I was my strongest when I was teaching yoga. People would ask me how I got so strong, was it because I did so much yoga? And how did I get so good at yoga, did I do it every day? I told them that I did not do yoga everyday, I cross trained through running and weightlifting, and would usually attend a dance class every week just because I loved it. Everything I did made me better at the other activities. Yoga made me a better runner. Strength training improved my yoga practice.
It is the same in our life outside of fitness. Take business for example. I’ve found that any improvement I make at work carries over into my personal life. Here are some of my hard earned business lessons:
If you have information that is useful to someone else, the sooner you say it – the better:
I fight an innate passive nature. I naturally tend not to say anything until the last moment. I think I do this subconsciously to protect myself because I feel people around me will get upset by anything disruptive. But withholding useful information usually causes awkward moments at the least, and emergencies and chaos at the worst.
For example, I’ve told someone at the beginning of the day that I need to ship the job they are working on that day. They say OK, but as the day progressed they weren’t working on it, and I knew it has to ship at 3:00. My inner battle is “Am I being too compulsive, because, I can be that way, or do I really need to say something. I still have to muster my courage and tell them at 1:00 that I need the job by 2 or 2:30 so I can get it ready to ship. The sooner I give my coworker all the details, the better it is going to be for all of us.
Leadership means I have to let people know my expectations, I can’t leave them guessing. I would see something that would trigger a red flag in my brain, but subconsciously, I would dismiss it in order to keep myself safe and not rock the boat with anyone. Then later the issue would come up, and I would say, “I saw that, I just didn’t say anything about it.”
I’ve really had to train myself, and my team to question everything. I tell them, “If you have a question on something, ask. If you see something, say something”. And in communicating, I’ve found it is always better to let people know any information I have as soon as I can. This is more about scheduling things and noticing potential pitfalls than giving people feedback, which needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully.
This has helped me in my personal relationships as well. I tend to live in my head, but if I have information that my family needs, the sooner I let them know, the better for everyone.
Think about what your customers want
This one changed my business, and me. I have sometimes felt a pull of customer demands weighing heavily one me. My ideal life would be me nestled into a couch reading a book. It would look like this: Hmm, what is on my schedule today? Oh, all I have to do is stay here and read all the books that are waiting for me. No one is going to ask anything of me?
But in reality, I have to interact with people and people have needs. It was taxing for me when people made requests from me. What changed for me is when I really took time to consider how I could serve my customers. Their wants are pretty simple: they want their jobs done on-time, correctly, and within budget.
I also ask myself regularly if I have taken the time to care for myself and others in my personal life, and how I can better serve my family.
Organization
Order sends a meta-signal of peace. Kelly Brogan
I was raised amid clutter, and I took to it like a fish to water. And, I love paper, so an empty surface is in danger in my house. I was a graphic artist at my first job after college, and I got really good. I was super fast, I was a pilot, and my keyboard was the control center. But I had a tendency to work right up to quitting time, and not take any time at the end of my day to clean my area, and then in the morning, I would just start right in again where I left off. One day my manager said that he was going to start giving awards to the people who had clean desks at the end of the day. I’m pretty sure that contest was aimed at me.
I still had this bad habit when I returned to the workforce after my 10 year stay-at-home mommyhood. I couldn’t figure out how other people kept their desks clean. I’m sure they had just as much paper floating through their lives as I had, but somehow they kept their desks neat and tidy.
I can walk by a shelf at work and tell when one of my coworkers has been in that area because everything is lined up. It is very calming.
But now I’m the boss, and have to set an example. I ask my team to keep their areas neat, and “don’t work on top of work.” When I have time, and I don’t always have the time, I get to the shop early and tidy every morning for 15 minutes. And then at the end of the day, I take just a minute to gather what I have been working on into a neat pile to go through in the morning. It makes a huge difference.
Patrice Washington says, “Clutter is the physical manifestation of chaos in your mind.” I have to believe that’s a little bit true. As I meditate regularly and work hard to eat right and workout, I feel the chaos in my mind quieting, I feel the clutter and cobwebs clearing. I’m able to slow down and get an aerial view of my life, which is pretty awesome.
I’m now at the point where I straighten shelves at work as I pass them by.
This new tidiness bend is showing up at home too. I don’t have cleanliness in every space yet, but I’m getting there, and really enjoying the tidy spaces I have created.
I’m a tidiness ninja.
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