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Get Your Life Back: Three Strategies for Taking Control

Written by: Teresa Pool, PCC

Article Overview: You can have a successful career or growing business and thrive outside of the office. Our three “take it back” strategies put you in the driver’s seat again, running your race your way.

Get Your Life Back: Three Strategies for Taking Control

The top performers I work with are not afraid of hard work. Instead they embrace it and often take it to the limit...and beyond. They thrive on exceeding expectations, including their own and keep raising the bar higher and higher. At some point, working smarter and harder can turn into working longer, and working longer becomes working all the time. That's when the bigger picture of Success starts to look fuzzy. So we turn to the three strategies to bring Success back in to focus; Success that includes having a great life while also having a great career.

Get Your Life Back Strategy One: Take 100% ownership of your situation.

No one else, except perhaps your spouse or significant other, cares if you have a life. No one will hand you one or make time for you to have one. If we blame external situations and expectations for how our time is spent, we lose the capacity to control it. Fully embracing your role in creating where you are at will allow you to change it. Your new ownership mantras:

• I choose to work as much as I do

• I can manage expectations others have of my availability

• My assumptions of "what might happen" don't drive my actions

• I choose my own work boundaries

• Success is doing well in all areas of my life

Get Your Life Back Strategy Two: Stop the delusions

• Let go of the myth that, "One of these days I'll have time for...." This only justifies being the victim of your work environment and prevents taking control. This puts life at the bottom of the to-do list and we all know how often we ever get there.

• Another delusion involves the importance of your constant availability. Top performers teach people to solve their own problems and become the "resource of last resort". Rapid return creates the dependence you want to get away from.

• The most devastating delusion is believing you have to do it all to be successful. The most effective leaders leave the most to-do's in the dust, focusing their efforts where they have the biggest impact. Learn to be comfortable and confident in what you choose not to do.

Get Your Life Back Strategy Three: Put life on the calendar and leave it there

Yes, it is that simple. Put YOU on the calendar and make it your most important meeting. If you had time scheduled with the President of your company and something else came up at work, you would make that meeting with the President happen. Become the President of your own life and treat yourself with that same respect. The rest will fall in to place because it has to and because you are taking control of it.

The most successful men and women in business use these three strategies every day. You can be one of them and get your life back!

Related Articles
  Successful People Make Their Own Luck
  Personal Responsibility, Self Confidence and Success
  Smart Women Are In Control of Their Ride
  Taking Charge of Your Life
  Living The Life You Have

Article Tags: assumptions, boundaries, cares, delusion, delusions, dependence, external situations, last resort, myth, nbsp, one of these days, raising the bar, rapid return, top performers, work environment



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