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Jody Moore

Life Coaching for Moms

Entre-Talk: Work-Life Balance

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Better Than Happy Jody Moore | Work-Life Balance

If you’re trying to build a business, it’s easy to get out of balance. There’s a lot of talk about how we need to have work-life balance. I agree with that, of course. However, like many other areas of business and life, our brains can take a really useful concept like work-life balance and use it to sabotage us.

I see people feeling guilty about how much time they spend working on their businesses. Or worse, they are afraid to even get started and really dive into their business for fear they won’t have work-life balance. Sound familiar? I’ve experienced this for myself, and there are a few things I want you to consider.

Tune in this week to discover how a fear of lacking work-life balance might be stopping you before you even get started. I’m sharing why having work-life balance is a choice, and how to own the decision to focus your attention on your business in an empowering way, without feeling bad about it.

I want to give away all of my best secrets, and that’s why I’ve created a free training. If you’re a coach or you want to start a similar business and are struggling to figure out how to get started, you need this training. To get it, all you have to do is click here!

What You’ll Learn on this Episode:

  • The guilt entrepreneurs experience around working longer hours than they intended.
  • How to get clear on your thoughts about work-life balance.
  • 2 things to consider if you’re worried about starting a business meaning you won’t have work-life balance.

Mentioned on the Show:

  • I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, Entre-Talk: Work-Life Balance.

    Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master-certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

    Hello there, friends, welcome to an Entre-Talk episode where we talk all things entrepreneurial, business building. Is that a word, entrepreneurial? Did I say it right? Lately I feel like I’m having trouble speaking clearly. I’m fumbling over my words a lot more, is this because I’m just getting older? Is this some kind of health condition? What is going on? Someone tell me. No, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. Well, I mean if you have a solution, let me know. I kind of think I’m just getting older maybe and my thoughts aren’t coming as quickly and clearly. And then I fumble over them as I say them. I don’t know. At any rate I apologize in advance.

    And we’re going to dive in because I’m really excited to talk to you about being out of balance. If you are trying to build a business or well, this is true for anybody who has a job or well, I mean maybe anyone, let’s just say anyone this can be true, that it’s easy to get out of balance. It’s easy to put your head into one area of your life.

    And when we get on a roll with it, when we start having success, having ideas, seeing clearly what the steps are, the next steps are that we need to be taking to achieve whatever we’re trying to achieve. Then it’s easy to want to not walk away from that in order to go do the other things that we value in our lives, whatever those things are. Maybe it’s taking care of yourself personally, your health. Maybe it’s taking care of the family, things like that.

    And so there’s a lot of talk out there about the importance of work-life balance. You don’t want to let work take over your life. You need to have balance. And I agree with that, of course. I’m not here to dispute that. I just notice that just like everything, our clever, clever brains take what is a really useful concept and good advice and then sometimes they use that to sabotage us.

    What I see happen the most commonly with this concept is that people feel guilty or they’re afraid to even start. And by starting I mean to get much traction, to really dive into their business building efforts. Because they’re afraid they will not have work-life balance. So let’s talk about that one first then I’ll come back to the guilt. So I see a lot of entrepreneurs say, “I told myself I was going to work these hours”, whatever those are, maybe it’s five hours a week. Maybe it’s 25/30 hours a week. I don’t know.

    “But I told myself I was going to work this much but I’m just not doing it. I’m just afraid if I really dive in, I’m going to neglect every other part of my life.” And when I say, “Why are you afraid of that?” They say, “Because that’s what I’ve done in the past. I know myself. I get into something, I become obsessed with it. I sort of start neglecting other areas.” Can you relate to this? I can.

    I used to sew back before I was an entrepreneur. I was still working in corporate, but I had a couple of kids and when I came home I liked to sew. I had my sewing machine I would keep out for the most part if I had a spot for it. And I liked to make the baby gifts. And I liked to make clothes for my kids and just little projects that I would find online and things. And sewing was really fun and therapeutic for me. And I could get into a sewing project and want to go all night long. It was hard to stop sewing to make dinner or to do whatever else needed to be done.

