If you haven’t noticed by now, I love quotes. This weekend, I ran across this one by Walt Whitman. “Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” It reminds me that life is cyclical and when the low cycles hit, we need to ask ourselves what we can learn from them to move forward.
This past week was an emotional one for me: with friends, family, and business. What I realized from my experience is this: it’s nearly impossible to be “up” or “on” all the time. It’s difficult for me and it’s difficult for those around me. The good and not so great moments of life flow in and out like the tides. Nature responds to cycles and those cycles affect us all. So, the question arose. How do we, as business owners, productive members of the community, fathers, mothers, and friends, roll with those cycles?
Chart it out: Keeping a journal is a great way to recognize cycles in your personal life or business. Try this for three months and you will see patterns develop. Try it for longer and you can start to forecast the cycles. There are a number of ways to chart your cycles. However, choosing a single focus — say, cash flow, is important. Put on your researcher hat and track the data using qualitative (free writing in a journal) or quantitative (counting) research. What do you see?
Recognize and honor the low: Lows happen. As a mentor of mine once said, “So what, now what?” Recognize that the low is happening and become solution oriented. You may not be able to control the cycles, but you can control how you react to them. What will you do to honor and appropriately respond to the low?
Take action: Take action on the solution to see results. This may be talking to a mentor, spending some time in meditation to work on the issue, or developing an action plan and attacking your first line item. Whatever you do, don’t wallow! Wallowing tends to attract more low. Wallow a little, process it, and take action to see results. How will you take action today?
Now, back to that quote, “Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” Mindset is important when you are rolling with the cycles of life and business. Seeing the miracle in everything that happens can be difficult. But when you look back, how has the dark led to the light of today? I use an app called Timehop to look back as many as five years on my Facebook profile. It helps me be grateful for the more difficult times in life and business and understand why things didn’t go as planned. Perhaps it will work for you, too.
I’ve asked a lot of questions in today’s article. So now I give it to you to answer them, either privately or in this open forum. The floor is yours, Carson City.
ABOUT DIANE HANSEN
Diane Hansen is the Chief Inspiration Officer of What Works Coaching, a coaching firm that has helped people worldwide with their businesses, careers, mindsets, and profit margins. She brings to Carson City more than 17 years of experience with a wide array of clients, ranging from top corporations, motivated entrepreneurs and individuals hungry for a fresh start. Her column appears every Monday on Carson Now.