Recruit People That Stick
April 3, 2018
Job Interview Preparation – so you nail it!
June 4, 2018
I had a cracking quarter the first quarter of this year, everything was going really well… financially, personally – it was all going fantastically,
and then…
two things happened in the last month or two.
One is we’ve moved house – it’s been insanely disruptive and there are things all over the place and I can’t find anything because it’s all in a box.
The second thing is while we were in the process of moving I got a serious illness – I got whooping cough.
And for anyone who’s had that illness it’s just really tough.
Sometimes things are going really well and we’re blindsided by something that we didn’t know was going to happen.
When it personally affects us and we find our resources are low, we’ve got to learn lessons from it. If we learn lessons from it then when we get back to where we left off we can use those lessons to find success again.
So I’m going to share with you what I’ve learnt from having whooping cough so that you can learn about bouncing back from personal crisis.
I think I can categorise the lessons probably into two types of lesson.
1. Spiritual lessons, like kind of esoteric and “What the hell am I here for?” lessons
2. Business lessons.
Let’s go with the business lessons first and then I’ll move to the spiritual.
While I had whooping cough, (and this could be any crisis you might have, any personal setback: a divorce, a serious illness, a problem with the family, whatever it is) when these things hit you what matters is how you respond to them.
I’ve been able to see that from a business perspective, it’s actually been on some levels really tough, but on other levels it’s actually been an opportunity.
I’ll give you an example.
For the first time in my business I’ve only been been able to use technology to deliver my coaching.
I couldn’t physically be with clients because I would be coughing all over them and I’d probably be giving them the germ, and I don’t want to do that, that’s bad for business.
I’ve had to use technology and what I’ve found is that through using tech I can connect up my ipad, I can draw everything and help them with their problem and afterwards I can send the file to them and then use automation to book in their next session.
It’s been incredible and clients have had great results and I’ve worked out that literally I could use technology to deliver everything.
So it’s actually been an opportunity.
The second is … I’ve had to focus. I’ve had no time and I’ve had very limited personal resources.
I talk to a lot of people in coaching and say “Just focus on 1, 2 or 3 things at once”, well I’ve only been able to focus on one, each day.
Right? What would be the one thing that I could *cough, cough* do?
I think one of the things that you can learn when you have a crisis is focus, because you don’t have spare resources.
Third is, I’ve just really missed being with people.
Now that I’m well again I’m going to be spending the majority of my week speaking to people or being with people because that’s the thing that I really missed and I can’t use tech for that – so that’s what I’m going to get back to.
The whole experience has reminded me of what I really care about.
Spiritually, it has reminded me that if you map the years you have left (however many years, we don’t know how many!) and when you have bad health it kind of gets you thinking about it right?
I’ve realised that for some of those years you’re going to be in bad health and for some of those years you’re going to be in good heath.
What really matters are the quality years where you’ve got your health.
Because if you haven’t got your health, like I didn’t, the business, and the family and all the things that you care about are really difficult to be part of… so health really matters.
The other thing is I’ve been thinking a lot about is who do I want to serve?
I do a lot of career coaching and there are two common questions:
What do you love and what gives you joy and what do you do best?
and then the second is: Who do you want to make a difference to?
The fact that I’ve been ill has really got me thinking…
“With this good health and time I’ve got left, who am I going to make a difference to?”
Not a short term decision, granted, but in the medium term, it’s getting me thinking about who that might be.
Let me summarise…
When you have a personal crisis or something goes wrong, like I got whooping cough, you can learn lessons from it, and it presents opportunities in your business, and it presents lessons to learn.
I think when something goes wrong, if we don’t learn the lessons we’ve missed an opportunity.
If you’ve got something challenging for you or a crisis going on – good luck, it’s hard, but once you get through that toughest space try and learn the lessons, when you come out you can get back to that success and satisfaction again.
And you know what, if you want someone to call, book some time and have a chat with me, I’m happy to have a chat and share my lessons with you.
Until the next time on The Reason & The Road, take care.
