We all want to see more abundance in our lives and now is an excellent time to prepare your garden and plant your seeds so you can bring more money, creativity, and opportunity into your business. The first step is to create a space for more clients, ideas, and time to live your life. Nobody gets into this crazy entrepreneur life to be chained to their desk, but we all find ourselves in that situation at some point in our journey. It can be overwhelming to know where to start, but doing a few things a day can clear the way for a surge of good things in your business while leaving your mind feeling clear and focused.
These are some ways to get started.
Clean your workspace
Junk blocks creativity. Even if you don’t have a designated room for your office make your space a place that is clean and organized. Get rid of things you don’t need and make cleaning your desk and office part of your regular routine. Even if you don’t have a designated room that is just for your office make your point of vision just about work. Clear out your yoga ball, ironing board, mail, and laundry. Those are all distractions reminding you of things you could be doing.
Clean your mind
Facing your inner critic – We all have an inner critic. I am definitely the meanest girl I know to myself. You can’t ignore the voice because it just get’s louder, but you can deal with. Write down your ugly reel of all of the things your inner critic says. Realize that those words are a projection of your fears and your way of protecting yourself. “You can’t do this” really means you could get hurt so just don’t try. Read each one aloud and say “thank you, but I got this.”
Do nothing – Take a break from launching, comparing yourself to others, and generally beating yourself up. Instead, think about what you really want. What is important to you and what is your ideal day? Rather than take another course, do some of the things that make you feel good and take advantage of having a flexible schedule. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be simple like going for a walk. Sitting on your deck and eating lunch, or meeting up with a friend for coffee. The idea is to create white space in your day because this is when the ideas will flow and come with ease. Don’t believe me? How many great ideas have you come up with in the shower?!
Clean your business
Start with your desktop – I am the worst about just saving stuff to my desktop and coming back to it later. It can add up to a huge mess and something you avoid dealing with. Organize these files and then take one folder from your organizational system each day and clean it out. If you don’t really have a system. I recommend not using your computer, but setting up folders to save work on Dropbox or Google Drive. Not only is this very convenient for backing up your work and sharing with clients, but it will keep your computer performing faster by not taking up your memory.
Dig into your systems – Everything you do from sending invoices to onboarding clients should be a system that is so clear you could write it down and hand it to someone else to execute. Start a Google doc or Evernote note and start doing this. If you spend one week writing this down as you go through your day it really is doable. The reason you want to do this is that when you actually write down the process you can then see how you can make your systems work better, faster and with more ease. A side bonus of this exercise is that it will help you build confidence that you know what you are doing!
Finish with an assessment– There are so many things you can do here, but start by identifying what is holding you back. Write down a list of what is not working in your businesses. This could be your VA, a tactic for getting new business, your work hours, or a part of your business that you hate doing. Number them from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most troublesome. Pick one of your fives and tackle it. It’s amazing how just letting go of one thing will give you the energy to start knocking out your list.