Words of Inspiration from a Reformed Scatterbrain

Sometimes even the most well-meaning marketing consultant can be a hypocrite, and I must admit, that’s what I’ve become this last quarter. I wasn’t being consistent with my own marketing and, while I felt guilty, I couldn’t very well do something I didn’t have time for.

OK, the truth is that I just couldn’t seem to get it together. I have about 8 draft posts ready to be written, but I couldn’t focus enough to write them. And when your blog drives about 80% of your website’s traffic (most do), it’s sort of crucial that you keep on top of it. And without blog posts, my email newsletters were scanty and off-schedule as well.

Part of my distraction has been some internal wandering… life has been a bit tumultuous in the past few months, and it’s required me to back up and reassess where I am personally. While my clients’ work was getting done, it was work on myself that was screaming for attention.

Enve is at a pivotal point. January 1 marks our 5th birthday, which is both amazingly exciting and daunting—because 2014 is about looking back at not only the past year but the past 5 years, to evaluate what worked and what hasn’t, and to project the best possible plan and energy into the future.

Recently, I met with a business advisor at the Connecticut Small Business Development Center who advised:

Beginning in 2014, you’re a six-figure business. Just tell your subconscious to continue to work on envisioning where you want to be in a year’s time—not five or ten years. You’ll wake up one morning and it will be much clearer.

My energy as we sat across from each other, I recall, wasn’t terrific. I just couldn’t summon the enthusiasm to believe her words in that moment. But of course, she was right. So much of success and contentment is about changing your attitude, about being mindful of every moment and not blocking opportunities by having a negative attitude.

Finding my center, that was the most critical part, and then I could project the necessary energy into my work, into what the next year will shape up to be. When you’re pulled in so many directions—as a business owner, as a person—it’s hard to find that little piece of yourself, much less to nurture it. I realized that Myself needed to become a priority, at least for a little while, if 2014 was going to be a successful year.

So how do you stay in the present and enjoy all the planning and routine of work when the future looms so heavily in front of you?

Over the past few months, I’ve structured my life around forgiving and accepting the past while minimizing anxiety about the future. I’ve committed to living and working and being in the present as much and as often as I can. While it has been a struggle, particularly for an obsessive planner and future-thinker, I’ve found that it has strengthened my creativity, brought focus back, boosted my productivity, and made me more able to handle the stresses and personalities that I encounter on a regular basis.

Throughout this journey, some inspirational people have landed in my life—like the business advisor—and on my bookshelf. I’ll leave you with one more quote to consider, and please feel free to share your own resolutions for the New Year and your own words of wisdom in the comments below.

Happy New Year to you all!

Maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious…. Whether your thoughts and emotions about this situation are justified or not makes no difference. The fact is that you are resisting what is. You are making the present moment into an enemy…. Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as a failure, but as a helpful signal that is telling you: “Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present.”
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle