Don't Waste My Time: How do we know our generosity is succeeding in helping others and ourselves?

Don’t Waste My Time: Generosity brings life and worth. Being a generous person also means that people will come to you for things. Advice, money, your time. They see and hear of your strengths from others and when it becomes their time of need, like an instinct, they know who to go to. But when is enough, enough, and how do we know our generosity is succeeding in helping them or ourselves?

Coaching others is extremely frustrating, but it is also very fulfilling. I enjoy solving complex puzzles and the psychology behind human behaviors. So, identifying and changing behaviors for success brings me rewarding challenges. I get to help others succeed. What’s not to like??Well, the reality is that most behaviors take a long time to change. We must amend the way our brain relates to certain stimulus and teach ourselves how to better regulate our emotions. It’s easier said than done, and that’s where all my frustrations begin.

I would like to think that I am a generous person. So, if you ask for my help, I’m happy to help. But don’t waste my time. A most recent example is that of a current client, whose business has been struggling for two years. When the individual came to me with despair regarding complex employment issues, financial woes from reduced sales and a laundry list of other problems. I knew I had my hands full. So, immediately I dived into the nature of how she was running the business. Only to find out she wasn’t running her own business. She wanted to live her life (outside of the business) and allow other individuals to run it for her. Others she never took the time to train. Nor made the time to communicate company goals, let alone write them down herself. The company has existed for seven years.

Now as I create a plan of action with the client, I am happy to express that one major aspect of running a business is actually running it. Showing up for your employees. Communicating company goals and stepping in when help is needed. So, we create tasks that weekly don’t get performed by my client. So, week by week, meeting by meeting, my client barely meets the minimum requirements of her tasks and with consistency pursues the excuse that life (outside of her business) is very busy. Till I am left with only one option going forward. Telling her I will no longer waste my time to help her business become successful, should she not play her own part in showing up. You can't show up for others if you cant show up for yourself.

If you had a business, would you wait seven years to start considering what the goals of your company are? So, when was the last time you wrote down your own set of goals? Call me a record on repeat here, but you must show up for change to happen in your life. For progress to happen in your business, and for your goals to be met. It takes sleepless nights, long hours and persistence to turn your dreams into reality. We can’t expect people to run a business for us who we have never trained. We can’t expect them to meet organizational goals if we have never written them down for ourselves and we can’t meet our own goals if we don’t create and follow a disciplined plan of action. Don’t waste your own time by creating a plan and never showing up to put in the work. Physical action must be taken everyday. We must try and fail, and try, try again. Be generous to yourself and show up for your own success. – Michelle

“Eighty Percent of success is showing up.”- Woody Allen