By Bethany Jett
Along with recreating the planner, I grabbed dry-erase markers and plotted out the first year’s quarter on our sliding glass doors.
I spent New Year’s weekend alone.
My menfolk took a boys-only trip out-of-state, and I was left blissfully alone–the house, the TV, the food to myself.
Heaven.
I made chicken pot pie with a biscuit-subbed-for-pie-crust topping, binged Hotel Hell and the New Year’s Day Shark Tank marathon, FaceTimed with my mom and sister, and worked a few nights until 4 AM, waking only to the beckoning rays of sunlight streaming through my curtains.
Along with recreating the planner, I grabbed dry-erase markers and plotted out the first year’s quarter on our sliding glass doors. It’s on my to-do list to transfer those items into Nozbe, my fave management app for lists and workflow.
As I watched CEO after CEO go undercover, I noticed similar characteristics about the women, physical and personality-wise. And it hit me.
I’m a CEO.
My company is really small, since I’m a one-woman operation, but I’m a CEO nonetheless.
I’ve registered my company with the state. I have an Employer Identification Number (EIN). I pay taxes as a small business owner.
So why don’t I always act like it?
Why don’t I dress the part?
What things would I do differently in my life if I woke up every morning with the thought, “I’m the CEO of my company. I’m gonna rock today.”
What would I do differently if I woke up thinking, “I’m the CEO of my life.”
What would be on our to-do lists if we ran our lives the way a CEO runs a company?
Would our standards be higher? Would we make better choices?
CEO Mindset
You don’t have to own a business to have this mindset. What would life look like if you acted like a CEO in your job? Would you dress more professionally? Would you arrive early and stay a little later? Would you double-check your work?
What if you acted like a CEO as a stay-at-home mom? What standards would you raise? I promised to have all my dishes out of the sink before I went to bed, but that didn’t happen tonight. The dishwasher was loaded and run, but some rinsed-out dishes remain in the sink for their turn.
What would you require of yourself if you thought in terms of being the CEO of your life?
This will totally look different for everyone, but here’s what it looks like for me:
- Pursue education. I’m currently in a Master’s program, but I also love to take online courses and webinars.
- Implement higher standards in regards to housework. (Did you know that carpet is a huge air filter in your home? gag). Vacuuming has taken a much higher precedent since I learned that.
- Get fully dressed instead of lounging in yoga pants all day. Trust me, there’s a huge difference in what gets accomplished based on how I feel I look–perhaps going back to regular nail care maintenance at a salon. The jury is still out on this one.
- Start my day with a quiet or devotion time.
- Get ahead in my different business ventures.
- Spend quality time with my kids every day. Every. Day.
- Filter requests through my business and life plans. Just like Nehemiah with the wall, not everything is meant for me to say yes.
I’ll let the list end there, but I have a much longer one in my mind about what this looks like for me.
Hopefully, it gives you a starting point for how you want your life to be. We make the choices that affect what our life is going to be like. We choose our standards of behavior and our attitudes, no matter what obstacles we face.
So my dear friend, chin up. We’re CEO’s after all.
About the Author
Bethany Jett attended her first writers conference with a proposal and a prayer and left with the Writer of the Year award, an agency contract, and interest from multiple publishers. Three months later, she sold her debut book The Cinderella Rule: a Young Woman’s Guide to Happily Ever After (Revell), which became a Selah Awards finalist.
Bethany is the Founder and Co-Owner of Serious Writer, Inc., and Vice President of Platinum Literary Services where she specializes in marketing, nonfiction proposal creation, ghostwriting, and developmental editing. Her love for marketing and social media led to her pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree in Communication: New Media and Marketing. She also holds a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies: Behavioral Social Science and Humanities with a Criminal Justice minor.
Along with her speaking, writing, and graduate studies, Bethany speaks at churches and conferences nationwide at women’s and youth conferences and retreats, and her work has been featured in numerous publications including ChristianityToday.com, Focus on the Family’s Clubhouse Jr., SpiritLedWoman.com, crosswalk.com, SonomaChristianHome.com, ChristianMingle.com, the Rave section of The Orlando Sentinel, and Splickety Publishing Group.
Bethany is a military spouse, momma-of-boys, suspense-novel junkie who describes herself as “mid-maintenance” and loves cute shoes and all things girly. Connect with her at BethanyJett.com and across all major social media platforms.