Over eight years ago I began my journey of self-awakening. It was a time to reconnect with myself and start to lay the foundations of all the things that were important to me; to live a happy and fulfilling life that I was completely in control of.
At the time, I was living a 7am to 7pm working day in my family business. As an incredibly successful business at the time, money and profitability started to take precedence over the fun that we originally nurtured within the business. Money was initially acknowledged and enjoyed as the bi product of hard work. When this focus began to shift, so did my passion for it. It was creating stress, manifesting hostility and certainly some painful political and undiplomatic confrontations amongst the family as we each tried to steer the business in different directions.
That was my cue to take a break. I jumped on a plane to bella Italia where a friend that I was travelling with introduced me to an incredible author, a prolific man and someone who has continued on this journey with me to this day – Robin Sharma.
You may have been lucky enough to attend one of his conferences around the world or read one of his books like “The Monk who Sold His Ferrari”, “The Saint, The Surfer and The CEO” or “The Leader Who Had No Title”, all unique and incredible fables about the journey of life.
Robin Sharma is an incredibly successful man, at around $50 000 for a three hour gig, he is a highly paid, successful entrepreneur who would be the epitome of someone who lives a holistic, balanced, focused, happy and healthy life.
Imagine how someone as busy as Robin Sharma whose time is consumed hosting worldwide events, writing iconic and life changing books, filming new business coaching series for online, amongst I am sure a thousand things that are running behind the scenes, still takes the time every day to sit back, reflect and reconnect. He serves as an amazing guide, an incredible leader to us all that we DO have time, we all have 24 hours in a day, we just need to make the time, allocate the time and use it productively to get the most from each hour.
Time Management
One of Robin Sharma’s famous mantras that inspires me every day is “The things that get scheduled, are the things that get done”. The reason this quote really resonates with me is because of the importance do the things that are important to us is vital.
These days we’re often met with a predictable yet typically accurate response to the question, “How are you?” The answer includes variations that focus on “busy”, or “hectic” or “my life is crazy”. Why are we consumed in the chaos of our daily lives, caught up chasing the thousand things that we deem necessary to get done rather than focusing on the things that are truly important to get the ultimate results.
Life Balance
With ‘the important’ things in mind, I would love to start off with an introduction to the Life Balance Chart. The Life Balance chart was first introduced to me at a sales conference many years ago when we were each handed a single sheet of white paper and asked to draw a line down the middle (so here is your blank canvas, go ahead and draw a line down the middle). Then do the same horizontally. Then replicate a line across this axis again diagonally, until you end up with a large asterisk on your page consisting of four lines in eight pieces. Each line should be the same length so you can plot the numbers consecutively from one through to ten on each with zero in the middle axis, working your way outwards. Then label each line with one of the following 8 core elements of your life. Each line will have it’s own element at the tip.
1. Family
2. Relationship
3. Friends
4. Work
5. Finance
6. Health and Fitness
7. Learning and Development
8. Spirituality
Now, once you have each of these marked out on your page, start to assess where you are in your life today in relation to each of these points, giving each an honest rating.
Starting with family, think about your immediate and your extended family, and whatever family means to you. Now based upon self-reflection and where you stand in relation to your family, award a score from zero to ten and mark it with an astrix on your chart.
Work through each of the eight elements using the same scoring principle as above until you have eight astrixes marked out on the chart. Now in a circular motion, connect the astrixes. You will start to see which elements are imbalancing your circle – thus, your life. This activity will now help you Identify and recognize the top three elements that are disrupting equilibrium in your ‘life circle’. It guide and help you to make a decision to channel your focus on these elements as the most important aspects for change at this stage in your life in order to bring balance back to the circle, and to your life.
Your ideal is to have a full circle, whether the full circle links at each point through six or ten or even one- the number is irrelevant. The key is to be focused on creating a full circle bringing all elements of your life into equilibrium with the attention and focus they need.
Once you have recognized the top three elements creating imbalance in your life, write them down in the space below. Under each, I would like you to write a goal towards achieving more balance in this particular area for the next 90 days (three months). Ensure that the goal is not too vague, and it’s something that you can measure.
