Questions That Come Up Before Taking Vacation
As an Entrepreneur, have you ever put off taking vacation? Are you afraid of losing new clients? Are you afraid of losing revenue? Even if you did take vacation, do you feel guilty? When I first, transitioned from an Employee to an Entrepreneur, my answer to all these questions were "YES". It took a couple of years to understand my emotions and change my mindset.
I would make time to accommodate a guest or relatives visiting us, despite my busy schedule of running my home chores and business. When it came to taking a vacation, I felt that only if I had a JOB, I can have the luxury of taking a PAID vacation provided by an employer. In other words, I felt that I never had "permission" to take vacation.
The dictionary meaning of vacation is "time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure", "a period of time devoted to rest, travel, or recreation". When I looked deeper into the problem, I realized that by not taking a vacation, I was denying myself rest, travel, recreation. With my own self limiting belief that vacation is something that needs to be permitted by SOMEONE, I was keeping myself so low in nurturing my mind, body and spirit (which I could have avoided by taking a short vacation) that I never felt any sense of accomplishment as an Entrepreneur.
Self Limiting Belief About Taking Vacation
All that changed when I became AWARE that I was limiting myself by NOT giving myself permission to take regular family vacations. I gathered information from successful business owners who take regular vacation and followed them. When I reviewed my Journal, I realized that subconsciously, I have created my own THREE POINT SYSTEM to take and enjoy vacations as an Entrepreneur, guilt free. Yes, I have been involuntarily using the system before even going on a vacation.
As an Entrepreneur, if you often find yourself avoid OR fear taking vacation, feel guilty before OR after taking vacation, these Three simple Tips are what you need to create a guilt free and fearless vacation experience.
Three Tips To Follow Before Taking Vacation
Tip#1 Stop Undervaluing and Start Affirming That You Deserve Regular vacation
Affirm that you deserve a vacation. Your business will grow in proportion to your personal growth. Your body, mind and spirit needs to rest, travel and experience wonderful things. Create your "Why" card for your business. My "Why" card reads something like this:
"I will deal with challenges in building my business today, because my "WHY" is to spend more time with my family, provide for my children s' education, take regular family vacations and be a mentor to my kids."
Create Your card and Keep it in a conspicuous place in your office and read it several times. By doing so, you are programming your sub-conscious mind to take regular family vacations and putting it to the Universe to help you achieve your goal of taking vacation.
Tip#2 Be Excited To Plan Your vacation and Be Committed To your Clients
To begin with, it is not the length of vacation that matters, but the quality and how you feel about your vacation. Start with short 3-4 day vacation get away. I am sure your mind will come up with blockers. Your Ego, will come up as a barrier and stop you from planning your vacation. It may show up as questions like the following:
"What will happen if you lose your new client?"
"Why don't you invest this money in advertisement/marketing, instead of vacation?"
Just write down every blocker that comes up in your mind. When you write it down, Universe will respond to you with answers like:
"I can set up a Vacation auto-responder email to all those who contact me."
"My business needs me in best health and spirits. Investment in myself is as important, as in my business. As long as I am making responsible financial decisions, I am OK."
Did you see, how your emotional blocker is transformed into logical (in the highest good of all concerned) answers?
Tip #3 Commit To Enjoy Your vacation and Weave Your Experiences Into Marketing Strategy
As an employee, when I went on vacation, my thoughts were focused more on future and I would rarely be in the MOMENT. By that I mean, I would think about missing some important meetings that may affect my promotion OR the work the will be piled up during my absence, etc etc. As an entrepreneur, I have learned to be in the moment, watch and learn from what is going on every service industry-like Airports, Theme parks, Hotels etc. You can learn new marketing tactics by watching them in practice and implement them in your business RIGHT AWAY and broadcast your message in Twitter/facebook and Ezine. In other words you can work your business around your vacation, without any pressure. Did you get the idea?
As you can see, it is the AWARENESS and willingness to look deeper into your OWN self limiting beliefs, that will help you to create a guilt free and fearless vacation experience. Remember, these are the same steps I personally used to transform my fear of taking vacation to welcoming and embracing vacation as a gift from Infinite Intelligence/Universe/God, whatever you may refer.
Now it is your turn. As a fellow entrepreneur, I invite you to share YOUR thoughts and feelings, when it comes to taking a vacation.
Lalitha Brahma transitioned from being an Employee in Management position in an Indian Nationalized Bank and Corporate America to an Entrepreneur after 21 years. She is very passionate about inspiring and helping employees explore the Entrepreneur in them.
Lalitha Brahma helps Consultants, Home based business owners and Small business owners improve their bottom line by inspiring and moving them to action. Is your Regular paycheck stopping you from exploring the ENTREPRENEUR in you? If you answered “Yes”, go ahead and sign up for her FREE Ezine to learn the secret of breaking the Regular paycheck barrier.
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