It’s great to have business goals and to believe in your ideas, but they mean absolutely nothing if they’re not accompanied by a sense of urgency. You need to work with a reasonable timeline, believing in the necessity of accomplishing now, as if your life depended on your individual efforts. Though, often times, after the initial step of proposing an idea—business related or otherwise— we tend to drag our feet and let way too much time pass without any real work getting done. And this is nothing new. People have struggled with “habitual hesitation” for thousands of years! The Greek poet, Hesiod, approximately around 800 B.C., wrote “do not put your work off till tomorrow and the day after.” Roman consul and philosopher Cicero condemned procrastination, calling it “hateful.”If procrastination is so bad, why do we do it? There are several proposed theories for why people are sluggish to accomplish. Let’s explore a couple.
There are many different types of businesses, but no matter what the kind, there exist immutable, indubitable principles that a company must uphold if it wishes to subsist in a sustainable and thriving way. At their core, these unchanging, unfailing principles, these eight Leadership Principles, provide the foundation for a prosperous organization. Let’s explore.
1. Possibility thinking. Nothing great has ever been done without someone first believing that it indeed, could be done. This first leadership principle is absolutely critical. Someone first has to have faith in an idea, in the work he/she is doing, in his/her efforts, in the innovation he/she is creating. This positive thinking, this faith in an idea, this belief in possibility, is what sets these principles into motion and calls people to action to achieve.
Flourish, verb: to grow or to develop in a healthy way. To thrive. To prosper. On some level—whether or not we are aware— everyone wants to flourish. We want to do well at work and do well in life. We feel a need to succeed, to do better, to achieve more. But does doing “well” mean we are “flourishing”? Not necessarily.
You flourish when you pay attention to and prioritize all quadrants of your life, when your mental health is just as important as your physical health. Flourishing is a commitment and investment in you and to becoming your best self.
Let’s break it down. There are four phases of flourishing: Reflect, Connect, Achieve, Flourish.
How can I strike a balance between my home life and my work life? If I could only figure out how to perfectly balance both, my life would be so much easier. Many of us can relate to this question and thought process, as most people are constantly striving to strike that frustratingly inaccessible balancing point. We try our best to juggle home and work responsibilities and are always trying to find that happy medium where each environment is equally demanding of our attention and resources. Picture a scale. Home life is on one side of the scale, and work life is on the other. Now picture yourself. You are standing precisely in the middle of the scale. Your “life” side and your “work” side teeter and stagger, tugging back and forth, up and down, before finally landing perfectly aligned with each other. The scale stops moving, and is balanced. Neither side is more demanding than the other. YOU’VE DONE IT! You’ve struck the balance between work and the rest of your life. WRONG. Though this may come as a shock, finding this perfect balance is actually impossible. Yes, IMPOSSIBLE.
We tend to treat ourselves in business as we do in life. If we lack the RESOURCES to grow in our businesses, chances are we lack the RESOURCES to grow in life. As a small business owner, you will find yourself asking, how can I increase my sales?
Maybe you don’t have a succinct brand or the capacity to build one. It is essential to know where your company’s profits stand today relative to previous years. In life, you may evaluate where you stand as a role in your family. Like in business, life evaluations help you reach your personal goals. We should be treating our business lives in the same manner. One of the ways to analyze solutions to our business lives is to increase sales is to set a goal.
Flourish, verb: to grow or to develop in a healthy way. To thrive. To prosper. On some level—whether or not we are aware— everyone wants to flourish. We want to do well at work and do well in life. We feel a need to succeed, to do better, to achieve more. But does doing “well” mean we are “flourishing”? Not necessarily.
How can I strike a balance between my home life and my work life? If I could only figure out how to perfectly balance both, my life would be so much easier. Many of us can relate to this question and thought process, as most people are constantly striving to strike that frustratingly inaccessible balancing point. We try our best to juggle home and work responsibilities and are always trying to find that happy medium where each environment is equally demanding of our attention and resources. Picture a scale. Home life is on one side of the scale, and work life is on the other. Now picture yourself. You are standing precisely in the middle of the scale. Your “life” side and your “work” side teeter and stagger, tugging back and forth, up and down, before finally landing perfectly aligned with each other. The scale stops moving, and is balanced. Neither side is more demanding than the other. YOU’VE DONE IT! You’ve struck the balance between work and the rest of your life. WRONG. Though this may come as a shock, finding this perfect balance is actually impossible. Yes, IMPOSSIBLE.
