I’ve been a small business owner for 24 years: 12 as a wholesale gift owner and 12 as a professional coach to hundreds of other small business owners. They’ve all told me they want one thing: more free time to enjoy their lives and less time worrying about what’s stressing them in business. Have you felt this way too? When you decided to turn away from a steady paycheck and benefits, you put everything on the line for your dreams. You didn’t go into business to be a business owner; you did it to advance your vision of a better life. And somehow, along the way, your dreams may have been shoved aside as your business began to take over; its needs just seem to scream louder than does your desire for a life of abundance, wealth and security. It’s time to reclaim your dreams and make sure your business is crafted to heed your priorities! Many coaches will encourage you to do this – some screaming as loudly as your business needs.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But how do you do it? It can be extremely hard to just suddenly ignore the tyranny of the urgent, compelling you to pay attention. And there’s a good reason why you feel that resistance. See if this rings a bell: When you were employed, you learned to always ‘look busy’ when the boss was around. And what did that mean? Shuffling papers, making phone calls, responding to emails, attending meetings, crunching numbers. In other words, the key to getting a ‘thumb’s up’ from your boss was to engage in some physical activity; to ‘look busy’. Well, now you’re the boss! The only person you need to impress is you and the commitment you’ve made to your own vision of success. Now success rests on you – not just for the physical steps; now it’s up to you to craft that vision and it starts with creative thinking. Your vision of success starts with an ability to ask ‘what if?’ or ‘how would things change if I did X instead of Y?’

You may think the key to a satisfying day is a lot of action and task completion. Well, it may end that way but the beginning of your day will deliver extra satisfaction if it sees you in a comfortable chair, in a quiet space just imagining the possibilities you can create and the probabilities to which you must respond. Stop doing so much; spend more time dreaming and you’ll build a smarter, more profitable business that responds to the priorities of your life.

Start now; just sit here for a moment. Close your eyes and think about where you want your business to be in a year or 5; what has to happen first? What’s going to happen around you that you can’t control yet will have an impact on your business? What’s going on in your industry, the economy, technology, or with your customers that will require you to be prepared for the changes ahead? Want a little mood music? Here you go.