Applying Business Principles for Personal Growth and Success

Ever wondered what could happen if you started treating yourself as a business? By investing in personal growth, striving for quality time, productivity, and financial success - you're taking steps towards a remarkable transformation. We delve into this intriguing concept, examining how this shift can help manage emotions, improve efficiency, and cultivate respect for self and others. We also talk about the power of regular emotional and mental check-ins, and how nature can soothe anxiety.

In this episode, we dissect how applying business principles to our lives can lead to personal growth and success. We discuss the benefits of continuously evaluating our mental health, nourishing relationships, and seeking out productive and quality time. Moreover, we explore how detaching from our past and looking at ourselves objectively can lead to self-improvement and growth. We also touch upon the importance of regular emotional and mental health check-ins and the calming effect nature has on us. Tune in to our enlightening discussion and remember to interact with us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and do leave a review.

Hypnotherapy coaching sessions can help if you are struggling with anxiety.  Please email us at englishsisters@gmail.com if you would like help with an issue, mentioning this episode of our podcast for a special discounted rate. We work with clients worldwide over Zoom or Skype. Buy our Book Stress Free in Three Minutes available on Amazon and Kindle, to help support our work. Thank you!

Please follow us and make this podcast a healthy habit for you, your family and friends to listen to weekly by sharing this with as many people as you can! Thank you!
Love and smiles from The English Sisters.

As always we love to here from you please email us with; Get Real with The English Sisters as the subject, at englishsisters@gmail.com

Watch the show on our YouTube  Channel
Follow us on Social Media
Share this podcast with your friends.

Chapters

• 0:00 Investing in Yourself
• 7:50 Improving Business Efficiency and Personal Growth
• 22:11 Checking in With Yourself & The English Sisters

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What if you invested in yourself?

Speaker 1: 0:03

What do you mean is, if you're a company, yeah, as if you're a company or a business, you know how all the due diligence that they put into a company or a business would put into investing in itself. What would happen if we did that as an individual, as a person, yeah, I Mean, I think it would be pretty revolutionary. So listen to this week's episode of get real with the English sisters. Well, we'll be chatting about, about, yeah, about the idea that you what if you were a company? What would you actually do to to understand the company's values, to understand the core I think you know, the actual core of that company, and To be able to understand all the people that rotate around that company and how to make them assets? I think it'd be pretty amazing, because I think most of us will do that at work, but we don't do it for ourselves. No, no, I think if we did do that as if we were a business, I think if we saw ourselves like I Like, as if we had a yeah, whatever business it is, I Think we take more, more pride in ourselves and more it would put more work into it. Definitely, just, I think. I think we don't put enough work into ourselves. We take ourselves for granted and we think what's going on at the moment, so okay, we're not continuing. Most people aren't. I mean, if you're doing that brilliant, you're brilliant. I mean most people don't continuously reevaluate and have, like, in a week Meetings, how have I been, what have I been doing? How is my mental health been? Wow, what have I invested in? Have I invested in my friendships, my, my recreation, my creativity? What have I been doing? You know they don't check these things off the list. They're not. Or it's just drug, on, on and on. Isn't that just trying to cope with what's what? What you've got? Really, for most of us, yeah, and then just trying to sedate ourselves, exactly whatever kind of sedation we like, like alcohol, or just binging on, yeah, food, netflix, whatever it is trying to make ourselves feel good that way. Yeah, just like instant yeah, instead of actually thinking okay.

Speaker 1: 2:41

So if, if, like you were a business, you know what would you want that business to appear to, not only to others, but what would you really want it to be like? Do I know? If I was a business, I would want to be in. I would want to be strong. Yeah, I would want to be successful. I would want to be a kind business, somebody that takes, appreciates you know the people that I have around me and I think I'd want to help them grow, because that's who I am. Yeah, I'd want to be able to see and understand the people that work around me or with me.

Speaker 1: 3:28

If we're pretending we're a business, yeah, and I would love that business to be all about, I think, looking into myself and to the others and seeing things that aren't working, like in, how do you say, in naturopathies yeah, that's a tongue twister. Yeah, seeing them and just thinking, okay, so they're not wrong. You're not attaching blame to genuine or guilt, yes, it's just something that, yeah, that that person isn't particularly strong at, or I'm not particularly strong at, like doing this or so it's all about. I would want my company to be all about that, saying, okay, you know, that's okay, you're not strong at this. Let's discuss this and let's try and figure out. Well, I think you've hit it on the nail there. I think, if we do look at ourselves like that, it takes away the maybe, the shame and the guilt of not being enough, the worry of not being enough, exactly, yeah, and just trying to improve which we. It's like there's no, there's no shame. Yeah, there's no attachment to that.

