Don't bring your problems to work with you.....

This phrase which I have heard many times during my career - both said to me and also in my hearing to others - is one of the most ridiculous ever. None more so than when you run a micro business like me when the business is all about you.

This is like saying 'cut off your arm and come into work and act normally - you can always stick it back on later' - it's asking someone to do the impossible.

In my experience, those who have said it to me have also been the ones who are often the MOST affected by their personal situation and yet are intolerant of others when their private lives affect their professional lives.

When a business owner asks this of someone they are asking the impossible. Only today I saw someone known to me struggling with managing her childcare situation with her busy professional career and feeling terribly guilty - feeling she was failing everyone.

I'm going to put it out there for you all to know - I'm in a situation at the moment which is affecting my concentration and my rate of productivity and I'm having to accept that for a while. I am not going to ask the impossible of myself as - at the end of the day - my business, which I love with a passion, is not more important than my family. My family really need me at the moment.

A very close relative has been struggling with her health for a while - and a crisis occurred about three weeks ago. It took a week to get to the bottom of the issue and now we know - she's got terminal cancer and these are her final days.

This person has been an important part of my life for over 20 years and has inspired me to be better, to rise above the circumstances of my upbringing and to improve myself both professionally and personally. I learned from her as she has been there, seen it and done it from a similar yet loving low income background. Now her mind is sparky, her eyes are bright and her body is failing her by the hour. As I write this she's being moved to a hospice. Thank goodness for the work that hospices do.

This is not the end of a journey for my family - it's the start of one and it's one that is not going to be easy and knowing that is the hardest thing of all. This person has been so proud of me in dealing with redundancy and setting up on my own and for the last 11 years of moving forward (up, down, zig zagging etc). She has been proud in a quiet way, where a word here or a phrase there has shown me she gets me, she gets it and she supports me. Now it's time for us to support her as best we can.

I'm not looking for sympathy in writing this - I don't want sympathy as these are situations we all have to face at some time or another. I just ask for some understanding that I'm slightly distracted and having to rush off to sort this or that out at a moment's notice.

I know some of you may read this and think - what the hell is this doing on LinkedIn - it's personal not professional. It's not about business. I'm writing this to you in particular, the whole point is that the two are not separate, they are linked. Unless you have the empathy of a stone.

I've given some thought as to whether to write this at all yet have decided in the long run it's best to let people know and to perhaps help someone else who may be facing a similar thing.

There are some things I'm hugely grateful for which are purely as a result of running my own business:

*business buddies who are willing to step in and take some of my work burden without question and none have asked for payment (I will pay them if finances allow).

*advice in accessing good LOCAL professionals help with practical legal issues which now have to be faced.

*understanding that I don't want to talk about this all of the time, it's exhausting and painful and I need to distract myself. I don't want to be crying, I'm too tired to cry.

*understanding that I might miss a planned call or appointment simply because something else has come up which is more urgent and I haven't had time to let you know - or as happened once last week, I completely forgot.

*Tolerance over my losing my thought process sometimes. During a phone call, I can zone out into a kind of in-between space and it takes a while for me to re-focus.

*I can take the time I need - even if it means my business doesn't earn as much this month - because there's nothing worse than regret that you didn't 'do that thing' or 'say that important thing' and now the chance has gone.

If you are a business owner, company director or a senior person in any organisation and you have teams who answer to you - please refrain from making this stupid statement to any member of your staff and consider how you would be feeling if you were walking in their shoes.

By offering support as best you can you will end up with an employee who is far more loyal and committed because when they really needed your support - that support and understanding was there.

For me, I have to gift that understanding to myself and allow myself to cope and get through the coming days.