You wake up in the morning full of hope. You’ve got a full schedule and you’re ready to check those tasks off your to-do list. With productivity fueling you, you start your day.

Breakfast cooked and served. Check. Dishes done. Check. Laundry going. Check. Client task number one completed. Check. Laundry moved around. Check. Client task two finished. Check.

As you’re whisking through your tasks, you notice the clock: “Oh no! I thought I would have accomplished so much more by now. What’s taking me so long?”

Pushing down panic, you think, “No problem. I’ve got this.” You keep trudging away, hoping you’ll make up the missed minutes throughout your day. Client task number three completed. Check.

But as the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, you realize you’re not going to accomplish all you had hoped you would today. Being a problem solver, you prioritize your to-do list and start rushing through the most urgent tasks.

But now that you’ve overhauled your entire daily plan, you pushed the more trivial tasks to the side. Now, your laundry is backed up, dishes from the snacks and loads of coffee you’ve consumed are piled in the sink, calls from family and friends went to voicemail, and you don’t even know what you’re having for dinner.

You didn’t get it all done. You begrudgingly transfer your unfinished tasks to tomorrow’s to-do list. Defeat overwhelms you.

Sound familiar?

As goal-oriented, independent, smart women, we want to do it all. We want to achieve our goals, maintain our household responsibilities, be a good friend, wife, mother, daughter, sister, etc. But so often we feel that we fall short.

We pack our schedules so full that we fail to notice the tasks we’ve completed and accomplished, and, at the end of the day, all we can focus on is the unfinished business.

As a Virtual Assistant, it’s essential to find balance. Balancing not only your personal and professional life but also your expectations and goals for yourself will allow you to grow your business without constantly doubting your abilities and capacity for success.

Tips to Stay Balanced and Motivated as a Virtual Assistant:

High Expectations

Often times, we set extremely high expectations for ourselves that don’t account for the learning curve. We overlook the time it takes to learn a new role and how to manage your life within this new role.

When you become Virtual Assistant, even though you’re offering services you already know and enjoy, you’re still stepping into unfamiliar territory. You’re running your business, you’re finding clients, you’re marketing yourself. Not to mention that you still have your family and household that demands your attention. All of these things take time.

Therefore, if your expectations exceed the limitations of time, you wind up feeling overwhelmed and defeated.

Solution: Don’t try to accomplish everything at once. Just as a baby crawls before she walks, you must do the same in your VA business. It’s wonderful to have high expectations and set goals that you feel push you. The sky is the limit and your goals should reflect that, but you must crawl before you walk and walk before you run. Establish long and short-term goals to eventually accomplish those high expectations of yourself and your business.

Schedule and prioritize your time to work towards your goals. Avoid the temptation to multitask. Set aside and separate time to work on your business and to maintain your household. Allowing yourself to stay focused on one task at a time keeps your mind centered and focused. This increases your productivity and diminished the feeling of defeat.

Specialize

As a Virtual Assistant, you want to help people, but you fear that if you don’t provide a service that your client needs, you’ll miss out on that client altogether. Therefore, it seems appealing to offer many different services to fulfill the vast needs of your potential clients.

By doing this, you set yourself up for frustration and burn out.

You can’t be an expert at everything. You can know a little about a lot of things, but you can’t truly delve in and learn everything well.

Solution: Narrow your niche. Offer one or two services that clients need.

While it may seem that clients would prefer to hire one VA to complete all the tasks they need to be done, they don’t. Clients appreciate and value your expertise. They want to pay top dollar for a Virtual Assistant who is an expert in the services she provides.

Additionally, narrowing your niche, helps you stay focused. By focusing on one or two services, you allow yourself to really dig into those services, become an expert, and make yourself marketable to high-paying clients.

Take Time for Yourself

Isn’t part of why you became a Virtual Assistant is that you would have more time to enjoy your life? An Oprah.com article states that “many of us feel compelled to measure our success in terms of acquisition and accomplishment.” Becoming so consumed with getting things done and working to accomplish your goals causes you to lose sight of yourself.

You need to be healthy, balance, and in the right mindset in order to be successful. Therefore, it’s just as important to take time to focus on your personal needs as it is to respond to the demands of your business.

Solution: Block out time just for yourself. Make appointments to enjoy your family and friends, go for walks, breathe the fresh air, and take the time to engage in the activities that make your life meaningful. Disconnect from work and enjoy the people and beauty around you.

Small Victories

Remember that hope you felt waking up ready to tackle your daily tasks? While your original plan was thwarted by that pesky clock, you still accomplished a great deal of your to-do list.

However, when things don’t happen in the time frame we want them to, we feel defeated and filled with self-doubt. And how quickly we transition from hope to defeat and self-doubt. This self-doubt can be paralyzing—if we allow it to dictate our next steps.

Solution: Celebrate the small victories. Everyone has the moments where their hopes are squashed by reality. But sometimes, those hopes and expectations are unrealistic. Are your expectations even feasible for the most experienced Virtual Assistant to accomplish?

Being a super-woman doesn’t mean you have to do it all. It means you’re in control. You make the decisions and work hard to pave your way to victory.

Instead, of obsessing about what you didn’t accomplish, celebrate your small victories and use that to power your motivation to keep pushing forward to accomplish your goals.

To learn more about how to maintain a balance in your life throughout your journey of building a successful Virtual Assistant business, apply here for a free MORE Clients MORE Profits Breakthrough Session with me now.

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