By: Faizan Haq, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Your Bliss Magazine, President & CEO, Manage Your Business LLC
Many people think that business is about buying and selling. A single transaction in their mind calculates what they can buy low and sell high. The aim is always to increase the margin and add to the net profit. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, the business is always about the transactions that calculate margins, seeking to minimize costs and maximize productivity. I am trying to bring your attention to something more foundational, and more fundamental. And that is your relationships.
The intensity of transactions and the business model that allows the exchange of value and goods for monetary units survives on the groundwork of relationships. The big corporation’s all invest in creating fertile grounds of relationships so they can reap profitable crops season after season and year after year. You might be thinking that, of course, customer relations are a very important part of the business and entrepreneurship. However, I want to take you to an even deeper layer than the relationships with clients, customers, vendors, and co-workers.
The deeper layer than “your relationships” with others is “your relationships with yourself.” It is not a typo that I have used your relationships, a plural term, with yourself. We must understand or at least look into ourselves to see how we feel about our own selves (plural). I am not suggesting that we have Multiple Personality Disorder. I am merely pointing out that we have many roles of ourselves that are at work and at any given point those roles are constantly defining our communications, qualifying our decisions, and managing our work habits.
It is not an easy task- it requires mental discipline, trained emotional intelligence, and most of all owning your history, embracing your identity and celebrating your shortcomings. The first step in this venture is to start having an honest dialogue with your own self. Nothing is more effective than taking on the habit of reviewing your actions and analyzing the intentions behind them at the end of the day. If possible, write down your analyses and review them the next morning before starting your day.
Every day will start with a new beginning as you will avoid the mistakes of yesterday and reinforce the positive thinking for tomorrow. We shall continue this journey for our betterment in the next episode of First Things First next month.