The Simplify Your Why Manifesto For Creative Entrepreneurs

“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

— Albert Einstein

Are you ready to escape the spiral of constant busyness, refocus your attention, and get more done in less time without sacrificing what matters most to you? 

Here's the problem every creative entrepreneur runs into at some point.

You started a business because you want to be in charge of your life. You found something you're passionate about that makes you feel alive. You're doing something you're proud of. You know your business will take off, but it's taking longer than you thought it would. You're starting to feel lost in the day-to-day.

You're one person, so there's only so much you can do. But how do you know if you're working on what's most important? You close your eyes at night and your mind continues to race over the day, tomorrow and the uncertain future. It feels like it occupies your every waking moment. You notice it taking away from your ability to be present with your friends and family. You feel guilty for stepping away from the business for any amount of time, and question whether you're taking it seriously enough. It's scary to think it might not work. You worry that you won't have the energy or desire to keep going if something doesn't change.

Here's what most creative entrepreneurs do to fix the problem.

If you're like most creative entrepreneurs, you've really tried to get a handle on your day. You have a to-do list longer than a six-year-old’s wish list to Santa. You've tried a bazillion different productivity planners, worksheets and "fool-proof" templates. You've read all the best books on productivity, taken countless online workshops (starting and stalling on more than you might care to admit), even joined a mastermind for support, but it left you feeling like it was just another commitment you don't have time for. You've even had some success with a few of the things you've tried. But it's short-lived because it ends up feeling like more work than it's worth. Heck, you've even tried to ignore the feelings of overwhelm with the hopes it would just disappear or somehow get better.

Here's why that solution doesn't work (and why it's not your fault)

Everyone has probably been telling you that you need to do a better job of managing your time. But here's the thing. Have you had the experience of working on a task when you’re exhausted, bored, or distracted and it takes hours to complete (or doesn’t get done at all)? Yet you zipped through that same task in thirty minutes the week before?

The reason time management doesn't work is because you can't move from point A to point B when you're running on an empty tank. Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of successful creatives. The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to you are not.

For an entrepreneur, your creativity, your efficiency and how you generate and recover energy starts with how you design your life. It's going to be the difference between whether you're successful, or whether you're spinning your wheels.

It makes a real difference in your income and your success if you can consistently show up physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose that's important to you and those you help.

If you're going to take on managing your energy effectively so that you can be successful, these are the five principles that I recommend you take on.

1. Precision Comes From Effective Decisions. As a creative entrepreneur, you make dozens of decisions each day. Each decision either moves you forward or fills your time with tasks that are unnecessary or energy-sapping. When you have an effective way to make decisions based on what’s truly important to you, you flow through your day by pursuing what you value and making progress towards what you truly desire.

2. Cultivate Consistency In Your Daily Rituals. When you have no plan for your day, it's easy to lose focus and get lost in a spiral of constant busyness. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine and habits. An energetic life emerges from daily, continuous improvements in the areas that matter most. The creative entrepreneurs that can do the right things, more consistently, are more likely to achieve success over the long-term. Your rituals replenish the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy that allows you to fully show up.

3. Design Your Strategy To Propel You Forward With Clarity. When you have a clear sense of who you want to be, how you want to interact with others, what you want, and what will bring you the greatest meaning, you can't help but feel a new sense of vital energy and confidence from knowing where to focus your energies and how to serve most effectively. When you design a routine with a reliable set of practices for unleashing your greatest abilities, it gives you a strategy built into your day that drives success.

4. Simplify To Amplify. By starting with the things you value most, then working backwards to ask whether a given decision, routine, or strategy performs more harm than good, you're given an opportunity to take a proactive approach to prune things that are unnecessary. Because it's so simple, there are no distractions. This space for reflection and clarity provides a clearness that lets you see what's achievable is not always what's important in respect to your values.

5. Reflection Is The Stem Of Progression. The usual way to avoid being taken by surprise by something is to be consciously aware of it. If you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at any situation. When you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, you're operating on your default setting. You become blind to the possibilities that allow you to realign your thoughts and behaviours with the ones that provide growth, well-being, and fulfillment as you work towards your goals. You may want to take on the idea that more important than a set of instructions is an effective mental operating system to make decisions, because for an entrepreneur, the terrain keeps changing, and after a few steps maps rarely make sense.

Think of Simplify Your Why as a lifestyle-design blueprint. It’s a working plan for taking your life from where you are now to where you really want to be: Leading a happy, healthy, purpose-driven life and business.

Since 2012, Chris Wilson has helped hundreds of people get out of their own way and lead lives of fulfillment. Chris is a cognitive-based therapy expert with 500+ hours of direct facilitation with one of Canada's leading mental health programs. He proudly served as a life coach with a Canada-wide initiative that helped increase high school graduation rates by an average of 75% for youth in low-income communities.

Chris completed an intensive year-long coaching program (with 320+ hours of education) to become a dual-certified coach and energy leadership master practitioner. Chris dove head first into specializing in small business and entrepreneurship at the Institute For Professional Excellence In Coaching. It quickly became a passion and has guided his life as a purpose-driven entrepreneur. He has continued to further hone his skills by graduating from Seth Godin's The Marketing Seminar and The Podcasting Fellowship.

He's a voracious reader, podcast junkie and exercise enthusiast. And he's still surprised by somehow managing to sit 160+ hours in silence with the meditation app Headspace. Chris struggled with mental health for most of his life before deciding to get back to simplicity and design a life he didn't need to escape from. He saw that nothing else matters without a healthy mind. Ideas, creativity, and a fulfilling life all come from a beautiful mental state. He learned from experience that the decision to live in a beautiful state is yours alone to make. This led to his guiding principle for life and business. The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life, you claim the power to change anything in your life. That said, Chris will abandon all routines if it means spending time with family, walking his plump little pug Chugs or going on an adventure with his partner Lindsey (which often means devouring delicious food).

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