Here are some examples of Priority Goals that are measurable:
1. To develop a Business Plan to secure a Government Grant
2. To win a National Business Award for Excellence in….
3. To save $10 000 towards booking a European holiday
4. To connect to my family by having six family adventures booked
Now that these Priority Goals are in place, it’s time to pull them apart into manageable chunks or mini goals, and then into fortnightly or even weekly action plans targeted towards achieving these bigger goals.
To keep your goals focused and in check, set them in 90 day blocks. You can of course include bigger picture goals spanning three years, but work them backwards through two year targets, one year goals, nine month, six month and then three month goals all aligned along the path to achieving the big ones.
Connecting the dots
Keeping all the elements of your life connected is imperative to business success. One can’t be successful without the other- they coexist. How can you live a happy life filled with love and abundant with amazing relationships if 100% of your time and energy is focused on profits and building a successful business? Conversely, how can you have a successful and profitable business if you are completely burnt out, eating fast food on the run food and not re energizing and nourishing yourself with exercise and relaxation time? This is the root of disrupted equilibrium as identified in the Life Balance Chart.
Building a foundation
Only now that we have the base, the foundation and roots of your life stabilised are we able to successfully start to build the business. It’s an argument that I’ve repeated with my father for years about what the most important element of business is. His answer was always product, whereas mine was always people. The conversation generally started with a neutral question in the theme of, “How are you going to sell the product if you don’t have the right people?” Or, “How are you going to be able to manufacture a quality product for the right price without the right people managing the production and supply process?” Predictably an argument escalated with each of us trying to win the challenge as to why we thought one element was more important than the other.
For me, history has proven undisputedly that first and foremost having the right people in your business who reflect the company values, respect and follow the business culture, treat the business as their own, take responsibility, step up to make decisions and constantly challenge the status quo to get better results, are the key to driving a successful business.
Once you have the right people in place, equally as important in developing a successful business is constant and consistent training and development. Educating and growing your team’s mind, training them in new technology, about new ways of doing business in turn helps them to work more efficiently and effectively to be more productive in their role. This may be done through internal education and training programs or external courses, seminars, workshops or a combination of both. I highly recommend a combination of both, as you are able to teach and nurture your team within your business frame and cultural paradigm, but also have external influences and different perspectives to bring back into your business.
No matter whether you are an apprentice, a manager, senior executive, entrepreneur or a business leader – there is never enough information in your mind, you can always be learning more. You should have a healthy fear of stagnation. And don’t ever be afraid to learn from those who are younger than you.
Rituals
Incorporating different daily rituals into your life help to form lasting habits and begin to create consistency, enabling you to create and facilitate change.
Here are some of the key daily rituals I “try” to incorporate into each and every day of my life. The reason I have put “try” in inverted commas, is because as we know it, our lives are busy, children can become unwell and quickly circumstances in your day can take over original plans and intentions fall by the wayside. The one thing to remember is that the new day is not too far away and will give you another opportunity to begin all over again.
Some of my favourite daily rituals
5am starts – a few years ago, when I was reading another of Mr Sharma’s greats, he invited me to join the 5am club, “beating the battle of the bed” as he says it, “putting mind over mattress” to spend the first hour of the day as a holy hour filling it with all the things that connect you to yourself and your day. Spending that first hour of the day exercising, reading, meditating, checking in on your goals, reading your plans, reviewing your vision and setting the tone for the day ahead. You may think, my god, 5am, how am I ever going to be able to implement that, I am just not a morning person. We can all train our minds and bodies to be morning people with a few simple changes: 1. Make sure you don’t eat after 7pm and eat the last meal as the lightest 2. Wind your mind down at the end of the day by reading and meditating 3. Don’t consume TV, your phone or other digital devices before bed to ensure you have a rested sleep 4. Set your alarm for 445am and actually get out of bed and remind yourself that this is YOUR Holy Hour and this is YOUR time to connect to yourself.
