The following is specifically if you feel like you spend most of your time firefighting in your business or basically that your mind is a mess 99.37% of the day.

Let’s play a game, simply answer “yes” or “no” to the questions below, then add up how many out of 10 you answer “yes” to.

1. Does your diet involve a lot of greens, vegetables etc?
2. Do you meditate daily? (even if 5 minutes)
3. Do you get enough sleep? (ideally 8 hours per night)
4. Do you stay focused on a specific goal?
5. Do you have mental clarity day to day?
6. On the whole, do you feel your activities move you forward and make your future better?
7. Do you take time out at least two times per week, for thinking and allowing new ideas to flow?
8. Do you have a solid understanding of how to think long term (strategically) while dealing with short term day to day situations? (tactics.)
9. Do you take at least one day per month, to simply step back and consider how you can improve areas of your business?
10. Do you deliberately place yourself in a productive environment? For example, surround yourself with the right people who lift you up and challenge you. Find the right workspace where you can thrive.

Add up up your score out of 10. (1 for yes, 0 for no.)

How did you score?

Before we go into further depth with each of the questions, I wanted to share my reasons for putting together this rapid self reflection test.

Throughout July I had the chance to meet and work with 100 business owners and although business strategy and sales were a large part of the theme, we actually discussed self care almost daily in the Zoom calls and meetings.

Sure, it might seem:

* Backwards to meditate when all you feel like you need to do is move forward.

* Frustrating to step away from your business, when your business so desperately needs you. But all of it comes back to staying stuck in a negative and non serving cycle, versus freeing your mind up to flow into success.

Let’s fly through these answers:

1. You are what you eat, literally. The short term is to eat what gives you a boost now, but as you already know doesn’t give you the nutrients your body needs. So, before you know it, you’re back to craving the next sugar rush. Eating right, is one of the FIRST signs you’re thinking long term over short term and this translates into everything else in your life and business.

2. You cannot solve a problem at the same level of thinking it was created. Most business owners now are human doings, doing ‘to do’ lists. It’s exhausting at best and most of the time, we’re not even ‘doing’ the right thing. Taking timeout to meditate (even if just 2 minutes) allows your mind to recharge and literally for the universe to catchup. By continually DOING stuff, the chances are you’re brushing over things and creating more problems, as opposed to having depth in a few things that truly matter.

3. Nothing will extend your life more than getting enough sleep. Nothing will give you more focus than having a consistent sleep pattern. Enough said.

4. This is a big one. One of the most important contributors to success (in anything) is momentum! The problem with today’s shiny object syndrome society, is that we start by focusing on a particular goal, but before you know it we’ve set x 3 other goals. The BIGGEST problem here is that you never create any real momentum. Looking back at your own life when you’ve created success in a particular area, the chances are you were consistent over a period of time to create massive momentum. If you feel like you’re lacking momentum in life, the chances are you have too many goals.

5. You might see a pattern emerging that all 10 questions are connected. You can’t have clarity without the right nutrition and you’ll unlikely stay focused on one particular goal if you don’t have clarity. If your mind is like one giant fog, good luck in taking your business to the next level. Unfortunately, because most business owners believe that the future will be better by some deal landing, or if they just get through _________ insert the blank fire, they wind up in a perpetual cycle of survival, never ultimately reaching their potential. Clarity means an intentional movement towards your desired vision.

6. It’s easy to get stuck in a place of being busy and then getting to the end of the day, week, year, LIFE and wondering what we actually did with our time? One of the key indicators of high performance behaviour is recognising that each of your activities are deliberate and in turn make the future better. For example, by creating a sales processes for your business, creating the process can be tiresome and a lot of work. Yet, once it’s in place your team now have complete clarity on exactly how to sell. This will save you tens of thousands in LOST sales, if not considerably more. This is why measuring your activities on the basis if they move you forward or not, can be a great measure.

7. Unfortunately, we now measure success as being super busy! Anytime spent NOT working must be the devil right? Wrong… Actually, most of the world’s most successful people are famous for taking time to think, not just do. By taking time out to deliberately not work it can ensure the work you end up prioritising is the RIGHT work and actually moves you and your business forward.

8. One of my obsessions, is to help people create a better business mind and a big part of this is knowing with complete certainty the difference between strategic thinking and tactical thinking. Relating to all the other questions, thinking short term is the killer of businesses (and people’s minds,) where obsessing over long term allows us to be vision focused, instead of just ‘oh crap, I have a fire to fight now focused.’

9. This is a big one! Taking one day out per month to simply think, can dramatically improve the other 30 days of the month! No phones, laptop or Facebook. Simply step back and ask ‘how can you do things better?’

10. Finally, your environment is fundamental. Are you conscious of what your surroundings are doing for your emotionally and energetically? How about the people you choose to spend time with? Like it or not, we are a product of our environment.

So… Once again, how did you score?