Creating Margin in your Life and Business

Last week I was swamped between life and business. At the end of the week, I had to make some choices. Do I blog or do I let it rest? Do I Facebook or do I let it rest? Do I twitter or do I let it rest? A quick look back at my activity status on all three of these will show that I chose the latter.

I imagine I’m a lot like you when it comes to business. Everything is the MOST important thing, and much of it relies directly on me. To drop one thing, means dropping all things. That’s a tough place to be. Really tough. Sometimes we have to not only allow for, but specifically create margin in our lives.

The rules for design also work for everyday life. For something to be easily read and looked at, there should be enough “white space” to allow your eye to relax on the information you want it to look at. Our lives are the same. If we don’t create enough margin or white space we can’t relax enough to see what’s most important.

When it comes down to it, while my business is very important (both to me personally and to my clients), it’s not the MOST important thing in my life. Sometimes I have to back up and allow myself to breathe and see the bigger picture. When I do this, I am allowed to create much more freely.

What about you? Have you created enough margin in your life? In your business (you bet these are super inter-related)? If not, I dare you to do it…even when you think you can’t. Life goes on. By the way, if you would like a little deeper perspective on both the why’s and how’s of margin check out this book by Richard Swenson – Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.