Speaker 1: 4:40

Yes, now we have all this backlog of stuff that may be from our past and everything, but if we were a company, we were just having a meeting hey, what can we improve on this? What's lacking here? How do we improve this? What's a weakness here, if you want to call it weakness? So, okay, improve on this. What do we need to invest? How much money do we have to put into that Exactly? How much time do we need to invest in this? What can we discuss? How can we help each other and how can you help yourself as a business to grow, to overcome certain fears, to shine and to thrive as a business? Yeah, we might need more education. Yeah, we might need to, you know, do something. But there's nothing.

Speaker 1: 5:20

When we just see ourselves as people, as individuals, we just think, oh, everything seems so overwhelming because we're actually in it. We're not actually thinking about the bigger picture. I don't think we're actually. You know, we've got everything, all the backstory. We've got everything. Yeah, we've got the backstory. Yeah, you're right about that. Yeah, we're not detached from it. No, as if we detach from it, we think we might be able to say oh well, you know this business needs to focus more on quality time for their employees and you are part of that business, so you need to spend more quality time. We need to focus on that. We need to focus on more on maybe earning more money, yes, and how can we do that? So it's been more productive. So it's been more productive. So there's no, but there's no blame attached to it or guilt or shame or any of this stuff that usually comes along with.

Speaker 1: 6:16

When we're just thinking about ourselves as individuals, yeah, and because when we all know we're not, you know, you know we come from families and then we go on, and often we have groups of friends or partners in life. So we know we're not really individuals, but I don't think that we actually think ourselves like what I was thinking of, like a dot com or whatever, like a, like a business, like having. Imagine you had a dot com, like your own website, and it's all about you, just you, and how you could. I mean, sounds quite scary actually. You know it's just about you, but it's like really about you. So you're real, real, like not what you have to look at yourself properly from within. It's not like when you do a job interview, you know, and you just write stuff, oh yeah, but you know really, really, what you do, how you deal with stress and everything else. So, yeah, I think I think seeing yourself like that could be like an extra tool to have in your you know. Definitely, because it would mean that you weren't just, I think you wouldn't be just focusing on yourself as an individual, which is what a lot of us do, and we tend to feel sorry for ourselves or overwhelmed or as if we can't cope, or anxious. But if we saw the bigger picture and we saw it we imagine that, we visualise that we were a business.

Speaker 1: 7:50

How can I help that business? You're already taking yourself away from you. Yeah, there's more to touch me. How can I help that business? What would I be able to do to improve that? Or maybe go for coffee with someone, go and have a chat with someone, go and discuss this with somebody, communicate more effectively with my partner, exactly because you're literally lacking. We want this business or company to be more efficient. How can we do that? Efficiency? Yeah, that's it, and business nowadays are more and more about emotions as well, so it's not just the financial side, because I think any healthy, thriving business knows that its employees and the CEO and the founders have to be in the right mental state. Otherwise a business is not. It might do well financially for a bit, but afterwards the people working in it are all going to be start getting ill and not productive. So nowadays there is even more attention on that. So we know that's important.

Speaker 1: 8:58

So imagine that you're the founder of your own business, just checking with yourself how am I doing? Yeah, yeah, check in with yourself and more detached, like what you were saying before, because it is easy to think that, because your past was like a certain way, that your future is already tainted yeah, tainted, and is not. But yeah, it's not rosy as you'd like it to be. It doesn't have to be like that. No, it doesn't. You can really change, yeah, and if you are a business as well, you can declare bankruptcy and start again. I mean, there's always a way out of everything. Yeah, you're right about that. Okay, I'm going to close that chapter. I'm going to start again. And yes, I made mistakes and I've done things that you know. Maybe you didn't make that business successful. How can I make it successful? Now, exactly, if I start a new business, yes, yes, exactly.

