I was speaking to a life coach whose whole approach to helping people was simplifying things. It said as much on her business card – “simplify your life”.
That resonated with me greatly given that’s what I did in my various accounting jobs. Whenever I would start in a new business I would see the familiar look in managers eyes when I met them for the first time…”here’s another accountant here to bamboozle us with all these numbers and ideas”. But I did things a little differently to what they had previously experienced. I would keep things very simple and straight forward, no accounting talk. Just practical ideas in a language and format that worked for them. That’s what I saw as my job.
And that was what my life coach friend was talking about in relation to her clients. Understanding them, their needs and where they want to go in the future. In doing this the one phrase that kept on surfacing during our conversation was “the need to de clutter”. De clutter their whole life so they could focus on the things that are going to help them achieve their goals. And letting go of all the baggage, both mental and physical, that is holding them back.
When I got home later that evening I was remembering how managers I used to work with were constantly stressed and time pressured with all the responsibilities they had. How they would see their financial responsibilities were an extra burden that were too complicated. How I would need to slow them down and keep things simple. This was the financial and work decluttering process.
As I continued to think about it, it occurred to me that going through that whole process, the key was making the managers more mindful of the specific task at hand. Bringing them into the present moment. There were still all these other pressing issues that were impacting on the financials, but what was most important was the understanding in the here and now. “This is the situation, now where to from here”.
This conversation, with its little snowball effect on my thought process, continues to remind me how many of the offices or interactions with managers could have been so different over the years. If everyone was more mindful, it would have taken so much of the stress and negative energy out of the office environment and I would not have had to spend half of every meeting decluttering manager’s minds of irrelevant information to get them on task.
If we can all be more mindful while at work each day, you’d be surprised at how much better your day will seem to flow and how much time can be saved. You will feel less stressed, less pressure, and just generally be more focused on tasks at hand.
And if everyone in the office or business does the same, imagine the amazing office environment that you would be working in.
Then the only decluttering required would be that stationary cupboard in the corner that still has a million paperclips and folders sitting in there from the last attempt to move to a paperless office…
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