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Blue Monday:  Reasons To Be Cheerful And Positive

Blue Monday: Reasons To Be Cheerful And Positive

The third Monday of every year is called Blue Monday. This year that dates fall on 16th January. It is considered by many to be the most “depressing” day on the year. People’s moods are said to be low due to their post-Christmas finances, unsuccessful New Year’s resolutions, the cold weather and a long wait until the next holiday.

Is Blue Monday Real?

Despite this, the date is becoming more well known; there is no scientific proof to suggest that the 3rd Monday of the year is any more or less depressing than any other day.

In fact, the birth of the Blue Monday concept originated in 2005. When a, now de-funked, travel company called Sky Travel released a press statement to promote it’s summer holidays. While the company claimed to have used a complex equation to work out the date, further research showed that the equation just didn’t add up.

 

Flip It Over And Let’s Be Positive

The date, therefore, seems to have been a cynical advertising ploy. Today I am flipping Blue Monday on its head. 

I choose to make today positive and productive, and so can you! 

 

Here are some reasons to be happy in January:

    • It’s the start of a fresh New Year of opportunities, and let’s face it could it be worse than the last few years.
    • The dark evenings mean we get to cosy up on the sofa with our loved ones to binge watch on Netflix
    • It is a great time to get yourself organised and de-clutter your work or home space.
    • It is also the perfect time for you to invest in yourself, read a book or learn something new. 
    • Above all, relax more. Yes, January doesn’t have a holiday in it but why not create one? Have a YOU day with a bit of pampering!

Finally remember, you have the choice, the power is in your hands today!

There is a famous quote by Henry Ford that goes “Whether You Think You Can, or Think You Can’t… You’re Right.” It is the same today you can either choose to believe that today will be depressing and dismal, or you can choose to believe it today will be a wonderful day, regardless.

Common Mindset Pitfalls Small Business Owners Should Avoid

Common Mindset Pitfalls Small Business Owners Should Avoid

No matter what services or products you sell, developing a business mindset is a must. And while that might not pay the bills, it does help you make the right decisions when times are rough.

So in this blog post, I’ll talk about the five common mindset pitfalls many small business owners make and give solutions to avoid them. If that sounds interesting, then keep on reading!

 

Pitfall #1 – Procrastinating Too Much

Beat Procrastination

We’ve all dealt with procrastination! Sometimes, it’s just so hard to do the things we know are right! So why do we do this?

Unfortunately, there are many reasons why! However, here are some common ones:

  • Overwhelmed by work – As a solopreneur, you have a lot of shoes to fill! So sometimes, you might feel like you’ve got more work to do than you can complete.
  • Distracted with other things – It’s easy to get into the rabbit hole that is social media. It’s easy to do and addicting, which could manipulate you not to work.
  • Not challenging work enough – Sometimes, the problem is that you don’t challenge yourself too much! And since it’s easy, you might think you’ve got more time, making it easier for you to get into a loop of procrastination.

So what can you do to eliminate procrastination? Well, for starters, you should understand why you’re procrastinating. Then, you should solve it depending on the issue:

  •  If you’re overwhelmed by work, you might want to cut the unnecessary tasks from your to-do lists, allocate some tasks to others, or split up your challenging tasks into baby steps to make them seem easier.
  • If you’re easily distracted, then you might want to remove the distractions and work in a less distracting place, such as a library (if you can).
  • And if you find your work too easy, challenge yourself with work that is above your current skill level. According to Steven Kotler’s book “The Rise of Superman,” you should challenge yourself to do 4% more than you think you’re capable of!

Related: The P Word: Procrastination – Why You Do It And How To Stop It

 

Pitfall #2 – Imposter Syndrome

Starting and maintaining your small business can be both exciting and terrifying. At the same time, you might feel compelled to grow while feeling like your service/products are not worth the price you’re asking, making you undervalue yourself and your products.

That’s called the imposter syndrome, which many people face, including me. There have been many times when I’ve felt like I’m not cut out to be a virtual business manager.

And how did I solve this? Well, the solution is simple but hard to implement. And that’s to take to leap of faith. No one is fully ready for anything and will always find something that stops us from doing what we should.

So instead, we should try doing the best we can. And if you make mistakes, learn from them, and you’ll improve!

