Leverage Yourself

by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC

Private Practice Success Newsletter, March 2010

______________________________________

If you read the news lately, you have probably read the term “leverage.” Many banks leveraged their debt using borrowed money, and this resulted in adding to the financial crisis. But there is a broader meaning of this business term that can help you right now.

Leverage at its purest sense means using something that multiples the outcome of your efforts – as though you were using a lever to lift a heavy rock. Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” For those in a private practice, leverage implies that you are savvy enough to do a lot with a little.

Today, many of us need some leverage. Like Archimedes, we want to make life easier and better for ourselves and those around us.

I talk with many therapists, coaches, consultants and service professionals each month from across the US and beyond. The complaint I hear repeatedly from these business owners is how exhausted they are. Private practice can be hard, especially in a recession, and the burden of the practice falls squarely on the business owner’s shoulders.

In my coaching sessions with clients, we spend a lot of time looking at what the business needs, such as: clients, organization, cash flow, staffing. But when I ask these same clients to tell me what they personally need, their answers are always the same. They say:

• I need more energy
• I need more time

In this newsletter, we will explore how to leverage both of these needs, to help you have more with less effort. Then next month, in the April newsletter, I will show you how to leverage some of the essential needs of your business. First, let me show you how to use leverage to have more energy.

Build More Energy

Even if you have a healthy lifestyle, as a small business owner you can feel depleted. A private practice is like a demanding toddler – one who always wants you attention and efforts.

When you feel exhausted by the needs of your practice, writer Julie Plenty (www.selfgrowth.com) offers an important key for shifting exhaustion:  First, release resistance.

Resistance is the friction we feel when we fight ourselves, often fighting our inner judgments. You think: I should be able to finish the billing tonight, but I am too tired. As Plenty explains, resistance often feels as though we are going against ourselves in order to satisfy some internal authority or a myriad of “shoulds” “oughts” and “have tos”. It takes a lot of energy to stay resistant.

What do I suggest? Relax into the exhaustion. Feel it, understand it. Don’t resist. But then refocus. Ease out of the exhaustion by refocusing your thoughts and actions. What do I suggest you focus on? How about small steps of accomplishment? Focusing on any movement of your accomplishment can be an effective way to grow your energy.

Treasure any and all small steps – they eventually lead to big wins. Appreciating small steps boosts energy. This is why small steps count, each and every day.

Small steps might be thinking about inspiration: Who have you helped today? Or challenge? What did you do that was hard and even scary? When I ask my clients to tell me what they have accomplished between our sessions, I hear a long list of creative, effective small steps. The more I validate and celebrate these accomplishments, the more energized they feel, even in the moment. List your small steps, validate your accomplishment, and leverage your energy. Do this for yourself each day.

Have Enough Time

Time is my most valuable resource. I know I am not alone in feeling this.

One client agrees, saying, “I wish that there was more than 24 hours of a day. Between seeing clients, doing my administrative tasks, taking care of my family, and trying to have a personal life, I always run out of time. How can I do everything?”

I admire those very successful entrepreneurs who get a lot done, and have a good time doing it. They usually don’t talk about the lack of time; instead, they have strategies for leveraging time.

You need some strategies to do this too. Here is one that many of my clients say has helped them feel more abundant when it comes to time. Have enough time for everything you need to do.

One way is to rely on a calendar to devote concentrated blocks of time to each activity, instead of doing things piecemeal.

With so many demands on your time, you can’t be cavalier or casual about your scheduling and expect to feel in control.

My calendar is carefully scheduled with blocks of time each week that include seeing clients, writing, exercising, spending time with friends and family, and blocks of downtime for relaxation and reading.

A system taught to me years ago by coach and entrepreneur Jeff Raim, helped me think about time management in blocks. His calendar had three types of time blocked out each day: “work” “buffer,” and “spirit.”

• Work means activity that brings you both joy and money.
• Spirit means time that replenishes your soul and increases your energy.
• Buffer is a catch-all phrase meaning everything else.

When Jeff showed me this system, I blocked out my calendar and realized that my days were mostly work and buffer time, no spirit blocks showed up. This has changed and my time feels better managed and I am much more energized.

Finding the Time

Mary, a busy owner of a group practice, complained about having no time.  Her mother had recently become ill, and she said she was torn between the office and the hospital. I suggested that she look at her calendar in terms of work, spirit, and buffer time. Using these categories, she had nothing but buffer. Her work did not bring her joy, she said, so she counted the time spent at the office as buffer. This became part of our coaching goal, to help her find more satisfaction in her work.

But a larger problem as I saw it was that she had no activities scheduled on a regular basis that would fit the spirit definition. This was a formula for burnout, overwhelm; when so much buffer energy and effort goes out,  so little joy or nourishment comes back.

I gave Mary some tough love coaching. “Mary, you are the primary asset of your practice. So much rests on your shoulders. As much as you need to do to keep the practice running and take care of your mother, this can’t last. Your homework is to put an hour a day of spirit time into your calendar. It must be put in at the same time each day. It is sacrosanct and nothing can interfere.”

Mary hated this assignment. “Instead of having more time, your assignment means I have even less,” she argued.  But I was clear that without spirit time, she would not achieve any of her other coaching goals.

She finally found a way to carve out an hour a day – from 4:30 AM to 5:30 AM each morning! She got up and in the quiet of the morning, had a cup of tea, turned on soothing meditative music, and did some yoga poses.

This spirit time became her lifeline during the coming months as her mother got more ill and her practice took a dip from the economy.

“My spirit time is essential to my well-being,” she told me one day. “It’s mine. All the rest of my time is spent giving to others, my staff, my clients, my mother. But that hour in the morning, that is when I give to myself. I finally feel like I have the time I need in my day. Nothing changed except me and the way I handle time.”

Your Turn! Leverage Your Time

1. Schedule blocks of concentrated time in your calendar.
2. See if you can use the categories of work, buffer, or spirit.
3. If those are not right for you, create your own. Notice the degree of internal support you feel when you are taking care of yourself in this way.