Speaker 1: 10:01

You see it more like a challenge, I think, because in business there are failures, but there's so many challenges that you have to. You know you have to Failures and you learn from your failures in business, don't you? They always say, the most successful businesses have always had failures, and I think you tend to want to invest in more in the business as well, when you know it's like a business, a lot of yeah, a lot of the time. When it's just for yourself, you might think, oh, no, you know I can do without that, yes, but if it's your business, you might think no, if I'm thinking of myself as a business, can I really do without that? Or what is really essential for me to get doing today to improve myself? This is a bit like a bit of financial talking and business talking, but I think it kind of helps detach you from you slightly, from your past. Definitely, definitely so, because I mean it just puts you in a different like in a different category. Now, just thinking about yourself, you're thinking about the bigger picture. Once again, I'm knowing that, if your business, yeah, and also how, how you affect the other people in your life as well. If you were a business, would you really treat them the way you're treating them now exactly? Would you invest more time and, you know, dedication? Would you be kinder to them the way you actually verbally Speak to them, discuss things?

Speaker 1: 11:35

I was listening to a podcast today where they were saying that actually was a worker byron Katie, and and there was two partners in business, two husbands, and they were actually saying that he treats his husband, who's his, also his business partner. He always it wants. He says my, my husband always wants to be right when we're discussing business, yeah, and when I propose something, he always wants to be right and he's always offering feedback. And so with the work of Byron Katie, if you're aware of it, she said turn it around. And then he realizes that he always wants to be right and he's not listening to the feedback that his Partner also his husband, is giving him. So there is where you've got. You know, you've got people working together, but they're also a company and it was interesting to know Because they were a couple.

Speaker 1: 12:34

Yeah, he wasn't really Respecting the other person's opinion, which was his husband's opinion, where, if he had been his business partner, it might have been more respectful. She pointed it out. She said if it was your business partner, you were you listening to your business partner? And he said, no, I wasn't listening. I was listening to my husband. Yeah, and letting that side of the relationship go on to what that? That's why they say it's really hard To work with your family, with your husband, with your wife, whatever they actually say that. Why is it hard is because there's a lack of respect here. Yeah, so if you treated yourself as if you were a business, you would have more respect for yourself and for others. Well done, exactly, yes, that was a whole point of the thing. Absolutely, you would treat yourself with more respect, I think, and you'd be more willing to be more valuable as a business. You are.

Speaker 1: 13:30

You know, you think, no, I've set up this business. This business has come into the world and now you know, without putting too much pressure on yourself, but you want to make it successful, because you want to live a successful life, and that can mean anything, you know happiness, calm, why not? Yeah, your past does not equal your future. No, so you can change. It doesn't define you either. It's one day at a time. Every day is a fresh new start? Really, absolutely no, yeah, is there anything else there?

Speaker 1: 14:10

You were reading it before. I saw you reading about something. Yeah, I was reading about, like I just think, how people hide their inadequacies to avoid being found out a lot in work environments, and how I was thinking. You know I've already said that if you are your own business, you as a person you would have to sort of look at the parts but you'd have to hide them. You know you wouldn't hide them. No, it says that people hide them in business. They do hide them, but now there's new kind of businesses that oh, hang on a minute. They're called DDO, and the root of DDO businesses is they're always about people's interior lives as well. All right, and so they're not just hang on a minute, because now I've just said that. It's actually says does your company make you a better person? This is in the Harvard Business Review and it's about personal productivity.

Speaker 1: 15:15

And in this kind of, in our research on what we call deliberately developmental organizations, or DDOs for short, we have identified successful organizations that regard this trade-off as a false one. So I don't know if you're understanding what I'm saying. Do you understand it? So they're saying that you have to invest in your emotional well-being, because if you don't, it's not going to be successful. Basically, yeah, what if we also work as an essential context for personal growth? This is like these new companies, where they see work as not just separate work and your private life, but it's an extension, where you would have meetings and say, well, I mean, this is why I was just reading now. They said the companies we call DDOs are, in fact, built around the simple but radical conviction that the organization can prosper only if its culture is designed from the ground up to enable ongoing development for all of its people, all of them. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, that is that the people in the company are constantly growing through doing their work. What gives it more meaning as well, doesn't it? Yeah, it says it.

Speaker 1: 16:38

When you work in such a company, in addition to just going to work and being productive, you're constantly working on yourself as well. Oh, yeah, so, like if you're really shy, for example, you're working on yourself. So it's a bit like what we were saying about having you being yourself as your own business. You are, in a sense, you are, in a sense, a DDO, you are an organization. Look at yourself and say, okay, I'm shy or I'm fearful of this, so I work on this and I'm investing this. Yes, you're overcoming your own blind spots all the time. You wouldn't have to hide your inadequacies to avoid being found out, or you wouldn't be overly criticized by them. You'd be like what we were saying before You'd be encouraged, you're encouraged, you're encouraged to show your weaknesses so that you can work on them. That's a part of doing a good job, you know. Then you'd get an applause at the end of the meeting.