 

Pitfall #3 – Seeking Perfection

To be successful in business, you need to give your customers a great experience. That way, they’ll enjoy our products and services, which makes them come back and buy from us again.

However, that might sometimes doom small business owners from becoming successful. While it’s good to strive to give excellent service, you shouldn’t expect yourself to do it perfectly all the time.

That’s because there is no perfection! There’s always a way to improve. So instead of being a perfectionist, you should develop a “good enough” mindset. That way, you can actually get stuff done instead of delaying them until they are perfect.

And if you make any mistakes, you can learn from them and improve next time!

 

Pitfall #4 – Staying in Your Comfort Zone

Imagine this! You’ve just hit a business milestone that you’ve worked hard on. What will you do?

Well, if you’re anything like me, then you’d celebrate it. However, getting to a particular milestone might start declining your growth. That’s because you might not have the motivation to keep striving, and you’ll start doing the most comfortable things.

And that’s bad as if you stay in the same place for a long time, you’ll start getting behind your competitors. So instead of doing that, you need to do two things:

  • Create new milestones to strive for
  • And force yourself to evolve, even if you don’t feel like it.

That’s the only way a small business owner like yourself can continue growing their business!

 

Pitfall #5 – Not Having a Balanced Life

Work-life balance | Bravaproi Virtual Business Manager

As mentioned in one of the previous mindset pitfalls, small business owners have tons of work on their plate. That’s because they don’t have other people working with them. And that could lead them to work overtime and not take care of different aspects of your life.

So instead of falling into the same pitfall yourself, you should strive to live as balanced a life as possible. It’s okay to take a day off to relax and care for yourself. It can improve your productivity in many ways, as a day off could recover from burnout!

Related: Find Out How Outsourcing Can Restore Your Work-Life Balance?

Conclusion

So as you can see, building a business mindset mostly requires two things:

  • Creating action plans
  • And developing strong self-discipline

So instead of letting this information collect dust in your brain, why not take action from it? That’s the only way you can improve your business mindset and start seeing growth.

And if you have any problems overcoming these mindset pitfalls and developing a business mindset that works for you, why not schedule a coaching call with me? I’d love to help you out!

 

Evaluate Your Life – 6 Key Questions To Ask Yourself

Evaluate Your Life – 6 Key Questions To Ask Yourself

Today is ‘Evaluate Your Life Day’. Yes it is an official day! It is an opportunity to think about your hopes, dreams, objectives. As well as your ambitions, passions and basically what makes your happy.

Evaluating is a very much like personal goal setting. It’s about taking a long look at yourself in the mirror and challenging yourself.

Questions To Ask Yourself

  • Am I who I want to be?
  • What are my current goals in life?
  • Am I heading toward my goals?
  • What changes do I need to make in order to reach my goals?
  • Am I prioritising things the the way I want to?
  • What do I or can I offer to the world?

These are tough questions, but ones that will get you thinking about your next steps for both your business and your personal life. Remember without goals, you are basically just drifting through life instead of living with intention.

 Tips To Help You Evaluate Your Life

Here are some tips to help you in the thought process

1) Define what success means to you on a daily basis. Do this either the night before or in the morning, but make sure your definition is achievable

2) Do that thing that you’ve actually been putting off – eat the frog because the best things usually happen outside of your comfort zone

3) Once you have defined what success will look like, decide what metric you will use to measure it.

4) At the end of the day, ask yourself “Did today matter?” But, don’t worry if the answer is no, we all have good days and we all have bad days …it’s called life.

5) Ask yourself regularly ‘How am I feeling’ and ‘what do I really want’

The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Successful Morning Routine

The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Successful Morning Routine

Morning rituals are kind of a cliché! It seems like every entrepreneur or influencer has a complex 15-step morning routine. But that doesn’t mean that you have to follow it to reap the benefits of a morning ritual.

Instead, it’s better to create a morning routine that fits your needs.

So without further ado, let’s get into it.

Why Is a Morning Routine So Important?

Before we get into the habits of a successful morning routine, I want to talk about why should you have one.

