Help yourself to a thriving business

By Kate Keenan

April 26 2012 - It's All About You is specifically for you, the entrepreneur, the lone adventurer, who is relentlessly driving forward business, focusing more on achieving business objectives, but possibly to the detriment of your personal wellbeing and basic health. It offers advice, insights and voyages of self-discovery to assist you, as the owner of, or partner in, a small or medium-sized enterprise, to nurture and cherish the most important business asset that you have, 'you'.

Feel the strain

It's not easy being your own boss, as you require some seriously tricky juggling skills in order both to manage yourself and make a success of your business. Sometimes, all you may need is a little nudge to help you refocus your efforts and remind yourself why you set up in business for yourself in the first place.

You are your business and your ability to thrive is an essential component of your business - so if you are not functioning as well as you can, then how on earth can your business prosper?

Get into your comfort zone

Being out of your comfort zone can often be a miserable and lonely place to be. Life can be threatening enough without deliberately going out of your way to make it more so. All too often you can feel out of control, not in charge of yourself and harbour regrets over past actions.

None of this makes for comfortable living, so why on earth should getting out of your comfort zone be such an attraction? Surely finding a comfort zone where you can function positively and productively as well as enjoying doing business is a much better quest?

It would seem to be a really good idea to get into your psychological comfort zone - as this is where you will thrive.

Put yourself in the frame

Put yourself in the frame and tackle 'you' exactly as you would tackle any major business project or venture. You are really that important.

It's All About You explores those components which form the basis of physical and psychological well-being relating to yourself, your goals, your continuing development, and the psychological environment in which you work, the management of which is crucial in contributing significantly to your business success.

1. You

A principal aspect of managing yourself is knowing how you currently operate as a person and understanding how you cope with the pressures and strains of business which may sometimes get you down. If you are in the doldrums, learning how to regulate yourself from within provides you with both instant and longer-term solutions to use when you feel low.

By becoming more autonomous and independent, you will find it not only easier to resist social pressures, but also it will become simpler to harness your business drive, set your personal standards, as well as being able to enjoy your life to the full.

2. Your goals

By setting yourself motivating and inspiring goals, you are more likely to thrive and succeed, as these provide you with set of beliefs which make your life more purposeful. Goals give you an overall direction of travel and by clearly determining your business vision and its mission, you will be very much clearer about your ultimate objective, so making it more likely that you will achieve it.

How you view your long-term future and purpose in life is an important factor in setting your goals. Defining your more short-term goals becomes very much easier when they fit into a bigger context, as this endows your immediate working life with an explicit purpose and meaningful direction.

Business survival is very much a case of 'being forewarned is to be forearmed'. By having a contingency plan, you are much more able to cope with the unexpected squalls and downpours that can come your way. It is very much easier to keep your overall purpose in mind when you have your plans and goals in place. But remember no plan is foolproof - you just tend to do better if you have one, rather than going from pillar to post just to cope with eventualities.

3. Your continuing development

Finding out more about 'you', through a little self-analysis, is an affirmative way to live at ease with yourself. When you know yourself well, you will find it is relatively straightforward to evaluate yourself realistically and positively. You will enjoy a feeling of growing and expanding and find yourself far more open to new experiences.

If you can discover those activities which most suit your temperament, you will be more confident about what you do well and understand better what you probably need either to ditch or pass over to someone else.

Recognizing when your energy levels can sometimes get out of control and how you can put the genie back in its bottle can help you use your get-up-and-go to best advantage.

By appreciating that learning is 'cool', you can learn so much from all your experiences and you will find it much easier to work out how to do things better next time.

4. Your psychological environment

How you manage your life and your external surroundings enables you to choose and create the right context in which to achieve success. This usually has to do with ridding yourself of unwanted intrusions. By actively deciding to put yourself in control of yourself and your environment, you are far more likely to feel that you can get things done and achieve what is needed.

A major factor is to use the change process in a constructive way. Change is going to happen anyway, so if you take the bull by the horns you will find you can cope with unexpected uncertainties that you had not anticipated. And, as an adjunct to embracing change optimistically, if you can free up 'you' as a resource through using your time to better advantage and, not unconnected, as well as developing the capacity to say 'no' nicely, you will create a much more productive psychological space for yourself in which to function.

It really is all about 'you'

It's All About You invites you to focus on that essential asset that is 'you' - to take a voyage around yourself and to look at yourself, perhaps in a very different way from how you usually regard yourself. And then to decide where you might like to move on to, based on your enhanced view of yourself which has been informed by structured self-analysis and coherent reflection. In other words, to work on 'you' very much as you would a major business project.

About the book

It's All About You (Ecademy Press) by Kate Keenan, sets out to help business owners maximise the asset of their organization - 'themselves'. This book seeks to save businesses by providing advice from Kate who has over 20 years of experience as a chartered psychologist. By focusing on 'you', knowing where 'you're' going, keep growing as an individual, mastering 'your' environment and embracing 'your' business will ensure that 'yourself' and 'your' business remain protected and continue to thrive.

Kate provides industry and consumers alike with the guide and resources needed and all the actions to be taken that will aid understanding and give confidence to create/build a growing and glowing business.

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