I’m excited to share a couple of little messages with you from my Affirmators at Work deck of cards, which I totally love.

I pulled out two great cards to share with you.

The first up is Collaboration.

It says,

“I take pride in my role as a good collaborator, and look for opportunities to help and support my colleagues’ ideas, rather than dismissing them outright. I fill my meetings with yeses and ands, and I celebrate the constructive power they have over buts and ors.

Unless I work for a company that makes cigarettes and boats, in which case butts and oars would be, oh, never mind.

Let’s not go there.”

I’m always looking forward to building relationships, making new friends online, and helping and sharing stuff where I can.  I’ll always encourage you to dive in, share your business, and ask how can I help you, how I can help and support you and vice versa. I’m a Big, big believer in collaboration.

For me I love working with people that will support others, so big, big yes to the collaboration card this week.

Ask yourself who you could collaborate with, where you can collaborate online.

Reach out to people, ask if you can help, share anything, support them in any way, shape, or form.

The next one that came out is Balance.

Balance and Boundaries In Business (and Life)

This one says,

“Burning the candle at both ends, that might give you double the ambience and twice the scent of ylang-ylang, but you can’t keep up that kind of energy evaporation forever.

This card is reminding you to sprinkle some balance into your work-life recipe. When’s the last time you ate a good meal, spent time with old friends, set foot outside?

If you’re working so hard that your tank is empty, then you’re not really doing your job any favours. Take a moment to stop, smell the ylang-ylang,”

Your full-time sanity will thank you.”

That is totally true.

I was just chatting with the lovely Vicki Nicolson, my business bestie this morning, she’s had a weekend taking time out. She won’t mind me sharing that with you, and I have also. It does fill your tank up.

It’s all about stepping out, creating that balance.

Then if it’s not right for you and you want to work the weekend and you’re working set hours with holidays, etc, then that’s brilliant too.

I know the way that I’m now balancing the school holidays. I’ve been up early this morning working. I’m going to finish at half past one because I’ve got a friend coming over with my godson and his brother to play this afternoon. It is all about that balance and creating that harmony with your boundaries.

I’m also going to share with you, I’m actually breaking some patterns today.

I’m a big believer in boundaries.

When you set these boundaries at work and everything else and in your life, they can slip, can’t they? For me I feel during holidays and things they can slip a little bit because you are juggling different sorts of things. I was thinking this morning, I’ve been up early. I’ve been journaling, been using all the things that I have on my desk, my lovely crystals and my little Bach flower bottles and things, of breaking habits and creating new habits and new boundaries.

I was recalling when I met the lovely Mari Smith back in December last year, I was truly inspired.

She talked about her success and how she believes in lifiting the limits and breaking the pattern that no longer serve you.

I came away and wrote a list of ‘new habits for success’.

For me it’s about new boundaries, which in turn will help create that balance in life, so that balance at work, the balance of how many hours you’re spending at work, what you’re going to do for fun times, and all the rest of it.
I’m an early bird, so I know not everybody will resonate with that, because some of you will be night owls, but because I am an early bird. I used to really follow The Miracle Morning (link to book) although it’s about morning I really believe you can set the time aside and do it when it is right for you.

I’d love to know how you are finding balancing everything out, particularly between work life. Because I’ve come from the background where I used to work 24/7 at my desk, (you can learn a little more about that on my experience of talking with Victoria Derbyshire on BBC on just that subject) I became a bit of a slave to my desk, and I’m totally stepping out of that now.

I am more productive when I come in to my desk, do what I’ve got to do, and then actually I can go for a walk, I can work on the move. I can work whilst out walking, listening to podcast type of things, doing research, and all that other stuff.

I would love to know if these cards have resonated with you?

Let me know if you are going to think about how you can collaborate with others and how you’re going to create a little bit of balance and harmony in your work life. It’s something that is quite tricky to do when you’re self-employed and that work thing’s always there, particularly if you work from home like I do.

 It’s about giving ourselves permission to take a little bit of time off. It’s a tricky thing to do. I don’t know about everybody else, but I have a little inner stick that says “you must be working,” a lot of the time.

 For me, I want to read more. I want to take a little bit of time out. I think we all work 24/7 in our heads, of all those little inner voices of stuff that’s going on, plans that we want to do. It’s really easy to beat yourself up and go, “You should be working.”

Balancing Holidays

The lovely Emma Holmes (Rebels and Rockstars) was talking this week about being on holiday, and she’s tried the whole digi detox stuff, which I have too, of kind of switching off for a whole week and doing nothing. Then she’s tried the whole working for the week on holiday, so you’ve got nothing to come back to. Actually the balance of doing both, of just checking in a couple of times a day while you’re away, checking with your social or whatever, but it is about what works for you.

 I do pretty much that where I’ll just check in on a daily basis to see what’s happening, so that I don’t come back and I’ve missed everything, and then I’m bombarded with stuff. I agree with her on that. It is about creating the balance of what is right for you. If you want to work 24/7 and you feel that you’re not going to burn out, then do that. I don’t believe anybody can sustain that whole full-on 24/7 at work stuff.

We love our jobs, don’t we?

I love what I do, so it is hard to step out of that, because continually I’m thinking, “I could go and do this, and I could go and record these videos, and I could go and work on this website, and all that kind of stuff.” I also enjoy spending time my, girls, my friends and family and my crazy dog and cat.