Throughout 2019, we’ve been writing about building resilience in all areas of your business. Resilience is that ability to bounce back from stress, trauma, and tragedy - stronger and more powerful than ever before.
We’ve written about financial resilience, team resilience, sales pipeline resilience, and technology resilience. In May, we provided part one of a two part series on personal resilience.
Part one covered all the things you can do to heal yourself throughout and during those stressful times: the self care that’s required to keep your mind and body in tip-top shape so that you’re not drawing your energy from those crisis reserves of willpower, adrenaline, and cortisol - meant to be available only for those times of near-death and absolute survival.
This second part is focused on fueling you - giving you even more energy than you had started with before your reserves were drained, so you can grow and move forward without entirely emptying your cup each time.
Your core energy source, that battery that keeps your business charged up and moving forward is ... YOU. How’s the old inner battery? Charged up now that you’ve done all that self care we talked about?
If it’s not quite full, we’ve got a few ideas that will fill your battery, and give you energy.
Nourishment
How come eating isn’t under “nourishment” for us? Because that was back in part one, in self care. We’re talking about an entirely different kind of nourishment.
Reading and Learning
Remember when you had time to read fiction? Have you ever looked at your reading list and felt like you were just dealt a crushing blow? How about that list of podcasts you always meant to tune in to?
When you’ve put great boundaries in place and set aside real time with clear expectations of how you will spend it, you will find that you can absolutely read those books, learn about those new ideas, and listen to those podcasts. Don’t feel like you have to stick to business-related resources either.
Cross-pollination, the idea of taking ideas from over there and applying them over here is one of the key drivers of innovation. It’s one of the reasons why we think that Slayers working with multiple businesses in different industries is a benefit to Admin Slayer clients. Great ideas come from unexpected places. Expand your mind for the joy of learning, and the innovations will simply arrive.
Traveling & Experiencing New Things
Mmmm, travel. Over at our sister company, Spring Plans, people talk about travel and new experiences as a future goal all the time. Whether it’s getting out of your neighbourhood, country, or continent to experience other cultures, or finding them in your own town’s museums and festivals, this external focus will fill your batteries with ideas, experiences, and opportunities for joy.
Volunteering & Mentoring
Purpose is powerful. Your business has a purpose, and it is aligned with your own. But you are likely to have several more personal purposes that cannot be fulfilled within the confines of your business. That is okay. You can find other avenues for expression. Show up at your local school for fundraising activities. Donate to your local library, in books and expertise. Drive a cancer patient to their next appointment. Make lunch at a soup kitchen. Help someone learn, and become more knowledgeable thereby.
Get out of your own head. You’ll find your batteries overflowing.
Passion Projects
“Find your passion” is an oft-repeated refrain at graduation speeches. But what if your passion doesn’t make any money? Does that mean you shouldn’t do it, or you should and just not have money?
No. Sometimes your passion is just that - a passion. It is more than okay for you to spend time on this passion project, the one that doesn’t feed your business, or your pocketbook. Why? Because it nourishes you, and gives you energy that you can then use in other areas of your life.
Build that workshop. Learn to play guitar. Become a hula-hoopologist. Have something you do for fun. Be as great or as just okay at it as you need. Take the pressure off just one thing and you’ll find it’s released in many other areas.
People-ing
Whether introverted or extroverted, you are a community creature. Human beings require other human beings to be okay - it’s part of our evolution. We developed this way for survival purposes and our modern lifestyles are not changing how our minds and bodies are wired. Trusting and supportive relationships that light you up and give you that warm fuzzy feeling are not just a nice to have. They’re a biological imperative.
You need people. People need you.
Your business needs you healthy, healed and energized to take you to the next level. Take care of you. Nourish yourself. We need you around for the long-term.
Your own unique nourishment
As you heal yourself with self care, open up your weeks and days with delegation and time-blocking, you’ll find that varying forms of nourishment unfold before you. Start paying attention to your energy levels as you explore this area of your life (and try this nifty energy tracker from the Designing Your Life folks) and learn what kinds of things really add to that core driver that IS the fuel behind your business: YOU.