Take Time

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.

And listened more deeply.

Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.

Some met their shadows.

And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed.

And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they themselves had been healed.

Words attributed to Kitty O’Meara

As a finance broker, my blog is usually about raising finance and the different funding options that are available to help you grow and develop your business.

And of course, how your business is funded is important, and will become increasing relevant in the coming weeks, so it is a subject I will be returning to in future blogs.

However, this week, I felt it was right to take time to stop and reflect.

At the beginning of this year, words and phrases such as ‘coronavirus’, ‘self-isolation’, ‘social distancing’ and ‘lock-down’ were barely in the public conscience. Now, only three months later they form part of virtually every conversation.

Not only is the world facing a health crisis, but it is likely that we will face a financial crisis also.

And of course, our businesses and our finances are both vital and important. However, having faced major surgery myself in the past, and seeing my wife having to deal with the challenges of a breast cancer diagnosis last summer, if there is anything I have learnt, it would be this.

If these current events affect anything for you, I hope that it’s only your business, and not your health or the health of your loved ones.

And so, your priority over the coming weeks must be your own health and the health of your family and friends.

But this is also an opportunity. An opportunity to take time.

To take time to be thankful, to take time to enjoy your family, to take time to think about what’s really important.

And, as we seem to be heading towards the inevitable ‘lock-down’, there will also be an opportunity to take time to: reflect, recalibrate and reinvent.

As an entrepreneur and business owner working from home in the coming weeks, you are likely to have the time and opportunity to think about your business and to reflect on how you can do things in new ways.

I believe that the crisis we are currently facing will be an opportunity to ‘step-back’ and to reflect and reinvent ourselves and our business. In my view, the entrepreneurs and business owners that will do well over the next five years, are the ones who ‘lean in’ to the reality we currently face, and then go about transforming and reinventing their business.

If you’re holding onto the way things have always been done, and therefore resisting change, you will find this period of crisis hard going. But, if you embrace the reality of where we currently find ourselves, I believe there is huge opportunity.

So, in the coming weeks, take time. Take time to reflect. Take time to build a better version of your business.

Of course, this is a difficult time for all of us, as we endeavour to stay safe and to keep our loved ones safe. But it is also an opportunity to ‘lean in’, to embrace the reality of the current crisis, and to start to do things differently. Whatever that might mean for you.

And I believe those who embrace this process of reflection and reinvention, are the ones who really display entrepreneurship at its very best. In this difficult time, stay safe and keep your family safe. But also take some time….to reflect and re-invent.