Business
How do you find joy and enthusiasm for anything when everything is turned upside down? That’s what I’ve been thinking about this past week. As you know if you’ve been listening for a while, my fundamental business belief, what shapes everything I do and how I work with makers and designers, is that your business will thrive and YOU will feel best about it when you follow your enthusiasm. What do I mean by enthusiasm? I like the definition: intense or eager enjoyment or interest. You can follow your enthusiasm IN your business, by working on projects you love, letting go of expectations about what you “should” do, working with the kind of clients that you prefer. You can follow your enthusiasm outside of your business by allowing yourself to work on non-business projects and filling up your enthusiasm well with things that seem completely unrelated (for me lately it’s reading, and making bookish videos, which you can find on YouTube. Other times it’s been quilting or knitting). But with everything uncertain and stressful and all the change...how do we find any enthusiasm? I don’t know about your coronovirus situation, but mine is full of...obligation and responsibility. Basically, we’re all having to do a lot of things we don’t want to do, or that we’re not prepared to do, or that are just hard. On top of that, you have your business - maybe it is doing just fine, maybe it has lost some of it’s sales channels, maybe you’ve lost all your working hours, when you would work on it. So does the idea of enthusiasm and joy really have a place in our current situation? In my experience, yes. Not because things aren’t hard or we’re going to pretend everything is great. But because now, more than ever, you need to take care of your best business resource, and your family’s most important resource - your wellbeing. A key ingredient to your mental and emotional wellbeing is doing things that are just fun. That you get excited about, that brings you joy, or just interests you. But how do you tap into that enthusiasm? Fine all of the suggestions here: http://taraswiger.com/podcast305 We will bounce back.