When You’re Too Exhausted to Run a Business

“Fifteen years I’ve put into this business, and I’m just spent,” lamented one client. Another told me, “I pushed myself to get my website up, and I went over an edge with my health. It took me months to recover.”

It’s humbling to realize, but as you age, you just don’t have the same ability to go all night, and to push through deadlines and projects as you did once upon a time. Heck, I’m only nearing the end of my forties, and I definitely tend to prefer naps over late nights.

How about when you’re sixty and trying to get a business going?

A Lifetime of Helping Is In the Way

You need help. Period. I know you know that, please don’t look at me like I’m a nut. But here’s the kicker: since you need help, you need to ask for help. And you need to accept help.

Just reading those words, how does your belly feel?

If you tighten up, feel nauseous, scared, angry, spacey, or suddenly decide it’s a good time to go clean the bathroom, I have good news–you’ve found a doorway to freedom.

Yes, it’s true, it doesn’t feel like good news. But it is. Because you’ve just identified the next step that’s needed to make your business work.

I’m guessing you’ve been the helper, the provider, the one who wipes noses and cleans up messes. You’ve been the one who makes it happen, and you’ve rarely been on the receiving end of much help at all.

But it may be dawning on you, if it hasn’t already–there is no other way your business is going to actually work. Help! Help! Help! You need it.

The Quickest End-Run Around Help Avoidance

Here’s the truth: the heart would rather be in service. I want to validate your resistance to help, because it is an uncomfortable place to be. In the tradition of Sufism, Mohammad was given the choice between being a King who rules over others from on high, or a Divine Servant who, deeply concerned, helps and serves people. Believing that is was the more worthy choice for a human being, he chose to be a servant.

When you resist receiving help, in many ways your heart is just wanting to make the same choice. Unfortunately, avoiding help doesn’t truly support your profound desire to be of service in a larger way, it undermines it. Plus, you end up exhausted and broke. Not a good combo.

Of course, you could do all kinds of process and healing work, which I recommend in the long run, to clear patterns around receiving help. But for right now, how about digesting this: If you don’t accept help from others, you are denying them the possibility of being in service.

The people who are your raving fans, or friends and loved ones, are also wanting to make the heart choice of being a servant. If you don’t ask for and receive help from them to further the goal of your business, then you are the only one offering the help. To take it further, if you are the only one serving, you are forcing them into the unhealthy king role, where they don’t get to offer service themselves.

Here’s an example:

A client told me he didn’t want to receive a gift from his son, because he couldn’t help thinking of him standing on his feet all day working at a minimum wage job to pay for the gift. I asked the client to go into his heart and ask to be shown a larger truth.

When he did, what he saw shook him to his core. He saw in his heart that by allowing his son to work to give him a gift, his son was stepping into adulthood, that it was an important piece of growing up into responsibility.

Is it possible that the people around you who love you the most are waiting for you to receive their help so that they can grow? Humbling, isn’t it?

Don’t think for a minute that I haven’t struggled with this one, big time. This is a huge part of what the last two years have been about for me–learning to ask for and receive help.

For instance, the other day Kate, the newest member of Heart of Business, helped me see exactly how I was shutting her out and keeping her from contributing the extraordinary talents she has. My fear and controlling impulses were giving her the unintended message that I didn’t welcome her help and talents.

Oops! Luckily, she was courageous enough to challenge me on it, and I was worn down enough to be willing to let more help in. The result? She’s excited about all the work she’s doing for the business, and we’re getting a tremendous amount of help.

Let’s get you going on it. The entire healing journey may take awhile (or not), but that’s all the more reason to get started today. Right now.

Keys To Getting the Help You Need

• Take It Off Your Shoulders

Your business is on a track to make change. It might be change within your local community, or it might be global. Whatever your scale, take a moment and own that change your business is wanting to make.

Ask yourself honestly, do you believe there are other people who would want to support that change? What does your heart say?

• See Their Faces

Take a second moment to picture a few people who have been impacted by what you’re doing. They may be colleagues, or past or current clients, or friends.

What help have they offered that you’ve turned away saying, “Naw, that’s okay, I’ve got it.” A compliment you’ve brushed off? Help with something technological? Even just an offer of brainstorm or support time?

In your heart, bow to those who have offered gifts to you. Bow to them. And say, “Yes” to what they have offered.

• Don’t Go Too Far Down the Road

You’re probably feeling a little tender at this point, and so the best way to put yourself into complete overwhelm is to try to figure it all out.

Yes, you may have to eventually hire some help. Yes, it’s unclear who will help you with such-and-so. Please, be gentle with yourself first, catch your breath, and practice letting in what help is there. As you get used to receiving gifts, compliments and other offered help, you’ll be able to take the next step toward requests, which will be about asking for the help you need.

But hold your horses. You may not quite be there yet. First, let in the help. If you’re truly going to be in service to the world, you’re going to have to let others join you in the effort, and that means letting in the help. If we’re all in service together, I think you’ll notice your business moving further along and more quickly than if it were strictly a solo affair.