What do we need to do to retrain this epidemic of “my life doesn’t matter, just the results I get” mentality in entrepreneurship today?
‘Cause that’s everywhere in the business space right now, and has been for I don’t know how many years.
Instead of joy and satisfaction, there’s hustle. Instead of peace in your daily life, there’s “how much more can I fit in.” Instead of internal success and that personal glow of “I did it” satisfaction, there’s “yeah but I didn’t hit that next revenue marker, so I’m still a failure at this.”
Like guys – there’s a whole world out there of quiet daily real true happiness that you could be living, but you’re still stuck out here in the metrics game!
Does it matter that your podcast downloads haven’t hit a million yet? Does it matter that they dipped a little last month? Does it matter that your mastermind clients’ re-sign rate is 10% lower than last year? Does it matter that you don’t have every single spot filled by new people? Does it matter that your best person on your team might be leaving? Does it matter that then you’d have to hire again?
Why are you letting any of these things matter to your day by day, personal satisfaction of life??
Your enjoyment of sitting down to work on your business – serve your clients – scale your marketing – plan out your year – those things should never depend on how up or down your conversion rates are.
What you’re going to need to do for your team. The hard conversations you know you need to have with your partner. None of it!
Can’t you get back to loving your deep focus work block this morning? To being thrilled you got to pick the next right to-do list that felt amazing for today off your master plan of “has to happen to hit our goals this month”? Can’t you enjoy getting to take a coffee break at just the most beautiful time of day, looking out over your yard, sipping that just-right brew, perfectly hot, and enjoying the peace and quiet (or watching your kids play around the house)??
Like, where’s our moment by moment enjoyment of life even gone?? Where did it disappear to?
Or worse, where did we bury it? ‘Cause we’re the ones, sometimes, who disappeared it.
Who hid it under a pile of “must do’s” and “do this first’s” and “priority projects for the quarter” – it’s like we said, “Alyssa, you can enjoy yourself – I’ll let you like your work life – but you have to prove it to me that you deserve this, so I’m going to make you go on this sales sprint first. And if you sign 50% of them, I’ll let you have this.”
Or, “you have to make your next revenue goal in less than 30 days first. Prove it to me that you can hustle your way to this. If you do that, I promise I’ll let you right-size your workflow to where it’s something you can handle. But only if you keep up with everyone else first, right?”
It’s just nonsense. It’s nuts. Why in the world are we forcing ourselves through this, when we could’ve been enjoying a more easeful, flow-filled workday all along – and just gotten to our next revenue level a little slower? But with no adrenal burnout along the way??
Isn’t that worth something more than “it took me 5 extra months to get there,” to not have that health breakdown? Why all this push-push-push hustle mode?
(Okay, don’t answer that. I know why. It’s our culture and its glorification of work. Yeah, the Bible says to work, and to take pride in it, to serve excellently and see that as your mission, but nowhere did it say to kill yourself doing it. That’s what the world says. That’s how they twisted what God said about work – and the worthiness of work – and turned it into something it’s not. Was never meant to be. Side rant over.)
So next time you’re tempted to “just push through” instead of taking a proper breakfast, or “make it up to the kids later” when you want to work through supper, or skip their sports game ‘cause you know you’ve got 3 more potential clients just waiting in the DMs (or worse, go and do the messages from there ‘cause you think voice DMs with sports teams in the background would lend just the “right” note of working mom authenticity…..) – next time that happens, I want you to remember something.
That’s a choice.
You’re choosing to disconnect from your own internal sense of energy for this. You’re choosing to see the battery is blinking red on your creativity, your output, your decision-making ability….
And keep going.
Tell yourself you “ought” to. Tell yourself all the other business owners wouldn’t have been this low by now, so your punishment is you have to do this.
But you’re missing the most important factor – that’s it’s never about their performance levels. Only about you – ‘cause your business can only be measured by the potential and talents and possibilities given to its owner.
And that’s you. God chose you for this one. Not them.
He could’ve picked them – absolutely could have – but He didn’t.
And that means there’s a reason for letting you work in the middle between your baby’s naptimes – or in the few hours between school dropoff and pickup – or when you’ve got an auto-immune flareup and suddenly you can’t deliver on the launch you were intending and you’re going to have to push that off – He chose you, with your limitations (or what the world calls limitations) – for a reason.
And you’re only going to find that reason by actually living out the work of entrepreneurship in a day to day, what’s my limit, where do I need to stop before I hit it, reasonable allocation of energy sort of way.
That’s my message for you today. Stop striving, stop measuring, start right-sizing according to what you need to refill and replenish and restore your own marketing and parenting batteries as a business mom – ‘cause this current business is the only chance you’ve got.
And if you fail this one, the lesson will have to come around again. And I don’t think you want to redo this kind of level of life.
You want to beat it and go on to the next one. I know you – we’re both high achievers there.
You show us a way to beat the test? We’re going to go for it. ‘Cause that’s the way we’re made. And I want you to do that in entrepreneurship, too.
Beat the test. Don’t give in to the hustle.
Let yourself right-size and essentialism your life and declutter your business and minimize your obligations – all so you can get back to that joy.
‘Cause you didn’t come into being a businesswoman for the slog. You didn’t choose being a mom ‘cause you loved changing dirty diapers.
You did it for the joy. And it’s well past time you got back to that.
Whew.
Okay, God, show us how to live this. Show us how to live this way, with our families, with our teams, with our kids, with our clients. Show us how to not exhaust ourselves in pursuit of this calling You’ve given us. ‘Cause every resource is given us from above, and it’s not to drain us dry in the pursuit of worldly things and ever bigger and greater metrics. It’s to serve the mission. And we trust You for that, and ask You to renew our minds in this. Show us how to let go of even just one thing today. To better live towards that mission You gave us. We love You, we trust You, and it’s in Jesus’ Name we pray, amen.