    And I probably neglected my own health and self-care because I would just rather sew. Can you relate to this whatever your thing is? So we take that and we go, “That will probably happen with my business.” I’ll probably get into it. I’ll start figuring some stuff out or I’ll have this project that I really want to finish. And I’m going to then abandon the other things that I value in my life. And I don’t want to do that so I just won’t build this business. Now, again, I always in this situation start with, “Okay, then why don’t we just not do this business?” You don’t have to. It’s totally fine.” I’m not trying to talk anyone into doing it.

    But nine times out of 10 they will come back with, “No, I really want to. Not doing it isn’t even an option in my mind. I don’t want to not do it.” That would be a different kind of tragedy. So if that’s true for you then there’s a couple of things you have to remember. The first one is that that whole getting so into something that we neglect everything else, doesn’t just happen to us. It is a series of choices we make. We choose not to be disciplined. We choose not to stop the project and go do the other things that matter to us.

    We choose to let ourselves spend longer than we planned to on it. It is a choice, I promise you. I know it feels like it just happened to you, but it didn’t. So that’s the first thing you have to do is, own that it’s a choice. And I don’t mean that you should feel bad if you’ve done it before. I don’t mean that that was on me, I should have walked away. No, no, no, I never think that. I go, “That’s what I chose to do and it turned out fine. But I could choose something different if I wanted.

    I have chosen in the past sometimes to spend a lot longer on a project than I intended and that’s what I chose. It’s all in the past so there’s no upside to feeling bad about it now. But if I wanted to choose something different, I could. Do you see how this empowers you rather than think it’s just going to happen to you? It doesn’t just happen to any of us. It’s a series of choices. That’s number one.

    Number two is I like to make a case for being out of balance at times. Yes, I’m all for balance, work-life balance. That’s a good thing. But sometimes being out of balance is fine. For example, I am getting ready to get on a plane tomorrow with my family. It is spring break. We’re going to go to Phoenix and hopefully catch a little bit of sun, get out of this cold for a few days, swim in a pool, eat some good food, laugh a little, probably deal with some grumpiness too, and then come home.

    I am not going to work the whole time I’m there. I’m not even going to take my computer with me. I do not take it when I go on vacation with my family. You know why? I want to be out of balance. I’m not going to be working. I’m going to be just be with my family. And there are other times when I am working a little bit more or a lot more even than I normally would. I’m not going to always put in more hours and more effort, but in short bursts of time on occasion when I have a reason I like, I may work more.

    I may have a certain deadline or goal I’m trying to meet and I may allow myself to work more intensely, to focus more intensely. Just like if you wanted to get your body in shape you may do some kind of a bootcamp for a limited time or what’s the thing everyone does, the 75 hard or something like that? What is it called? It’s this thing where they go a certain amount of days and there’s all these things you have to do like work out twice a day and I don’t know what else. But it’s not forever hard, it’s 75, is it 75? Whatever the number is.

    You do it for a certain number of days. It’s purposely out of balance. You’re not going to push yourself to that extent forever, but for a short period of time it can give you a burst of success, first of all, and progress. It also kind of helps create some habits that once you scale it back to a more balanced healthy level, start to feel easy. It changes things a little bit. So there are times both erring on the side of my business and erring on the side of my family or my personal life or my health when I will choose to be out of balance.

    And if you tell yourself, I need to be balanced all the time, alright, if that works for you. But I find for me, that doesn’t work because then I feel guilty when I’m with my kids if I’m not working on my business. And I feel guilty when I’m working on my business if I’m not with my kids. Can you relate to this? Then try this out. Listen, right now is the time when I’m going to be out of balance. It doesn’t mean that you don’t still have parameters around what you’re doing but sometimes I think this whole work-life balance thing is either overrated or like I said, we use it to sabotage ourselves and I don’t want you to do that.

    Alright, everybody, thanks for joining me for Entre-Talk. I’ll be back next Monday with another Entre-Talk episode. Also make sure you’re listening to the Friday episodes of Better Than Happy because they’re all going to be super relevant to you as an entrepreneur as well. Alright, I’ll see you next time. Take care.

    Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.

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