Posts Tagged ‘Business Owner’

As a Christian home based business owner for many years, I began to see an interesting analogy of how business is like exercise. Does this seem incongruent? Here are three elements they have in common.Anyone who’s embarked on a fit of fitness soon learns that there are three core areas they need to work on: strength, endurance, and flexibility. As a Christian home based business owner, those terms translate into how and why we do what we do. As with all things, our businesses are to glorify God and to serve others. Let’s look at these analogies further.Strength, or building muscle, is actually accomplished by stressing the muscles to the point of tiny tears in the actual muscle itself due to stress?putting a load on what’s already there, a strain, for the purpose of building the fibers to be stronger than they were before the strain after a recovery period.A lot of us have been through some strain, to the point that it feels like something must be about to bust, maybe with getting over fears, procrastination, or even just getting a website done, or staying on top of the bookkeeping, or learning to outsource things we need help with. Our brains are often over-full and we’re juggling more than it seems we can handle.There’s a time of imbalance when we’re getting started. The strain is required to make us stronger. Every little place that feels like a tear will heal into a stronger fiber after a time of recovery.Endurance is accomplished by cardio exercise. That’s all about consistency, persistency, and time. It’s a daily-ness, being faithful to just keep on keeping on. There’s no hurrying cardio and there’s nothing fancy about it. You just have to put in the time and do it over and over and over. This is building up our heart, our most important muscle!This is your ?why.? Is your ?why? strong enough to keep you going through the plain hard work of making a success of your Christian home business’then there’s flexibility, without which we could have good endurance and great strength, but something might snap! Good effective stretches are done slowly, letting the muscles elongate, every time a little bit further. Flexibility prevents a lot of future injuries!With any home based business, we regularly get an opportunity to work on flexibility, slowly building up that ability to bend without breaking. It’s just like a new little tree that’s planted and needs to be able to blow in the wind, because the flexing strengthens the root structure. If it’s tied too tight to its stake so it can’t blow around a little bit, the roots are weak and the first good storm is going to do permanent damage.Just like a well-rounded athlete, your Christian home based business requires that you develop strength, endurance and flexibility. Then you’ll be fit for the journey that God has called you to and soon you’ll recognize how far you’ve come from where you started at the beginning of this marathon!(c) 2007 Becki MaxsonBecki Maxson works on her business fitness as the founder of KingdomWork.com, whose purpose is equipping God’s people to prosper.Becki also serves other Christian home based business owners as a Mentor for Advantage Conferences, offering ongoing Christian entrepreneurial training and mentoring.