Get Off the Hard Work Hamster Wheel
You're a hard worker.
You work hard every day, but is it the easy out?
Is hard work the comfort food of your day? Has it become the default?
Hard work is often a distraction.
It's easy to do the hard work instead of all of those things you say you can't get to.
Leaders struggle with the notion of working IN the business versus working ON the business.
Working IN the business is transactional work, client fires, and managing. The working ON the business is creating and executing your vision, making bold moves to scale, building a new product, or taking your company to fundraise.
Many of us default to the 'easy' hard work of the day because it is more comfortable than the transformational work. This has you saying you are too busy, don’t have time, feel scattered, and staying in overwhelm.
The default work has you running in place.
That has you playing smaller.
When you find yourself in busy, scattered, and overwhelm because of the hard work, it holds you back from exploring possibilities.
What if?
What if is a question of possibilities.
Thinking differently for yourself starts with an open mind that looks forward to uncovering and discovering the answers to the question: What if?
Asking ‘What if’ is where imagination plays. When you move away from doing things the way you always have done them and open yourself up to imagining what's possible, that's where creation and innovation unfold.
Elon Musk
Jeff Bezos
Sarah Blakely
They imagined what was possible. When they shared their outrageous possibilities most people responded from their own limiting beliefs that they were crazy and that their idea had no possible chance.
As far as we know, we are the only species that can imagine. It's why you don’t see dogs, cats, or horses creating the wheel or sending a man to the moon.
Elon, Jeff, Sarah (first name basis now), imagined what was possible and then moved to belief and then planning and action.
It is easy to discount people who have impossible thoughts. We think they are different from us.
Elon, Jeff, and Sarah, are no different from you or me.
They simply get out of the day's hard work to imagine, begin believing, and take action.
My current business structure is built on trading time for money. It has me working hard, which I’m so grateful for, but that busy was keeping me from re-imaging my business to serve my clients more deeply and have more impact. I dedicated time to exploring what it looks like to strengthen and grow my capacity for the business. It’s hard work with no simple or right answers, but already the byproducts of this hard, uncomfortable work have me deepening my CEO Self-Concept.
If you don’t allow yourself to imagine what’s possible you are not allowing yourself to come up with breakthrough ideas that will truly transform your business.
That has you staying stuck in the day’s hard work.
Committing to the hard-er work is not in conflict with your calendar because the time you invest in what you want most will be the thing that gives you your time back. It will give you more time to do all of those things you dream about doing but don’t have time for.
Investing time today to get time back.
What would be really hard work for you this week?
The question I get most frequently on these calls, ‘what results can I achieve?’ Here’s what one client shared:
"I found working with Christina fun, insightful and worthwhile. I always appreciated her transparency and her candor; she was always in my corner but was not afraid to call me out or push me to be more honest with myself and with her. I appreciate that she is a strong woman in business who wants to help me figure out not just how to succeed but also how to balance that success with my husband and future family. I felt like she really did get me and value the relationship we built."
