The New Year has begun! Have you hit the ground running? As entrepreneurs, we can set some pretty audacious goals. Then we start running with them and can forget to have fun along the way.
I invite you to check in with your audacious 2017 goals for your business and your life. Do you have enough play in there? I know you may be saying, “Play???” “What are you talking about Lauri? I have too much to do this year to play.”
Plan to Play
May I put a different perspective on this? If you don’t have play in your plan for 2017, you may just be setting yourself up for burnout or even worse … building a business you end up hating.
Play is essential to building a business around a lifestyle. What kind of lifestyle do you want to be living? Does your business plan and goals allow you to live this lifestyle. Will it give you the flexibility you are looking for?
I know that I can get so caught up in getting something accomplished, that I forget to play. I get so focused on meeting my goals that many other things in my life can suffer. This doesn’t serve me or anyone else. Especially my family.
As women, we can get really focused on achieving our goals. To the point, we actually push them away. We start to force our efforts instead of trusting, taking the most important steps, keeping it fun, and adding in play along the way.
I don’t know about you, but I want to be with people who are fun, people that take their life and business seriously but know how to laugh and play along the way.
Play Makes the Right Things Happen
It’s amazing how when we relax, trust, take the necessary steps, and play, how we can just fall into flow. The right things, people, and support come our way. We begin to float down stream instead of trying to swim up it.
Play is an essential part of your business, to bring joy into everything you do. Have fun with it. Play with the fear, the excitement, mistakes, and the successes. They tend to all come together if you are out there playing big!
Making your dreams and goals happen this year, may not be about doing more … it may be about doing less.
Five Tips for Adding More Play to Your Life
Here are five things you will want to do less of this year:
- Putting play off – Put time on your calendar for play first. I grew up with a saying “get your work done first then play”. The problem with this is when you are self-employed, that work never really gets done. There is always more we can do, and we love what we do, so it’s easy to put that first. I want to encourage you to calendar play first, time for you, your family, and then put work around it. Keep your priorities in order. You and your family come before work!
- Say “Yes” less often – Follow the Pareto Principle of 80/20. Twenty percent of your activity creates 80% of your results. Work smart this year. Have a checklist to look at before you say yes. Figure out what your top 3 priorities are, and before you say yes, make sure that it will positively impact those priorities. If not, you may want to say no.
- Stop trying to do everything yourself – start letting people help you. Nothing great gets created alone. Get the support you need to be successful. Find a community of supportive, like-minded people, get a coach or mentor (this investment will save you a fortune in mistakes and shorten your learning curve), and find an accountability buddy.
- Stop being a perfectionist – There is no room for growth in perfection. Be willing to play, experiment, and let failure be an option. It’s the place we learn the most. Your greatest success may follow an epic failure.
- Stop playing small – No one is served by your playing small. I love Marianne Williamson’s quote “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” When you allow your light to shine, you give light and space for someone else to shine.
Go out this year and make it your best. Be playful, bring joy to everything you do, and build a business that supports your lifestyle and priorities. Have fun out there!