Why you need to slow down

I love my job. 2015-10-03 16.44.42 Elmira Bayrasli Tara Lutman Agacayak photo credit The StyleIST

I get to work with inspiring women leading the companies and teams and movements that are making our lives better.

These women are highly educated, highly intelligent, highly accomplished and have big visions.

They are Fulbright Scholars, award-winning filmmakers, and bestselling authors.

They are thought leaders, and role models and have ideas for products and services and apps designed to improve the way we live.

The problem with being so ambitious is that sometimes you think it has to be more complicated than it actually is.

You think that in order to be successful you have to have all these layers of complexity – you need more education, another certification, more knowledge, a bigger team – in order to bring your big idea to fruition.

And I am seeing this take a lot of women out of the game.

Or at least, making the game harder than it has to be.

And the reason I can see this is because I’ve been through it myself.

Trying to do too much

Last year when I signed up for a 12-month coaching certification program, I found myself buying a bunch of extra programs to help myself learn faster.

Even though the program had all the information I needed, I didn’t feel like I was going fast enough.

I thought if I learned faster, I would create a successful business faster.

But the problem wasn’t that I wasn’t going fast enough, it was that I wasn’t going slow enough.

I wasn’t giving myself time to absorb what I was learning or put it into practice.

And because I wasn’t putting it into practice, I wasn’t getting any results.

And since I wasn’t getting any results, I was criticizing myself for being a failure.

I thought I just needed more courses and I needed to learn more things.

So I bought more programs.

This just compounded the problem because now I was failing at two programs instead of just one.

Implement what you already know how to do

Earlier this year I was convinced that I needed to hire another coach to help me in a specific health area.

The investment was going to be a stretch for me and it was going to take more time too.

I was already working with two coaches privately and was in a large-scale group program.

And getting ok results – but adding something new felt overwhelming.

When I talked to my husband about hiring another coach he said – he’s so wise – he said, “Tara, before you do that, I bet there are 10 things you already know you should be doing that you aren’t doing. Do those things first, and then let’s see if you still need this new coach.”

And I realized he was right.

I looked at where I was spending my time and realized I was spending a lot of time learning new information, but not a lot of time implementing what I was learning.

I was speeding through the implementation without giving myself the opportunity to analyze and learn from it.

No wonder I wasn’t getting any results.

I wasn’t even giving myself a chance!

So, I decided to focus on my business 100% for 90 days.

Give yourself what you need to perform at your best

It meant I needed to have watertight boundaries and complete concentration.

I recognized I needed to create larger containers of time to work on creative tasks instead of stuffing them into containers that were too small and stifled my creativity.

It became clear that I couldn’t run off and have 3-hour lunches twice a week – right now.

But by creating a strong business foundation, I could set myself up for the lifestyle I desired in the near future.

By dividing my attention among too many things, I was shooting myself in the foot and spreading my resources too thin, so I wasn’t really producing anything of high quality.

And my community deserved the best from me.

I deserved the best from me.

And I can tell you that it didn’t take 90 days to see results.

In less than 30 days I was able to cross – and pass – the $10,000 mark (a milestone in this industry) with relative ease.

Because I slowed down, and gave myself the time to focus, I got to know my community better and hear what their problems are.

I started to see patterns and common challenges and then offer targeted training programs in my community.

I learned how I could serve people better, and help them get better results, and become better leaders.

My own coach has said many times, “Do less better.”

And this is what happened when I slowed down.

Slow down

I was able to see what 20% of my activities were producing 80% of my results.

So I focused only on these activities and looked at how I could make myself even more effective in this area.

So, when a woman comes to me to have a conversation about what a private coaching relationship will look like, and I ask her what she desires, and she starts reading off a laundry list of to-do items, I know that what she really needs to do is slow down and start eliminating.

When we do this together, we both get to see what she’s really good at, where she shines, where her natural gifts and talents can be used to lead others.

It’s simple really, but it feel counter-intuitive because it seems like to get better you have to do more.

But this has not been true for me – I got better when I did less.

Do Less Better

If this idea is appealing to you, and you would like more support in getting better by doing less, please join me in the Creative Impact Studio, a private community for women leading the companies and teams that make our lives better.