The objective of a morning routine is to prepare yourself for the day. This is done in multiple ways:

  • Getting into the right mindset. To get the most out of your day, you’ll have to have the right attitude. You need to be disciplined and positive. This mindset we’ll help you be more productive and make better decisions.
  • Help your body to wake up faster. We all know how unproductive we are when feeling sleepy. With the proper habits, you’ll be able to skip those hours and work on your business more energised than ever.
  • Get ahead of the competition. Morning routines can also be used to get ahead of your competitors. This is done through habits that I’ll mention in the next section.

5 Habits for Success

The first step to creating the perfect routine is to choose what type of habits you’ll start your mornings with. There are hundreds of ways to do it, but here are just a few habits you could try adding:

#1 – Taking Cold Showers

Cold showers have many great health benefits! But what is the best benefit is that once you get in a cold shower, you’ll wake up quickly. Additionally, a daily cold shower will build up your discipline as well.

#2 –  Reading out loud affirmations

The best practice to get to the right mindset is to read out your affirmations. This way, you’ll start your day positively, which helps you make better decisions and be, overall, more productive.

If you haven’t done any affirmations before, all you have to do is create positive sentences about yourself. These could be as simple as “I am a happy and likeable person” or “I get everything I want in life because I’m willing to work for it”.

#3 – Learn Something

There’s a saying, “leaders are readers”. So why not educate yourself in the morning? This way, you’re educating yourself daily, which will make you into a better business person.

You can do it in multiple ways: reading a book, listening to a podcast, taking online courses, and much more.

#4 – Morning Workout

Another thing that many successful people do in the mornings is that they do physical activities. This will help them to feel more energised, instead of being tired.

Plus, you don’t have to hit the gym to reap the benefits. It can be as easy as doing a few jumping jacks and pushups.

#5 – Plan Out Your Day

A beneficial thing to do in the morning is to plan out your day. What important task are you going to complete this day? Write down, and schedule time for them on your calendar app. This way, you have time to work on goals that move the needle.

Creating Your Morning Routine

Now that you know what you can do in the mornings, it’s time to create your morning routine! The morning routine should be unique to your particular needs. But how do you do it?

The best guideline to creating a morning routine comes from Robin Sharma’s book “The 5 AM Club”. When reading this book, you’ll find a formula called the 20/20/20 formula.

This formula tells you what you should do in your first waking hour!

The first 20 minutes are called “Move”. During this time, you should do something that wakes up your body. These could be morning workouts, walks, or cold showers.

The following 20 minutes are called “Reflect”. During this time, you can plan out your day, practise gratefulness and read your affirmations.

The last 20 minutes are called “Learn”. During this period, you can listen to a podcast or an audiobook, read a book, or watch educational videos.

How to Program Yourself to Follow Your Morning Routine

Starting a new habit is difficult! You’re going against your old habits, which is uncomfortable to change. But fortunately, with discipline and the proper techniques, you can make your habits stick.

To help you program yourself to follow your ritual, I’ll use the information from Robin Sharma’s book again to explain a rule. This rule is called the 66-day rule.

The rule says that if you do something for 66-days, you’ll have integrated a new habit. You’ll go through three stages:

  1. Destruction Stage. During the first 22 days, you’ll go through a challenging stage. In this stage, you’ll be destroying your old habits, which requires a lot of commitment.
  2. Implementation Stage. If the first 22 days weren’t complicated enough, the next 22 are even more challenging. During this stage, you’ll be installing your brand new habit.
  3. Integration Stage. The last 22 days are, fortunately, easier. During this time, you have installed your new habits, and after each day, it will become more and more natural.

Once the 66 days are over, you have created a habit out of it. No longer will you feel and resistance to waking up early and following your morning routine!

But going through these 66 days is going to be complicated. So to make it less challenging, I highly recommend you reward yourself frequently for following your routine.

For example, you can reward yourself daily with a piece of chocolate or coffee in your favourite coffee shop.

The Importance of Night Routine

Now that you’ve learned about the morning routine let’s talk about another vital ritual called the night routine. But what is a night routine?

Night routines do two things: prepare for the mornings and help you get a good night’s sleep.

Without preparation for the next day and a night of high-quality sleep, you won’t have the energy and the desire to jump out of bed and make the day count!

