Episode 115: Time and (E)motion - Giving Yourself Space and Consideration As A Small Business Owner
In this episode, Fiona talks about allowing yourself to get some space and consideration when dealing with different emotions as a business owner.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Time and Emotion
Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
Conclusion
Links/Resources Mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Episode 115 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. My name is Fiona Killackey, I'm your host, I'm coming to you from North Warrandyte represent.
Yes, I am coming to where I do most of my work where I make my money, and where I help so many small business owners with one-on-one coaching, group coaching, a whole lot of ebooks and online courses and strategy sessions. And so, if you're interested in that, definitely get in touch soon because we are booking out the last quarter of this calendar year. But we do have some really exciting things coming up as well if you don't want to do one on one coaching, but you'd really like to still work with me. So definitely make sure you sign up to our email, because you'll hear about that first and you can find the email to subscribe to over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/subscribe. But the other thing I wanted to acknowledge before we get stuck into today's episode is that I do work in Warrandyte. And I acknowledge that the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation are the traditional owners and custodians of this land on which I work and play and have my fun. And I want to pay my respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been seated.
So today you are listening to a quick tip episode. And today I want to talk about something that I have personally had to work through. And I work through it fairly much, once a month, at least, as a small business owner. And I've worked through it in my career today in the last 20 years working in different brand content and marketing roles. So it's a quick tip, tool, or tactic, what would it be? It is a tactic. But it's also a tool. I guess it almost falls into all three, I should really figure this out before I start talking. But anyway, let's get stuck in today's quick tip episode, shall we?
Alright, so you might have heard about the concept of time and motion. So looking at time and kind of productivity and what kind of gets done within a certain amount of time. Or if you want to look up like the dictionary definition, it is an analysis of the efficiency with which an industrial operation is performed, also called motion study or time study. So that is from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English language 2016. So what I want to talk about is not actually time and motion, but time and (E) motion, see what I did there, but really looking at time and emotion. Because I am all for emotion.
I think that we have to have feelings in our business. We have to, I mean, I talk about it all the time. We have to love what we do at least part of the time. Otherwise, why are we in this game. But one thing that I've learned pretty much I learned very early in my kind of managing people career of you know, the last 20 years when I started managing people, which was almost instantaneous. When I started, you know, my career kind of went straight up to management. And it can be really hard to manage people. And it can be really hard as a business owner to manage expectations of clients or customers or partnerships. And so often we come against a lot of different emotions every single day, we could ride a roller coaster of emotions. And I think what I've learned is to put some time between reacting to something and considering it and actually I loved years and years ago, I read Viktor Frankl's Man’s Search for Meaning, which is, you know, one of the best books on the planet, everyone should read it. And basically Viktor Frankl talked about this, and he talked about it in terms of stimulus and response. And I'm just going to read a quote from the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote “A human being is a deciding being. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Now, Viktor Frankl was writing after having gone through incredible tragedies and being a victim in the concentration camps in World War II.
So obviously, majority of us are not going through anything close to that even with a pandemic happening. But I love those words around giving ourselves space before responding. And it's something that I have had to learn because back in the day, especially when I was managing people, I would often feel like I had so much on my plate that I just need to nip this in the bud and get to it pronto. And I wouldn't pronto.
Never use that word anymore. But pronto. I needed to get to it ASAP, so that it was off my list. And I can be very direct when I'm talking to people and I think it comes from again, just working pretty fast. And I had to really sit back and especially where there was emotion involved. So say for instance, someone had sent me an email that I didn't agree with or that I thought they needed to pull their finger out or that I couldn't you know it take a minute and really check my ego. And I would respond sometimes in that emotional state rather than leaving it, giving myself an hour a day, whatever it took to really consider it from both people sign.
And that's not to say, oh, gosh, I was a horrible person. I'm not trying to paint that picture, I'm sure sometimes I was just like anyone else. But I really had to learn whether it was even on a flip side to say it's not like an angry emotion or frustration. It's more, say, where someone might send me an email. And it's really sad. And I will feel really sad. And I will go into fixer mode. That's what I do. That's kind of part of my personality, I think. And so I will delay other stuff that needs to get done to respond to somebody really in detail, really at length, when potentially I could have waited and done still a lovely response, but a bit later on.
So I love the concept of Viktor Frankl talks about where that's one of our greatest powers to give ourselves space and consideration. And especially like when you look at a child, they're so in the moment that there is no space in consideration as we develop as we grow, we have that power within us. So I guess that's the tip for today that if you are in a situation where any kind of big emotion is coming forward, and it could be even, you know, happy and fun emotions, just sometimes give yourself a little bit of space to write, you know, in the case of an email, a considered response back to think about it from all angles, especially when it comes to things like say customer complaints when it comes to things like DMs. Or say you've got a staff member who's just, you know, continuously late, it's not to say that you should just let these things go and just be like, airy fairy, and everything's perfect in the world. But giving yourself a little bit of space is actually going to give yourself a little bit of grace.
And really think about what your next response is. So that is it for today really thinking about time and emotion. Or as Viktor Frankl calls it, stimulus and space before the response. What might you do to give yourself that grace, and get back to people you know, when it suits you and when you've had time to consider something rather than rush and be really emotional when you're trying to get back to somebody especially when it comes into business because again, we are in professional services and selling products. We want to keep things professional at all times. So that is it.
I would love it if you found this tip useful if you might share this you can tag us at @mydailybusinesscoach over on Instagram, or you can send us an email or a DM and let us know what really resonated with you or how you've learned to deal with this. If you enjoyed this, I would love it as well if you might have two seconds to leave a review or hit the stars. It just helps so many other small business owners find us and learn different tips and tools and tactics like this for their own business. As always, the full show notes will be available over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/115 as this is Episode 115. See you next time
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