Speaker 1: 17:40

So I mean, imagine that and these are companies that are starting off now in today's world, I suppose, if you don't get it, if you don't get the applause and you can't manage to do something, I suppose you'd be encouraged to where your strengths are and you'd be redirected towards your strengths. I suppose, I don't know, here it says no executive or leader. I'm just imagining if I couldn't, if I could find something, if you get something, no, if I could work on this and I just didn't get it, or I just couldn't, my brain couldn't get around it, I feel terrible, yeah, but you'd say I just can't get around that. Yeah, and so then I would imagine a company like that would say okay then. So maybe this isn't for you right now and if you know you can maybe leave this for now and let's work on something else that you feel more comfortable with your strengths and you know you're more suited to. Yeah, because you're allowed to speak out Without feeling that you're inadequate. Or you can't do that Because I'm just thinking, say, if it's something to do with maths, I would find terribly hard. Yeah, and I wouldn't just be suited to it.

Speaker 1: 18:42

Because in an ordinary organisation I'm reading this off the Harvard Business Review it said every person is doing a second job no one is paying them to perform covering their weaknesses and inadequacies, managing others' good impression of them and preserving a position that would feel more precarious if people didn't always see them at their best. In a DDO, this is considered the single biggest waste of resources in organisational life. Well, yeah, I suppose so, because you're just kind of hiding something, aren't you? You're pretending to be good at something when you're not, so you're not really doing the job properly either, and you're feeling bad as well. You're feeling bad, so you're going in thinking, oh gosh, I hope I don't get noticed today. I hope no one sees that I haven't done this. You know, and you're carrying those feelings of shame around and guilt which are going to make you feel stressed. They will, they will right, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:35

And then you go back to trying to comfort yourself, Whereas if you worked in a place where, yeah so it's as if you were your own company, you would encourage yourself to think about your weaknesses and say, okay, where do I need to improve on? What do I need to improve on this? And it was a potential asset, yes, and you can say, okay, I'm doing so and so on this, or maybe I have to spend more time on this. But you'd actually look at yourself like, yes, I can ask it, how can I do better? Kind of thing. Yeah, like, in these companies they say phrases like she does not yet have all the necessary capabilities to perform the role at a high level, but we will help her to develop them. And when she does, she will have outgrown this job and we will need to find her another.

Speaker 1: 20:27

So, like, imagine that you're always out growing. You say, well, you're really competent in that, let's go for another. Your brain is always stimulated. It sounds exhausting, actually, now that I've read it, but I can imagine working in a company where they're kind and kind of yeah, because you're always saying I'm always on to the next thing. Can't I have a break? Yeah, I've just learned how to do that. Now, just give me a break. You know, my, I would think gosh if I was working really for somebody like that. I just like learn how to master that, you know, let me, let me. Yeah, I suppose that's what we should all be doing If we were our own company.

Speaker 1: 21:06

When we get, the real truth is that when we get comfy enough doing something we'd like to ask we're comfortable with doing the podcast, we should maybe ready to move on to something else. If I'm just thinking about it right now, yes, that's what we have to ask ourselves. Do we want to? I don't know, because we're quite, we're quite comfortable with it. We are a company where the English is just companies, so we do have to look at ourselves like that sometimes. Well, we should even more now that we've done this episode.

Speaker 1: 21:38

Well, as always, all our episodes make us reflect on our own life. Yes, they do. Those are, you know, and how we affect those people that we love around us and how we affect you. So let us know, listeners, absolutely, what you think about this? Do you think it's your worst nightmare to be considered like a company? Some people hate business and companies. But what do you think it's a good metaphor for you to think about this and how you can maybe change a certain areas and look at yourself, you know, on a weekly basis.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Check in with yourself once a week and say, hey, am I feeling a bit down this week? Am I feeling anxious? Do I need to do more of this and more of that? Do I maybe need to spend some time in nature to feel less anxious? I mean, I did that last week. I spent more time in nature because I noticed I was feeling anxious, so I did some gardening. Yeah, that usually works for me as well. Yeah, so just check in with yourself and see how you're doing and, of course, check in with us and come and visit us on YouTube too, where we have the podcast, and say hello and follow us on Apple Podcasts and please leave a review as well, because it really helps others find this podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. Lots of love and smiles from the English sisters. Bye.