The typical female small business owner puts most super-heroes to shame! From the time the alarm rings at o-dark-hundred—or the scared kid crawls in bed at 2 am following a bad dream—today’s female entreprenuer is juggling schedules, tasks and responsibilities, multi-tasking through business and family roles. If the stamina of the dynamo we know as the Mom/Entrepreneur could be bottled and distributed, there’d be no energy shortage to worry about. Why do we women business owners do this? Why do we run at a maddening pace, responding to everyone else’s needs all day long? First, we do it because we can. The female brain is different than the male brain; I’m not saying it’s better or worse, just different. Scientists have documented an array of structural, chemical, genetic, hormonal and functional brain differences between women and men . Women often take on responsibility for the problems of others and fix things they could handle perfectly well if allowed. Our brain usually responds to a plea for help by jumping in and solving the problem, whether that’s best for us or anyone else. Then there’s the way we feel important when we’re needed by others. That motivates us to take on too much because the adoring words and glances trigger those brain hormones we’ve come to depend on. It’s not a conscious decision—it’s the way we’re wired between our ears. And, it’s not a bad thing because if we didn’t respond to those queues, the human species would have ceased to exist a long time ago. Women are built for connection and creating community. Our neural wiring leads us to connect with everyone and include all creatures, great and small, in our community. Combining our drive for connection with our proclivity to take on everyone’s problems, we can easily become over-booked and over-committed in our work-lives. We need those Wonder Woman qualities of super-strength, super-stamina and super-agility just to navigate our daily routines. In the real business world today, there are more demands than a normal Mom/Entrepreneur (or anyone else!) can possibly handle. Working harder and longer hours will only dent the to-do list and we’ll still feel stressed and maybe even incompetent from taking on too much. Wonder Woman must die! We must regain a sense of reasonable expectations of ourselves and others if we are to operate at our best. Try these practices to gain more control over your time and tasks: 1. Limit the items on your daily to-do list to six or fewer priorities. If there are more things you want to get done, place them in the queue for future dates, but don’t log them for today when you can’t possibly get to them. Moving incomplete action items from one day to the next defeats the purpose of planning. Be realistic about your commitments each day so you can feel accomplished when you complete the tasks you planned for the day. 2. Recognize that there will be unexpected demands and allow space for them. This is the act of accepting reality and allowing yourself to be at your best by being lightly stressed, not paralyzed by pressure. 3. Pay for specialized help. You are doomed to failure if you try to do everything perfectly, like Wonder Woman or the other media images of super females. Decide which of your tasks must be done exeptionally well—bookkeeping and payroll, customer service, technical services, or whatever it might be in your business—and if those tasks don’t match your strengths, hire others who specializes in that area to do it effectively and efficiently. With Wonder Woman out of the way, there’s room for your best in your work-life, the talented, bright, joyous, competent and successful woman you truly are. Celebrate her arrival. ___________________________ Brizendine, Louann, M.D., “The Female Brain” 2006. Broadway Books, New York.
Article Source: http://bizymoms.com/business
Marti Benjamin, MBA, Professional Certified Coach and Certified Career Management Coach is the president of Business Energetix—Success Coaching, providing individual and team coaching for business leaders who want to love their work. To learn more about Marti and Business Energetix services and to sign up for her blog, visit www.businessenergetix.com