If you’re looking around at your business and feel like you need to make some big changes, it’s important to take a look at yourself first. Reinventing your business begins with reinventing yourself.
What does your life look like? Do you feel fulfilled, and confident? Are you taking care of yourself, emotionally, physically, and spiritually? Do the people in your life energise and inspire you, or drain you?
If you’re unsure whether your life needs reinventing, here are some key signs it does:
You’re not fulfilled
If you get home every day feeling like something’s missing in your life, it probably is. In order to have a business that satisfies you inside and out, you must first decide what you need exactly to feel fulfilled.
Maybe you need to be a great parent and role model for your children. Perhaps you need to have some time where you’re giving back to your community and feeling like you’re having a positive impact in the world. Maybe you’re lacking friendships or a partner, and there’s a part of you craving that companionship.
Whatever it is, it deserves your time and attention.
Life feels stagnant
The beauty of running your own business is you get to make the rules, and follow nobody else’s. You’re creating something from scratch, and often you’ll be required to assume many roles, especially in the early years of your business.
This means that life should be anything but stagnant unless of course, you’ve found yourself stuck in a routine.
When life feels stagnant, it’s important to reassess what’s actually important to you from a personal point of view, and then see if your business is reflecting this.
Your relationships are making you unhappy
Are you in a romantic relationship with someone who you’ve grown apart from over the years?
Do your friends not understand you anymore, and don’t even try to, leaving you to feel unheard?
Are your family like a weight on your shoulders, pressuring you about your business, or making you feel like the work you do isn’t valuable?
These are all signs that your personal life needs a thorough stock-take.
Your physical and/or emotional health is suffering
If you’re suffering from stress or anxiety, gaining weight, or falling ill more often than usual; your body is telling you that something’s wrong.
It’s important to listen to your body and fix these problems sooner than later so that you don’t end up pushing yourself too far.
Exercise, eating healthily, and ensuring you have enough downtime are all vital to your physical and emotional health.
You want to achieve something, but your current lifestyle doesn’t support this
Have you always wanted to start a business so that you can stay at home more with your family, but found your business isn’t allowing you to do this?
Have you got a goal to run a marathon this year, but you’re struggling to find the hours in the week to train?
Do you want to start cooking more, so that you’re having a healthier diet, but you always seem to wind up ordering a takeaway?
If you keep on setting goals, but your current lifestyle isn’t allowing you to meet them, then it’s time to reevaluate things.
The great news is, there are so many ways to create reinvention in your personal life, which will flow into your business and be fundamental to striding boldly in a new direction.
Here are just a few of them:
Take responsibility
You are one hundred per cent in control of your own life. If you don’t like what it looks like now, then take ownership of that, and commit yourself to real change. No more excuses, because they’re only going to hold you back in your old ways — and you know they don’t work.
This means being responsible in all areas of your life — your health, your relationships, your creativity, your finances, and your personal development.
Turn bad habits into positive ones
All habits that we have — good and bad — are formed through repetition. Do something enough and it becomes a habit.
So maybe you’ve picked up a smoking or excessive drinking habit, or a snacking on sugary food habit. This lends itself to other things like snapping at your spouse or your kids, or even going to bed late and then snoozing your alarm.
The great news is, you have the power to create powerful habits that are good for you, like eating healthy, exercising before you start work, and being organised with your finances.
Change your perspective
Thoughts become things, so it’s really important we think positive ones. Once we get into the cycle of fearing the worst and focusing on everything that’s going wrong, it is hard to break out of it. It also means we fail to see everything amazing that’s going on in our lives.
Shifting your perspective, or opening yourself to someone else’s on your situation, can work wonders.
Practice gratitude
The reason so many of us are in a constant state of wanting more and more, and still feeling unhappy and unfulfilled when we get it, is because we’re signing over our happiness to things that are outside of us. When we look inwards and look around at everything we are grateful for, we’ll often see that life is pretty great; and our desires will then shift and downsize dramatically.
Take a look at your life now. What are you grateful for? Write a list, then write one again tomorrow, and the day after that if you need reminding.
Start with you
If you begin with your business, you’ll find it an uphill battle because you won’t be in the right head or heart space to shift in a direction that’s right for you, and your customers.
So, the key with reinvention is to start with yourself, and then your business will naturally follow suit.
Where in your life do you need to reinvent yourself? Book a discovery call or contact us at 1300 459 302 and get one on one advice from our business experts here at UpCoach.