Daily 5, nightly 3 – Each morning, I write down five small actions that I would like to achieve by the end of the day and when my day is over I reflect on my day and think about three amazing things, three little things that may have happened that day that I can be grateful for that become my nightly three. Even if you have had a shocking day and are struggling to identify even one good thing, refer back to the daily five things that you have achieved and celebrate them. Celebrating the small wins that you have had that day, no matter how small, start to add up over time. You may think that doing five things in a day is not a lot, but over time, over a year those little things amount to a significant number of little things that you have achieved.
Meditation – Meditate at the beginning of the day to set your focus and at the end of the day to wind yourself down. Meditation has been used for thousands of years in practice to clear the mind, disconnect from the elements that surround you to just be present with yourself. I have seen the health and lifelong benefits of meditation first hand. Healing, focusing and shifting unnecessary blockages. Personally, The best thing has been my introduction to Guided Meditations that I have downloaded on my phone so I can lay in bed and spend 20 minutes in deep meditation.
Gratitude – Be truly grateful for all the amazing things that you have in your life rather than focusing on the things that you don’t have. Thinking about people who are less fortunate than you help to put things into perspective. Daily gratitude and appreciation. If you begin to get stuck on the same things, delve in deeper to the little things. For example: “I am grateful that I have the sense of sight to be able to wake up each day and see the uniqueness of every day and be stimulated by colour and images” or, “I am grateful to experience the gift of the love of my children and their unconditional love in return.”
Planning – Planning your life with the end in mind helps you to create a path and road map to achieving all the things in your life that are important to your fulfillment and satisfaction. Creating big picture plans and putting them out to the world as well as short-term goals are the stepping-stones towards achieving the big ones. As Robin says, “the things that get scheduled are the things that get done”, so ensure you set-aside quality time to plan. For me, the weekly planning happens on a Sunday night where I spend an hour mapping out all the things that are important to me for the week ahead thinking about the following core elements:
Interior Life, Health, Family, Career, Economic/ Finance, Social/ Community/ Circle of Genius, Adventure/ Fun/ Lifestyle, Legacy/ Influence.
These are five things that I use as rituals in my life each and every day. Think about what rituals will work for you, and vitally, that you will be able to maintain over a long period of time. Now, these things are completely habitual and happen naturally every day without me even needing to think about them.
Discovering your purpose
Understanding what your life and business purpose is is something that is constantly in the back of my mind. When I recently gave birth to our second child, some time out to reflect and connect was just what I needed to discover what my purpose was and how I was going to inject it into every facet of my life to ensure I was living a more fulfilling and purposeful lifestyle. It often takes life changing circumstances to put things into perspective and motivate us to potentially take the step to make changes that lead us to live a more fulfilling life.
To discover your purpose, dedicate blocks of time to THINKING. Get a journal or note pad and think of all the things in your life that make you happy, the things that you get excited about, the things that you are passionate about and then start to create a plan about how this could be developed into what you do professionally.
Sometimes it’s not realistic to integrate all of your passions into what you do each day for work, however it would certainly be ideal. It may be that you are a finance broker, however your true passion and purpose lies around health and nutrition, and teaching people about healing their ailments with food. This could become a weekend hobby or a blog. You may even decide to set up your own finance company or work as a consultant rather than full time for someone else, giving you the time and flexibility to pursue your personal passions further.
Building your life around your purpose
When you give yourself the quality time to recognize what your purpose is in life, understanding who you are and what you want your life to stand for, what you want to be remembered for- your legacy- be relentless into incorporating every element of that into your life. Walk the walk and talk the talk that your passion and purpose inspires in you. What you put out there will resonate with what you get back.
Something that I truly believe in is that with all these elements of life in place; the personal life balance, meaningful purpose stemming from a solid foundation- profitability and a financially and fulfilling business become the natural bi products of this equilibrium.
Don’t get me wrong, hard work and a resilient attitude will always have their place as an essential ingredient to this mix, but ensuring that you live a balanced life will help you to get up every day, happy, healthy and fulfilled and on track to being successful in business.
Catherine Taouk
This is a sample chapter taken from the amazing business guide book, Success In Business. Written by some of industry’s most knowledgeable thought-leaders, Success in Business is produced in an informative, conversational style with valuable, insightful advice and case studies taken from real business people running real businesses.
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