Happy September New Year!

For most of my life, going to school, raising kids who went back to school, and now my grandkids are starting school this week. September has always felt like a New Year.

A second new year opens up new goals and new opportunities to discover, as Barbie famously says, “What am I made for?”  

September is the ideal time to reset your plans for the coming year.

Before you pull out the planning calendar and start thinking about next year’s marketing plan, this is the ideal time to celebrate your journey.

You ARE amazing, and you are well worth looking after.

Now let’s make planning easy…

Stephen Covey refers to starting with the Big Rocks – your most critically important priorities. The mistake most entrepreneurs make is not making themselves a big rock.

Your health and wellness are what make everything else work!  Are you carving out enough self-care time to sustain the size of your ambition?  

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

James Clear

Leading yourself starts with a framework of success habits. Habits are the root cause of behaviours – both good and bad. If you want to introduce a new behaviour, start with the habits that set you up for success.

Instead of dedicating your early hours to your best thinking, why not experiment with dedicating it to a wellness routine that expands your capacity to think throughout the day?

In Tomas Isabella’s book Tiny Experiments, the author suggests:

“Personal experiments give you the opportunity to explore a different path.

Instead of asking yourself, What if this doesn’t work, ask, what if this is an experiment to see what happens?”

Isabella points out three distinct advantages of the“experimental” context.

1.    What will I learn?

2.    What new opportunities might arise?

3.    How can I explore this without pressure?

Time and time again, I hear owners say, “I make plans, then everything blows up by 10:00 am”. What if you planned for the blowups? Instead of dropping everything, schedule 30 minutes at 3:00 for the Daily Rap and Resolve meeting with yourself and your team. If someone has an emergency, that is the time to bring all the facts. They can head off and get it solved, and come to you if it is insurmountable.

Most things can wait longer than we think - it is our own sense of control that makes them urgent.

The chances are that taking a beat gives you the chance to delegate and let your team find their own answers.  

Try this as an experiment: For one week, challenge your calendar to see what might be bogging you down.

·      Move end-of-day meetings to the first thing in the day

·      Shorten one-hour meetings to 15 minutes

·      Limit emails to 30 minutes twice a day

·      Bring a designated into the meeting to own the follow-up

·      Call instead of email (a personal fav)

What other tiny experiments could you run at low risk, to learn more and see what opportunities might arise?

Rituals and Habits to Refresh and Renew Every Day

I learned a tremendous lesson from Jim Collins, The Habit about habit stacking. If you are introducing a new habit, do it right before something you love and do without thinking. For me, the two best moments of the day are my morning coffee and hopping into a freshly made bed at night. If I am introducing a new habit, I intentionally try to position it right before I do these self-soothing rituals.  

Why not try these things:

• Stretching and posture

• 15 minutes a day on a language

• Morning pages of writing

• One YouTube a day on AI and ChatGPT (This was a big win for me last year – game changer!)

• One skill a day for 30 days

• Jot down the highlights of the day

• Plant the seed for one dream come true idea for the next day

September will always be a second new year, with less pressure and more runway to introduce small habits. Tiny changes that can make you and your business ready for the big swings you have always wanted to take!

What is your daily highlight ritual? What new habit could you introduce right before it to expand your capacity and learning?

I’d love to hear the ideas you have for looking after the vessel that makes the whole thing work!