Feel the joy of running your own business again

I don’t know if this is a hot take but I don’t think you can build a successful business without failing a couple of times (at least!) There’s no one-size-fits-all way to build a business. It’s not as simple as following a map from A to B because you and your business are unique. What makes me tick is not the same as what makes you tick. What works for me isn’t necessarily going to work for you. 

That’s why I’m all about figuring out your own path to success. The figuring-out part is where people can lose the joy of their business because of the ups and downs of trying new things but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun! 

Where the joy gets lost

You don’t need anyone to tell you what to do. You don’t need to follow anyone else’s strategy. No one knows you, your clients and your business like you do. So you can figure out how to make your business successful yourself. Using your journal to reflect on what’s going on in your business, work through issues, and notice patterns and opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise, you can take on the world! 

Part of the process of figuring it out for yourself is making mistakes, facing setbacks and things not working out. We learn so much about success when we fail. I wouldn’t be where I am in my business today if I didn’t fuck up along the way. So failure won’t ruin your business. But how we respond to failure can make or break us. 

Failure is never going to feel great. It hurts because we care about our businesses so much. We really want our businesses to work. When something goes wrong, it can feed self-doubt and get us stuck in negativity. That’s when we lose the joy of running our own businesses. The excitement of doing what you love for a living is long forgotten and so is everything you’ve achieved so far. All you can see is how hard it is. 

When all you can see is the hard stuff of course you’re not going to enjoy running your business. We can bring the joy back by flipping our mindsets.

How gratitude puts the fun back in business

We’ve established you’re going to face setbacks. Instead of seeing that as a problem that brings you down, see it as progress and another step forward. You tried something. It didn’t work as you hoped. Now you have more information about how to make your business a success. If you didn’t make that mistake, you wouldn’t have the information you’re now using to grow your business. 

Deal with perceived failures with gratitude. What are you grateful for about that experience? The first thing that comes to mind will probably be “For fucks sake…” Stick with it, look for lessons and you’ll find the silver lining you can focus on. Paying attention to the good you can take from every situation feels a lot more positive and helps you to grow your business because you…

Keep a positive focus

The reason we obsess over problems is that we don’t want to make the same mistake again right? Our brain is like “That was crap! Let’s not do that again. How do we not do that again?” It makes sense as long as we’re focusing on what we can take from the experience and not beating ourselves up about it. Getting annoyed at yourself will only make you feel worse. I don’t know about you but I find it hard to do what I need to do when I feel like crap and then guess what, I feel even worse. The complete opposite of fun!

When I’ve looked at a situation and realised the positive I can take from it, I have something new to work with and apply to my business. I’m focusing on making progress. Through gratitude journaling, I’ve accepted the situation for what it is without turning it into a stick to beat myself with. I’m busy working on what I can do with the new information and getting excited about what’s next for my business. 

Acknowledge the wins

We tend to have a negative bias for what’s going wrong and gloss over what’s going right. I guess it’s a safety mechanism but when you’re not fighting off lions and tigers and bears, it’s not very helpful. When all you see is bad stuff, it’s hard to stay hopeful and believe good things are possible. It’s a real downer!

Gratitude journaling makes time to acknowledge and celebrate what’s gone right. For example, you didn’t end up signing that new potential client but a current client has given you more work. That’s worth celebrating! If they want to give you more work, clearly your services are valuable to the right people. Enjoy the win. It makes business more fun. 

Learn lessons

When you reflect on what you can be grateful for about a situation, you have to think about it more deeply instead of just taking it at face value. That’s where the magic happens! As you’re thinking about it more, you might notice things you wouldn’t have otherwise. Initially, you might not know what went wrong. On reflection, you can see a really valuable lesson that will change how you do things in the future. A simple gratitude can turn into a future win. There’s no better feeling than a eureka moment!

Stay motivated

Business isn’t fun when you don’t feel motivated to work on it. It’s going to be hard to stay motivated if you don’t see the signs of progress so there’s nothing to show that all your hard work is worthwhile. Gratitude is like a progress check. You’re looking at what’s gone well. Even the tiniest good things are still good things that motivate you to keep going. Often there are big wins that we don’t fully acknowledge in the rush of running a business. Gratitude journaling makes sure everything gets appreciated and recorded in the win list. 

Tap into the Law of Attraction

Finally, there’s just something magical about gratitude. Once you start noticing the little things to be grateful for, you end up with more and more and bigger and bigger things to be grateful for. Well, I think it’s more like switching your brain from noticing everything that’s going wrong to noticing everything that’s going right creates a mindset where good things are not only possible but inevitable and that impacts your actions. That’s magic, right?

Gratitude is simple yet it is so so powerful when you make it a habit. Notice the good and run with it! Let yourself enjoy what you have achieved and believe that the rest will follow. We’re putting the joy back into business through gratitude journaling in the Find Your Vibe Business Club in August. The daily journal prompts will help you explore gratitude in business in different ways. The guided workshops and other membership events are a chance to come together to journal and discuss where you’re at with fellow small business owners. If you’re interested in the Find Your Vibe Business Club, fill out this contact form.