 But what should you do during your Night Routine? Here are a few tips for creating a night routine:

  • Make your mornings easier. During the last hour, you should start setting yourself up for the morning. You can do it in many ways; prepare your tomorrow’s outfit, write down the most critical goals, pick out a book to read, etc.
  • Turn off your screens. At least one hour before, you should stop looking at your screens. The blue light emitted by the displays makes your brain think it’s still daytime, and you won’t feel sleepy because of it. So give your eyes a rest, and you’ll sleep better.
  • Do relaxing things. During this time, you should relax. It will help you wind down and get ready for sleep. My recommendation is to either read a book, drink some tea or take a hot shower.
  • Reflect on your day. Another way to spend this time is to reflect on your day. Write down everything that you did well and things that you need to improve on. Additionally, write down solutions for the things that didn’t go as well.

Conclusion

Now you know everything there is to know about creating both morning and evening rituals. While night routines are helpful, creating a morning ritual should be your first priority. Without it, you won’t have as productive a day otherwise! 

The P Word : Procrastination – Why You Do It And How To Stop It

The P Word : Procrastination – Why You Do It And How To Stop It

Are you continually missing deadlines and failing to complete necessary tasks, or simply spending too much time on menial tasks like checking email? You are not alone; we all procrastinate from time to time. However, if procrastination is affecting your business growth, then you need to take action.

Why You Procrastinate

People tend to procrastinate for three fundamental reasons –

1) they enjoy the thrill of beating looming deadlines,

2) they want to avoid completing boring or unfulfilling tasks,

3) they can’t decide which tasks to finish first, so they choose to do nothing instead.

The first step to overcoming this habit is to understand and accept why you are putting the work off – this could take some soul searching and some self-honesty. But if you don’t know the cause, you can’t find a solution.

Once you accept that you put things off and understand why then it’s time to figure out how to stop this behaviour. Most of the time, simply telling yourself to handle your time better or stop wasting time on your Facebook page is not enough to change a learned behaviour (nor does it help you complete essential tasks on time).

 

My Top Tip To Break Your Procrastination Habit

Procrastination is usually the easy route, the one that initially makes us feel happy. However, it prevents you from accomplishing your goals, which ultimately will make you feel stressed and frustrated…so you procrastinate more to feel happy – it can be a vicious circle.  

Getting over your tendency to procrastinate involves changing your mindset, behaviours and habits. It means having a plan, focusing on your long-term goals and start putting the hard work in.

Daily Action List

A simple way to beat the urge to put off work and surf the Internet instead is to create a daily action or to-do list.

Hopefully, some of the tasks on the list will be enjoyable. But it would help if you accepted some probably won’t be exciting. Some jobs will be boring, unfulfilling and maybe even downright annoying – that’s life. But once you realise the necessity of these tasks and understand how failure to do them can impact your business/life, these tasks will hopefully become a bit more bearable.

Your daily task list should always relate to your broader business and personal goals, which you should be setting and writing down on a regular basis (If you are not sure how to set business goals, this blog could help – How To Set Awesome Business Goals). If you are unsure what to prioritise your tasks, as there seems to be so much, revisiting your goals will give you that focus. 

Having a list can give you the momentum needed to stop procrastinating quite so often. Plus, ticking off tasks could give that instant gratification that procrastination does.

 

The Role Of A Virtual Resource

Virtual Business Manager can take over responsibility for tasks you keep putting off. Ensuring they are completed on time. Relying on an excellent virtual resource allows you to work on more ‘enjoyable’ tasks. Additionally, it frees up your time to pursue hobbies and interests, or business opportunities for that matter.

While a Virtual Business Owner can’t stop your tendency to procrastinate. The practical support they provide can keep you on the right path to completing tasks on time, tackling those tedious tasks you loath, and making your task-related decisions easier.

Delegating tasks to a virtual resource requires some level of involvement; you need to take time to help them understand your business and their responsibilities. However, it comes with all the rewards of meeting or exceeding business and life goals too.

 

Overcoming Procrastination

Procrastination is a learned behaviour. 

Often by pairing your business/life goals alongside the tasks you need to complete to meet these goals, you’ll quickly begin to see the long-term rewards of getting stuff done on time.

But, you don’t need to tackle this problem alone. A virtual business manager may be just what you need to ease the stress and frustration caused by tight deadlines or the thought of having to work on endless, monotonous tasks.

You may never completely overcome your tendency to procrastinate. However, finding a way to compensate for this behaviour by hiring a Virtual Business Manager is one way to ensure procrastination won’t hinder your ability to succeed!