Sacrificing Yourself is Not Critical to Business Growth

A friend asked me if I had read a very popular book  that seemed to be on everyone’s bookshelf and bookclub selectons.  I responded….well no.  I purchased it.  But I just can’t.  It’s not that I don’t like reading.  I am just at capacity with information and haven’t fully downloaded the busy that is real and the busy that I keep building in my imagination.

Like many of you, I have found myself in a perpetual state of To Do Lists that are exhausting and not ending.  I like a thriving business.  I appreciate client calls…the good, bad, and indifferent.  Because they all mean that you are working on something in business whether it’s working on getting better from an organization perspective or even service improvement.

But still, I was feeling overwhelmed.  One day, I decided to check on myself.  Here’s how that goes:

1. You schedule you in
2. You take YOU out for lunch
3. You sit with no work …maybe a phone.
4. Over the meal…and in your head…ask yourself “how are you dong?”

This is something that my godmother taught me. 

Ask You about YOU.  That for me…is self-care.  I listen to myself, I check-in with me and I put some action behind what I can do to make things better for me. 

Here is the thing about clinical leadership…

We are taught and intuitively ask staff, parents, and others how they are doing.  Rarely, is the moment that will ask you without needing something from you. 

So check-in with yourself.  Not in social media venting.  I’m talking real-life gut checks.    Give yourself a moment…realizing that at times you will need to fight for your moments. .

• Moments with friends and family
• Moments with myself.
• Moments to mentor.
• Moments to think.
• Moments to connect.

Moments for me are critical in leadership quiet development and contemplation.  For me, I gather time to ponder on systems and see how I feel.  Check in with myself to see how things are really going.  Moments allow me to recall mentoring nuggets that have been passed down to me and provide those sacred moments to think.

For me, it’s not always in the latest professional course being taught or networking opportunity.  Honestly, the quiet moments are those that I am most impactful and effective personally, professionally, and in terms of my business.

In fighting for my moments, I have said No to some opportunities and narrowed down friendships that no longer served me and were not reciprocal. 

My hope is that in this self-care landscape, we remove the frame of doing and being there for others as we lead and build.  The leader as the sacrificial lamb as business grows has to be removed as a mindstate.  Leadership requires that we be here for ourselves and fight for our moments of contemplative solitude and joy.

Leadership requires that we look at ourselves and understand what we need.

Me?  I need my moments…and I find one each day. 

Here’s to Us and Finding Moments!

~Landria Seals Green