Wednesday 14 September 2016

Setting Yourself Up For Success

Here, at The Therapists' Business School, we often talk about the limiting beliefs, which can hold back our success. A very common limiting belief is that as we get more successful we will have less time. A variation on this limiting belief is that as we become more successful we will be more stressed. So, when we hold this limiting belief, it causes us to subconsciously move away from success. Often, people will stagnate in their business, or even self-sabotage to avoid the time restrictions and stress, they subconsciously associate with success.
So, where does this limiting belief comes from?
It can come from parents. Many of us were taught, by our parents, that the only way to make a lot of money is to work as many hours as possible. It can also come from our own experience. I started my career in the corporate world. As I looked at the more senior staff, all I saw was people who were working longer and longer hours for a small amount of extra money. I saw people whose lifestyles were severely limited by their poor work life balance. It knew it wasn't what I wanted.
We need to challenge this limiting belief about success and time. If you work for yourself, as a therapist, then actually success brings you more time. You can increase your per hour fee to work fewer hours. As you become more successful, you can outsource many of your business tasks, allowing you the time to focus on the parts of your business which satisfy you.
As you become more successful, you can also use your increased income to outsource many chores. For example, get a cleaner, have someone to do your laundry, get your shopping delivered or even get entire meals delivered to your door.
The wonderful things about the age we live in, is that almost everything can be outsourced and more success allows you even more free time to do the things you are passionate about.
So, what is the best way to manage our time and set ourselves up for success?
How we feel physically will affect how mentally focused we feel and how productive we are. Therefore, look after yourself. Make sure you schedule time every day for some exercise. This will make you feel great, you'll be mentally alert and have more energy.
As well as scheduling time for exercise every day, find time for meditation. There's a great meditation app called Headspace which contains 10 minute long meditations, so there's no excuse not to fit it into your day.  Meditation is great for decreasing stress and helping you to feel more focused.
Once you have exercised and meditated, you feel physically and mentally prepared for anything.
It's often best to schedule your exercise and meditation for as early as possible in the day, to set you up for success.
Once you've set yourself up for success, what is the best way to maximize your work productivity?
A good strategy is to limit the amount of time you have on certain tasks. For example, set yourself 30 minutes to work on content generation for your newsletters. Limiting the time, makes you more focused. If you know you only have 30 minutes to work on a task, you will avoid unnecessary distractions such as Facebook.
Another great strategy is to choose your work environment wisely. If possible, get out of your house. Otherwise, you'll be tempted to do some housework! Aim to work somewhere without friends or family around to distract you. If you don't have your own premises, to work from, then a library or café is great. Make the environment a pleasant please to be. Choose a café with great light and ambiance. If it works for you, then put some music on. If you have your own office, make sure it is clean and put beautiful pictures up.
Avoid multi-tasking. You might think you get more done when you are multi-tasking, but in reality you probably don't. Sometimes we can feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks to complete each day. However, just take one at a time. Choose your most important task, which must be completed today and work on that for 30 minutes. Another benefit of meditation is that it makes it easier to focus on one thing at a time.
Everyone's lifestyle is different so design a daily success plan which works for you. Personally, I find I am better at exercise later in the day, so will schedule blocks of work and break up those blocks with a work out.
A fantastic book, which details how to be more productive, is The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. We highly recommend it.

If you have any hints and tips for being more productive, please do comment below.


Get the 7 Steps To Creating A Successful Therapy Business here. 


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