Achieving Balance in your Life

Principals for Business

It sounds simple. It is straight forward. It is hard to get. We need to understand our purpose, our challenges and our chances. How do you achieve balance in your life and still be successful in business? What is the definition of success? As entrepreneurs we create an idea, open a business and try to provide a service for the better good. Usually business is about risk and return or profit. As individuals, we risk a part of ourselves when we decide that a business direction is what we want to pursue. The dictionary meaning of success is: The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted: attributed their success in business to hard work. The gaining of fame or prosperity. One that is successful.

How do you define success? Is it working hard and attaining wealth is it doing something good for someone else or for mankind in general? Can you be successful without truly being happy? If you lost all your important relationships/friends but achieved wealth, than this was probably not success at all. What good is success if you traded it all for stress and money?

A popular quote: "If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all."

There is no one, all-encompassing definition of success because success is a relative concept. Success, in the action sense, is achieving something you have set out to do and wanted to do, but what about the connection between success and happiness? What if what you've accomplished doesn't bring you true happiness and satisfaction? Are you still successful simply because you completed something?

Managing and maintaining a business is a difficult task, if it was easy everyone would be doing it. So, where do you turn for the answers?

To achieve success you must define it for yourself.

Don't misunderstand: we are flooded with concepts, fashions, gags, proposals, and invitations to beliefs all the time in an endless stream. Sometimes it is entertaining, even interesting, often it is just simply 'noise'. It is the quick food for the mind but it is rarely real inspiration.

Inspiration - real inspiration - is needed to be able to create a new way of thinking. We need to understand our purpose, our challenges and our chances. Inspiration is the key. It opens the door to the inner world of our hearts and minds where creation is happening. Inspiration takes many forms - maybe music is one of the best ways to inspire because it is communication beyond words....

To create inspiration in ourselves takes practice, how do you have time to create inspiration in your busy schedule that is flooded with deadlines, proposals, sales, employees, and office politics? The answer lies with you and you priorities. This concept is very similar to the business you chose. The health club business is all about priorities or making the time available to commit to a healthy lifestyle with a regular routine of exercise. We are so busy with business and profit we forget to take time for ourselves. But the time we take for ourselves is the single most important factor for our health and happiness. If we are in sound health and mind we will project that to others and in business this can create a solid leadership position for others to follow, in turn this will create some of the success you are searching for.

Taking time for yourself is easier than you think. Create a routine that is all about you. Forget about the many people that you believe rely on you for direction at every moment; these people will survive and will actually mature themselves when faced with the same challenges. Build your schedule with you being the top priority.

Many companies around the world are turning to meditation to improve the caliber of executives and staff. Employees who are more creative, more intelligent, healthier and more energetic naturally contribute more to a company. Productivity increases, absenteeism decreases and teamwork improves.

Meditation has become part of the stress-management arsenal for hundreds of companies throughout the world. The effects of stress in the workplace can be devastating - both physically and financially - for both employees and the company. Studies have shown that meditation is more than twice as effective at reducing stress as any other form of relaxation. So, it all starts with you, build your schedule to include meditation on a daily basis. Meditation has been around for thousands of years, but not so long ago extended retreats or programs that banned speech was reserved for aging rock stars or college students on the ten-year plan. And while the practice isn't exactly mainstream in corporate America, more and more executives are open to anything that might help them thrive in - or temporarily disconnect from - today's Blackberry-addled ADD business climate.

Research on American businesses where employees have been taught Meditation found that they had significantly:

- Less anxiety, job tension, insomnia, and fatigue
- Improved health and fewer health complaints
- Enhanced effectiveness, job satisfaction, and work/personal relationships.

Meditation is the active mental investigation of a subject. People find their own ways to meditate. Some common methods: prayer, journaling, walking, playing solitaire, listen to classical music, sitting still, exercise, talking to a coach or mentor, looking at art, doodling, and any other way that works for you.

Here are seven benefits of meditation:

You've told yourself you want to meditate. When you meditate, you have the satisfaction of completing a goal.
You become more sensitive to your environment. You know more about what is happening around you.
You become more sensitive to the needs of others. Your relationships improve.
You open a creative link to the universe. Good ideas flow.
You reduce the stress in your life. You enjoy your life more.
You see your long term goals more clearly. Your life takes on a deeper meaning.
You can sincerely recommend meditation to others. You now speak with credibility.

The ability to sit quietly through daily meditation can have profound effects on your workplace; it can help transform your work experience from stressful to joyful. Have you ever worked out and ran several times a week and realized it just wasn't enough, that you were looking for something else, something to bring you silence or inner peace. After meditating for 10 minutes each morning you might find you are better prepared to deal with day-to-day stresses.

Sometimes when you own your own business you find yourself either not showing up or working all the time. I have learned over the years when things get out of control such as my current situation, it is time for a time out. It's time to get clarity before taking any action. Take a one hour space of time to reconnect through meditation and realize how valuable and powerful this time is.

If you are a business owner, or in any aspect of your life for that matter, where you begin to feel overwhelmed and find decision making a task, meditation can be a great benefit. When you are out of alignment with yourself, meditation will always bring you back to your center. You will always know when you are out of alignment by the way you are feeling. The five basic emotional states that show you are out of alignment are the feelings of apathy, grief, fear, lust, or anger. There are many sub categories that define each category more clearly but you can get the picture.

If you have never meditated, it is not as difficult as some my lead you to believe. It is best to begin with short periods of time anywhere from 5-15 minutes and build up gradually to a minimum of 20 minutes. Find a nice quite place where you will not be interrupted. Turn off your cell phone and TV.

Some benefits to meditation in my own life and business have created a long term business plan and outlook, here are a few examples:

Talk about how we as a company take a long-term or "Longevity" approach to sales and customer service. Our philosophy is not how many new clients we can bring on each month but rather how long we can keep a client once they come aboard with us. It's not about quantity, it's all about quality. When a new club owner decides to sign up with eFit it is our goal and commitment to keep them as a happy client for the life of their business. It is much more cost effective to keep the clients you do have rather than funneling a large portion of your time and money towards getting new sales. Many competitors that focus on high volumes of new sales lose sight of the long-term big picture. They end up losing just as many clients out the back door as they do in new sales. We are in the customer service business (or people business) just like our clients. We must provide good quality products, service, and support each and every day, in order to maintain a long-term business relationship. We are the only company of our kind that still answers the phone live. No other company takes this unique customer service approach in this day and age of auto attendants. This is just one of many reasons for our success and longevity in the health club industry. This decreases our operating expense and stabilizes us a rock-solid company. With this type of business philosophy clients feel they can depend on eFit and feel comfortable knowing we are working on there behalf.

Of course you will have different business objectives and complexities and hopefully you will find the benefits of making yourself the top priority in your life. Take quality time out for meditation to align yourself for the continued challenges you face everyday in business.

"I made a list of pros and cons, and realized I loved my job and I started to see why I loved it. I also realized this was not about my boss, my job, the environment or the other employees. It was me."