So, I took a long time off from writing any blog posts here. How long? That's a fact I’m ashamed to mention… but for those of you keeping track, it was almost two years. Ouch! I think it would be easy to assume that during this time I was doing something ultra exciting that kept me from running my business. But, in reality, I was running my business and running it hard. I had built enough of a client load that I just simply didn't have time to maintain things for my own business anymore (other than invoicing clients as I did work for their businesses). |
In this time, I've grown considerably as a writer and flourished as a business owner. I focused on myself both personally and professionally and found that there were some things that have fundamentally changed the way I live and work that I want to share with you.
So, today instead of talking to you about ways that you can optimize your website, improve business, or better market to your core audience, I want to focus on what real meaningful change and growth that fuels success looks like.
Faith
For me, there have been a few things that have been absolutely instrumental to how I've changed over the last two years – the first of which is God. I realize that this is not a personal blog, and that politics and religion are the two things that everyone says you should never bring into business or talk about in mixed company, but I can’t help myself. I would be remiss if I didn't credit, first and foremost, all the change that's happened in my life to the God of all creation who reigns supreme.
Growing in my faith has given me a foundation that I simply could not perform at this level professionally without. A saving faith is something that guides everything I do every day – my professional work included. I'm not going to use this space to evangelize to you, but if you don't have faith in the Lord to ground you in the life that you're leading or the work that you're doing, I strongly encourage you to reevaluate your belief system.
Reading
Another huge change that I've made is reading. I always assumed that I read enough doing the work that I do, so I didn't need to read outside of that. I read a lot as part of my research stage when writing articles for clients but what I was reading was industry publications or reference materials for those articles. I wasn't broadly reading or reading about what interests me.
What I've discovered is that reading is important no matter what you're reading about or what that reading looks like. Sure, reading the Harvard Business Review is probably going to benefit you professionally more than the National Enquirer, but ultimately all of reading that you're doing is challenging your mind and causing you to think about things differently. This is important because one of the key ways that we set ourselves apart from what's being created with AI is in how we can synthesize new ideas by drawing connections between things that a computer program wouldn't necessarily realize. So, any reading that you do is going to help you professionally. If you're reading about an interest that you have, it will be personally fulfilling in a way that reflects itself in your professional work.
Whatever you're reading, always be reading! I like to check books out of the library and leave them in my car so that when I'm waiting around at school pickup or at a doctor's office, I have something I can grab. But I also like to have eBooks on my phone for ultimate portability. I listen to podcasts as well, which is not quite the same as reading, but they are still a source of new ideas and new information.
What I found was that as I started reading was that my assumptions were all wrong. I thought I was going to be more tired if I tried to read more. I thought that the toll of being a parent and a business owner was going to be so much that if I stacked reading on top of that I was just going to burn out and be too tired to do anything that I needed to do or to really absorb any of it. But the opposite was true! The more I read the hungrier I got. The more I read, the more I wanted to read, and the more I was getting out of reading which brings me to my third recommendation.
Exercise
As an adult, I was always one of those people who thought, “Well exercise is obviously healthy, but I'm tired - I don't have the energy to exercise.” I would hear people say when you exercise you have more energy and logically it didn't make sense to me. If we have a set amount of energy and then that energy gets used up throughout the day and we do something like rest or sleep to build up more energy, wouldn't exercising just cause that energy to deplete faster? That's how I approached life, and I was overweight and unhealthy and tired as a result. It was affecting me emotionally and mentally as well.
I started exercising regularly four years ago and sticking to a routine and what I found is that:
- I sleep better
- I have more energy
- I'm happier
- I have a healthy outlet for releasing stress
- It helps me problem solve
If you’re exercising and doing it right, you’re going to love the way it makes you feel and the way it will change your life.
Real Friendship
Lastly, true friendship is crucial. I was in a stage of my life where friendship was hard to cultivate, so I didn't really try to reach out to others and forge deep important friendships. Then, God brought a friend into my life in a way that was extremely meaningful – the kind of friend that I could tell anything to and share my joys and my struggles with to genuinely connect.
No matter how close you are with your spouse or parents, I think you still need one really good friend that is going to bring an entirely different perspective to your life and walk through it with you. This is a hard one because it's something that you can't really just decide that you're going to do and make it happen all on your own, but friendship is essential.
It’s kind of like that Friends episode where Joey decides that he wants what Monica and Chandler have, which is a dating relationship where they are also best friends. So, he decides that he's going to try to turn one of his existing friends into his girlfriend and his plan (predictably) fails. When that backfires, he decides to tell every woman he goes out with that he wants to be friends before anything romantic can happen, which also has unintended consequences (if you've seen the episode you know what I'm referring to). You can’t just decide “Okay, I need a best friend to thrive so I'm just going to force it to happen.” It needs to be formed organically. You can't force it, but what you can do is you can be open to it instead of putting your head down to do what needs to be done right in front of you and closing yourself off to others. You can open up your heart. You can be vulnerable, and you can prepare yourself for what it would look like to have a deep meaningful friendship. I promise, it will change things.
There you have it! Those are my four tips on how to better yourself personally to better yourself professionally. So, if you really want growth this year, next year, or even this decade those are the four most important elements that I think you'll need to succeed. Happy growth!