The Weight of This Impacts Your Success

Woman with head on laptop and a huge rock on back of her head illustrates article on business coaching and life coaching.

As a business coach with a thriving practice, I can’t possibly do everything that needs to be done in my practice … not if I want to have any kind of life! It’s one of the things I teach … the top 3 things you need to focus on in your business.

If you’ve been reading these messages for a while, you know I’ve been looking for new team members for several key positions.

Well, I took the leap and hired a Virtual Assistant, something I’ve been resisting for some time, because I prefer a personal assistant working in my office. The reality is there are things that a VA can’t do … or can’t do easily … from afar. But I decided having help on 75% of the admin stuff is a lot better than nothing!

The other day, I was working with my VA and I had a major realization … one that could impact your business.

Through her ultra-efficiency and high-level skills, I realized I’d been tolerating B+ work from a previous assistant!

My early training as a life coach with Coach U taught me about the distinction of “tolerations.” A toleration is something you’re putting up with … something that drains your energy. For example, when you look at that messy desk with all those papers that need to be filed, you can just feel your energy sink … the life force draining out of you … every single time you look at it and don’t do anything about it.

Most people have somewhere between 50 – 100 things they’re tolerating. Whoa!

When I first did this exercise nearly 20 years ago, I had 113!

But here’s the thing. The first time my VA completed the task of billing my clients on her own with only one session of training, she completed the task in half the time it took my former assistant and, most importantly, she did it with no errors!

It wasn’t until that moment I realized just how much I’d been tolerating.

And I don’t think I’m the only one out there walking around with tolerations weighing me down. I bet you have ‘em too, both personally and professionally.

But you have to LOOK for them. You have to be aware of your energy. And you want to be aware of how your energy dips and soars with the various tasks you do in your business.

We’re all probably familiar with the multiple tolerations people put up with in the corporate environments. We put in place all kinds of workarounds to accommodate people and processes that simply aren’t producing the needed results or aren’t working as well as they could. It’s no different in small businesses.

Now, it’s time for you to look at who and what you might be tolerating in your business. Write a list. Get it all on paper and out of your head. And then slowly begin to address those tolerations one-by-one.

Start by looking for the “core” toleration or tolerations you could eliminate that would almost automatically resolve or take the energy drain out of many more on the list.

Address your tolerations and watch your energy … and the passion for your business … come back like magic!
All The best,

P.S. Stay tuned … Next month’s edition will build on this critical action step of getting rid of your tolerations by outlining a 4-step change management model that’ll allow you to easily and cleanly assess where you are in your business and develop a straightforward strategy for 2022. It’s powerful and absolutely brilliant in its simplicity!

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