in your kids’ room. You can’t fully enjoy where you are at because your “psychic energy” is tied up with tolerating the interference. Tolerations take up “room” in your head. As you walk through your house, notice how your attention is drawn to the stuff that is undone, broken, old, or just plain ugly! As you think about your business, pay attention to the nagging voices in your head of all the things that cause you stress. I want you to be “friction free” in that you can be in your home, business, relationships, and life without this stuff tugging at you.

Usually this concept both excites people and overwhelms them all at once. I ask my clients to do through each room of their house, their cars, their closets, and review relationships. The next task is to come up with lists of things to be corrected. Some are tiny and easy to do, while others will either take much work, much more time, or a bit more $$. After you have taken on your home, you start on your business tolerations.

So, where are you going to start? I bet as you read this article you can think of at least 10 things right off the bat. Here’s your assignment. Make the list, and commit to doing at least five things this week. Keep plugging away until you can feel the difference. You can also prioritize what you’ll do based on finishing a space or the ease or cost of the work that needs to be done. You can do it!!! And, you’ll be amazing at how much more energy you have and how much more productive you’ll feel!

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