I signed up a few weeks ago to be coached by Tara Butler. She organised the webinars to starting entrepreneurs that I was listening in for most of February and of all the coaches interviewed, I decided to choose her to help me on my journey of becoming an entrepreneur. I chose her because I agreed with a lot of the things that she said and I liked her approach to interviewing the guests speakers.

The pre-work leading up to the first session was very enlightening – I went through different exercises to clarify for myself what are the things that motivate me and what have been my best moments since age 7. The last one needed a bit extra work from me – I had to create an excel spreadsheet to remember exactly which country I lived in, where did I work and who were the closest people to me at that time. It was easy to remember the last few years and also childhood highlights, but the middle was a bit of a blur. But once the years were in their cells with country, places visited, jobs and people, it was much easier already. Amazing how the mind works – just need to find the connections and it gives you what you are looking for!

These types of exercises are good to determine what are the values that are most important to me. Subconsciously we try to live according to our values and if they are not being met then we try to compensate in other ways. For example – one of my values is challenge – my motivation surges if I get to solve a problem that seems to be unsolvable or get to create something that I haven’t done before. But if my job is no longer offering me something new and exciting then I tend to take on too many tasks in order to feel the challenge. This is not a good compensation for the real juicy challenge though, what it does instead is tire me out and make me lethargic in the end.

Taking time off to think about your values helps put things that you focus in perspective. My major realisation yesterday was that I should not try to spend 8 hours a day in front of the computer in order to get maximum amount of things done. Instead I should set my goals for the day and once I’m finished with those, take time to read something, go for a walk or do what ever I enjoy. This way I will start the new day with energy and motivation, rather than surf the net as a compensation for using up my resources the day before.