Prioritising self-care is one of the key ways to increase your productivity and success in life and business.
Amelia and Duayne from Live Life Build discuss the importance of self-care for builders and what it means to prioritise yourself. They discuss creating a routine, time management, how to be organised and more.
Watch the video now, or read the transcript below.
Duayne
When you start being more organised and more effective and changing, it flows through your entire business.
Amelia
Duayne, for most of the builders that we work with and that we particularly work with inside our membership, that whole idea of working on themselves first as a priority, that they actually should prioritise time for themselves, for their well being, for exercise and those kinds of things. That can be really strange for them, it can feel really odd. Why do you actually think that builders really struggle with this idea of prioritising themselves before anything else? Why is self care for builders not something that is seen as important by some?
Duayne
From personal experience, I think they get caught up in the actual business. That the business just keeps growing and growing, they get caught up in it, and they actually think that the business has to be right before they can work on themselves. And because they’ve got to get some time back, and the reality is if they’re not right, nothing around them is going to be right.
Amelia
Yeah, it’s really interesting. I see the builders doing that, that they literally go, okay. And I know, as a business owner, it’s something I’ve done. It’s like, once I have all of these things in place, then I’ll have time to exercise or then I’ll have time to spend, you know, more time with my friends and those kinds of things. But you’re so right, that whole thing of if you don’t get yourself right first.
You are your business’ biggest asset. So if you’re not actually getting yourself right first, then nothing else is going to flow for you
And it’s really interesting seeing the members that we work with when, when they actually do start prioritising the exercise and those kinds of things, how much it unlocks, then for the other things just to happen for them to have more resilience around, you know, how they approach things, to not feel as stressed, to be able to think better, it’s quite amazing.
Duayne
It is fantastic. And we, we do see the ones that do continually have similar struggles. They continue to have them and yet the ones that do take that step to organise themselves seem to once they’ve organised themselves, they just skyrocket.
And I think it is one of those things like scheduling is not something most builders would consider. They might be scheduling their jobs, but actually scheduling their life is something that’s very unknown to them. And I’m a very big advocate now of scheduling your personal stuff first. So you have to prioritise what’s important to you, your health, your family, friends, what little hobbies, whatever it may be. And the work stuff just seems to end up squeezing around that. But, I think one of the things is so many builders get so caught up, they don’t have plans, they live out of a diary. And they spend all day every day driving around putting out fires, and that, that is 90% a reason why they feel they have no time.
But when you put in the time to actually have a schedule, and put things down, it really makes you focus on the time you have left to get the business side of things done. And everything just starts falling into place.
Amelia
Yeah, that whole idea of actually looking at your week ahead and going okay, well, I know that I want to spend more time with my kids. I know when I spend more time with my partner. I know I want to exercise every morning. When you actually start putting that in, all of a sudden you realise it gives you these containers of time to focus your efforts in for your business.
Amelia
And I know, I’ve seen your diary, how scheduled it is, because then that means you’re actually in control of your own time. You’re not letting others dictate you. Because, we’ve seen what happens when you’re letting others dictate your time to you, all of a sudden, your time just runs away. You end up being really unproductive with things.
So, that whole thing of actually taking the time to, at the beginning of the week, to say okay, this is when I do these things. And then you can actually start saying, okay, I’ve got this time to meet clients, or I’ve got this time to work on, you know, the business or in the business. It makes a really big difference, doesn’t it?
Duayne
It changes everything. It doesn’t just change a business, it truly does change your entire life.
But for me, and I know a lot of builders will be on the same page as this, it felt like school work. Like it honestly felt like sitting down, filling out, like doing a diary, having a schedule, was school work. But, I love it now like it’s something I work real close with my wife Camille in the office, our Supervisor, like, and I guess that’s the exciting part about this, it actually flows on to the rest of your team.
When you start being more organised and more effective and changing, it flows through your entire business.
Amelia
Yeah, and I know too, that what I see for a lot of people and particularly builders, if they haven’t felt that they’ve been good at school, you know, and they felt like they perhaps got made a fool of or felt stupid at school, that can translate then into how they go about learning other things. And learning something like this, you know, self improvement, learning how to, you know, different skills and those kinds of things.
Learning how to schedule your week, that can feel like; oh gosh! I’m going to be made a fool of, look stupid, look silly. That can of course put another big hurdle in front of you wanting to do it. But, if you can get over that, it makes such a big difference to your ability to just actually get the knowledge that you need to be able to make this difference.
I mean, you listen to lots of books when you’re driving around in the car, you know, there’s lots of opportunity for you to be able to learn in a way that doesn’t actually take a lot of extra time. It’s just using your time differently.
Start With One Personal Goal
Duayne
Well, making the most of every minute like, it’s probably one thing that does annoy me now, like I literally spent years driving around in my truck, wasting time, listening to music, whereas now every single minute is valuable.
But, we’ve seen it firsthand with one of our members in particular, Luke. I think the biggest thing with this, is you start with one thing, like you don’t get overwhelmed by scheduling, don’t think that you have to go and schedule your entire day and the week and month and all those types of things, just start with one thing. And Luke’s one thing was, he wanted to go to gym. And, what we’ve seen recently like he said, it was a struggle for the first few months.
He had to get up at 5:00 or 4:30 to be at gym by 5:00, but he’s past that stage now he’s absolutely loving it and as we’ve seen in the past few months, everything else now in his life in his business is all just falling into place. So, it’s worth putting in the time, worth putting in the effort and you’ll get the results.
Amelia
Fantastic. If your wanting more ways you can prioritise self care for builders you may also want to read ‘5 Ways to Take Back Control of Your Time and Your Thoughts’ [https://www.livelifebuild.com/blog/personal-5-ways-take-back-control/]