{"id":1840,"date":"2011-04-14T09:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T13:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thegrowthcoach.com\/cincinnati\/growth-coach-challenge-business-owner-dont-waste-your-wake-up-calls"},"modified":"2022-07-11T11:32:39","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T15:32:39","slug":"growth-coach-challenge-business-owner-dont-waste-your-wake-up-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thegrowthcoach.com\/cincinnati\/growth-coach-challenge-business-owner-dont-waste-your-wake-up-calls","title":{"rendered":"Growth Coach Challenge \u2013 Business Owner, Don\u2019t Waste Your Wake-Up Calls"},"content":{"rendered":"
Every human being, but especially overworked, overwhelmed, and overly busy entrepreneurs and small business owners, will receive numerous wake-up calls over their lifetime.\u00a0 What’s a wake-up call? <\/em> It’s that very personal, shocking, upsetting, and significant event that grabs your attention, shakes you to your core, and strongly encourages you to slow down and think.<\/strong> Twenty common wake-up calls for entrepreneurs are listed below … continue to read.<\/p>\n A true wake-up call is too significant to be brushed off, ignored or easily forgotten. <\/strong>It gets you to reflect and question your current attitudes, beliefs, lifestyle, habits and behaviors. Such a body-blow event can make you more open and receptive to changing your ways.\u00a0 Such a jarring wake-up call demands that you stop taking loved ones, friends and your situation for granted and stop sleep-walking through life.\u00a0 It wants you to awaken! <\/strong> To be more fully engaged and enlightened at the office, home with the family, or both.<\/p>\n No doubt about it, wake-up calls are jolting.\u00a0 They can frighten you, grab your heart, stress you out, embarrass you, knock you to your knees, humble you, and steal your peace of mind. <\/strong>God knows I have had my fair share of wake-up calls … some that blind-sided me and some I flat-out caused.\u00a0 However, I believe they all serve a real purpose if you search.\u00a0 Wake-up calls are to remind us that we are fragile human beings and that we aren’t immortal, invincible or super heroes.<\/strong><\/em> That we are far from perfect … and in fact, very much broken.\u00a0 That there is no place for arrogance in business and life.\u00a0 That life is not fair and goes way too fast.\u00a0 That tragedies happen to everyone on the planet … the good and bad, rich and poor, young and old.\u00a0 That we all make dumb mistakes we regret.\u00a0 That we get off track and lose our way from time to time.\u00a0 That certain things are beyond our control.\u00a0 That we are human beings first and foremost, not just business owners.\u00a0 That there is a God … and it\u2019s not us.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n While painful, a wake-up call wishes to teach you a valuable lesson … IF you are receptive to learning and growing.<\/strong> If you aren’t open to receiving the gift of insight, it will be both painful and without any real benefit … what a shame.\u00a0 Don’t waste a valuable wake-up call.\u00a0 As a CPA and business coach <\/a>for over 25\u00a0 years, I have seen countless small business owners and professionals deal with dozens of different wake-up calls.\u00a0 Here is a small sampling of 20 of the more common wake-up calls:<\/strong><\/p>\n Can you relate to any of these wake-up calls?<\/strong> How did you respond?\u00a0 Did one or more of these get you to change your ways?\u00a0 Did you transform to become a better person or business owner?<\/p>\n Though unsettling, these wake-up calls can teach us great lessons and humble us.\u00a0 With the proper perspective, these wake-up calls (just like business coaching<\/a>) get us to slow down, reflect, count our blessings, learn valuable lessons, make adjustments, and move on as better people and owners. <\/strong>At times, they even teach us to ask others for forgiveness and make amends.\u00a0 Again, don’t waste a wake-up call … make something good out of something bad.<\/p>\n When confronted with a wake-up call you caused, you must take responsibility and own it. <\/strong>If it’s a wake-up call that merely happened to you, you still must face the reality that it happened, accept it and deal with it.\u00a0 No place for denial.\u00a0 You must treat wake-up calls as teachers trying to help you learn, avoid the same mistake in the future, correct your course now, and improve.\u00a0 You must also learn to forgive yourself and stop beating yourself up.\u00a0 For serious wake-up calls and challenges, be sure to seek professional counseling.<\/p>\n If you do have a wake-up call, don\u2019t panic.\u00a0 Treat it as a gift.\u00a0 Some are warranted, some are not.\u00a0 Forget about them being fair or not.\u00a0 If you dig deep enough, there is always something worthy to be found and something positive you can change in your business and\/or life as a result. <\/strong>See the silver lining in each and every black cloud.\u00a0 Search for the valuable lesson and wisdom.\u00a0 In fact, we teach our business coaching clients<\/a> to look at any bad situation, wake-up call or setback and ask a few empowering questions: “What can I learn from this?\u00a0 What is the message for me? What are the positives I can take away from this experience?\u00a0 What do I need to do differently?\u00a0 How can this make me or my business better?”<\/p>\n Please don\u2019t delude yourself.\u00a0 As long as you are alive, wake-up calls will surely come.\u00a0 While not all wake-up calls can be avoided, most of them are self-inflicted and can be prevented or cushioned with proper business coaching … on-going self-reflection, facing the truth, accountability, and creating new directions. <\/strong>In fact, we want our Growth Coach clients<\/a> to have gentle wake-up calls with us from DAY ONE so massive wake-up calls and emotional grief can be prevented, delayed or softened.<\/p>\n Instead of waiting reactively for a big wake-up call to knock you down, take a proactive stance<\/strong> and take our business coaching on-line assessment<\/a>.\u00a0 Or, read the introduction of our business coaching book<\/a> for a valuable wake-up call.\u00a0 You will be grateful you confronted reality on your terms instead of being blind-sided by a speeding and massive wake-up call.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every human being, but especially overworked, overwhelmed, and overly busy entrepreneurs and small business owners, will receive numerous wake-up calls over their lifetime.\u00a0 What’s a wake-up call? It’s that very personal, shocking, upsetting, and significant event that grabs your attention, shakes you to your core, and strongly encourages you to slow down and think. Twenty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n\n