When Life is Spiraling Out of Control

With the economy, the pressures of daily life and the impending holiday season, control teeters on a delicate balance. Demands for our time and energy press inward from all sides.
Stop! Breathe! Relax your shoulders! Calm the swarm of butterflies in your system! Right now is the time to collect your thoughts and set up priorities. One of the age-old examples is a jar of rocks. Sort your “to do” list into three sections: major and urgent tasks, major but not urgent tasks and minor duties. The major and urgent tasks are the largest rocks. The major but not urgent tasks are the pebbles and the grains of fine sand are the minor duties.
If you fill your jar with the fine sand first, all of your time will be consumed with minor tasks. You will not have any time available for major and urgent activities. It is easy to become distracted with minor personal emails and little daily interruptions. When you allow your mind to wander rather than focusing on the task at hand, you are filling your time jar with fine sand. Spending time with minor distractions consumes all of your time and accomplishes nothing to move your business or your life forward.
Schedule your time in manageable blocks. One hour blocks work the best for me for the major activities. For instance every business everywhere requires marketing. Without marketing, you do not have customers and without customers, you do not have a business. This rule holds true from major corporations to franchises to home based businesses. Marketing is a major activity for all businesses. Schedule time to work on lead generation. Whether you choose to use online marketing, print media, social network marketing or recruiting friends and family, you must perform marketing. Marketing represents the biggest rock in the jar. Without leads you do not have customers and without customers, you do not have a business.
Another major rock is mindset. Developing a mindset for success is imperative. Remember “The Little Engine That Could?” That was a book from my childhood. The little engine kept saying “I Think I Can.” Believing that you will be successful and visualizing that you already are successful is so important. Dr. Wayne Dyer talks about seeing it from the end. See your success in all of its glory as already achieved. Experience that success with all five senses. Know it, feel it and believe it. When your mind totally accepts the success as a reality, the subconscious mind goes to work on making it happen.
When you place top priority on placing the big rocks, the major activities, in the time jar first and blocking time for their accomplishment, you are more likely to complete those duties. Naming the big rocks and blocking time for them is still not enough. You absolutely must focus totally and completely on those tasks during their time slot and finish them. Making the decision alone is not sufficient.
There were 5 seagulls on a dock. Two decided to fly away. How many were still sitting on the dock? All five. Making the decision did nothing until they took action on the decision.
Name your priorities, allot time to each one, focus on task completion and finish the job.
Once the major rocks are in the jar, then add the major but not urgent tasks. Follow exactly the same method. Decide what must be done, set aside the time to do them, focus on the completion and do the necessary task.
There will always be time in the day to pour in the fine sand of minor details. No need for guilt when you have already completed all of the big rocks and then the medium size rocks and pebbles.
Life is all about priorities.