Is your business suffering needlessly from GES?

Has GES Syndrome Attacked Your Business and Your Health?

GES Syndrome causes people to suffer low energy, poor performance in all aspects of their lives and unnecessary disease for too many days, weeks, months, years and even decades. It steals creativity, excitement, motivation, spark, passion and pursuit in the most devious way; by keeping people locked in the status quo. That can ruin a day, a career and even a business to say nothing of the other aspects of one’s life.

What is GES?

 GES stands for Good Enough Syndrome. A syndrome is a group of associated symptoms both physical and mental. Associated GES symptoms include:

• Unwillingness to consider the quality of your own performance in any or all aspects of your life.
• Hesitating to change harmful work, life and health habits.
• Not doing things you know will improve your work and life.
• Improving after a slump and then returning to operating as you had been before the slump. In other words, remaining stuck.
• Being unwilling to find out what you don’t know that is critical to your work, life and health.
• Using “everybody does (or eats or uses) it” as an excuse to do something that impedes your progress to success.
• Using “just this one time” as the excuse for doing something that stands between you and success.

Another telltale sign of Good Enough Syndrome is the use of the phrase, "One more won't hurt,” especially when applied to already poor choices in your business, health and life. If you find yourself saying or thinking phrases like that or suffering with the above-listed symptoms, you have likely already come down with GES, and you may want to consider getting help.

The problem with GES is that it can spread far beyond the things that truly are good enough into areas of your life where it can be extremely harmful. When that happens, you end up settling for conditions that you never wanted in the first place. Rather than make a conscious decision to change, you become comfortable in your discomfort and misery.

The Vicious Cycle of GES

 Jerry is a self-employed client with a small business.  Over the years, he has developed habits to manage things like the daily paper flow, email, etc. He isn’t particularly efficient at many of these tasks, and he doesn’t have procedures to make them flow smoothly, but he slogs through because they must be done.

One day is much like the next as he maintains his focus on maximizing his sales. Meanwhile, some things just get shoved into a growing pile of incomplete tasks to handle in the proverbial “someday.”  And the piles build in his mind as well as his office, creating increasing stress in his business and his body.  His blood pressure continues to rise with the piles, as does his weight.  His vitality, on the other hand, decreases proportionally to the incomplete piles.

Jerry knows that when he is focused on marking and sales, his profits rise, but that also adds more incompletes to the piles and stress to his life.  That increase in sales leads to increased production demands which then take his time away from handling all the necessary sales and marketing. So, his sales drop.  Meanwhile, his incomplete piles continue to grow.

Jerry is in the common cycle of trying to do everything (even the things he hates and/or is not good at) by himself.  While building his business, he is also building his stress and moving toward inevitable medical breakdown be it heart attack, cancer, ulcer or other disease.  GES plays a significant role in each of these cases.

It was good enough to pile things to the side “just for now.”  It was good enough to keep the same business routine even though there was enough income to outsource some of the tasks.  And it was good enough to continue expanding his business without building a new foundation.

The result of this GES behavior is, however, eventual massive collapse - be it in the form of a medical illness, financial downturn too great to overcome or simply being crushed by piles upon piles of incomplete work.

Most self-employed people are far too familiar with this cycle.  It is emotionally and physically draining, but Jerry has managed to keep one step ahead of the game and pay his bills for many years, even as his incomplete piles grow and blood pressure increases.

Whenever he looks at those piles or his wife reminds him of his promise to lose thirty pounds, he thinks, “It could be worse.”  And he continues adding fuel to the potential fire that will wipe him out because Jerry has GES.

Jerry is very aware that he has to change his habits. He knows he needs to outsource some tasks so he can stay productive. He’s afraid of change because he doesn’t know where it will lead yet he can feel himself wasting away from the stress. Jerry is stuck, and his GES shows up in his work as well as in his health and his home.

In order to excel at anything, you need to continually cut back the “good enough.”  This is how great leaders succeed.  They are uncompromising in their standards.  “Good enough” is not good enough for them, and the same needs to be true for you.

Great leaders will not settle for the ordinary, and they are deeply committed to their goals while being flexible enough to change when necessary. That's what it takes to keep GES from taking over your life.

Although I may not be able to help directly with your business, we all know that our businesses are very much influenced by our health. If you are ill, your business suffers, and that’s where Align Wellness can be of service to you and your business. We help you repair the damage GES has done to your physical body, so you have the energy to prune back GES in your business.

I have found that the best way to treat the health aspects of Good Enough Syndrome is to learn …

• How, when and where to have your body's structure corrected.
• What to do to physically support your body correctly, especially when sitting for hours.
• How to easily have the right kinds of healthful water and food.
• What conditioning your body and mind need.

Handle these things in your physical body, and you’ll be well on your way to doing the same for your business as you eliminate GES from all aspects of your life.