Symptoms of Depression: Your Consulting Business Is Sick



Today we are going to talk about business codependency. I'm sure you've never heard of this topic before, so I'm introducing it to you today. When you achieve a goal you set for yourself it provides a great feeling of accomplishment. Your ability to meet goals is what has created your current success in business. However, as you accomplish more and more individual achievements in your business you become addicted to the high. You need to keep doing things to feel successful in your business and your business needs you to keep accomplishing things in order for it to exist. This is actually a picture of codependence.

What I believe. I believe that you are in a codependent relationship with your business.

Why I believe it. Codependent is defined as a relationship in which one person is physically or psychologically addicted to another person, as to alcohol or gambling, and the other person is psychologically dependent on the first in an unhealthy way. In other words, you are psychologically dependent on something and it is also psychologically dependent on you. The two of you need each other to exist. I believe that's true with you and your business.

You are codependent. You are psychologically, mentally, attached to your business. When you work on your business, you feel like you're doing something that matters. For this reason, it feels better to work on your business than it does to work on other things. You are addicted to your business because you need it to feel useful. Your business is addicted to you because it needs you to function. As a matter of fact, if you don't work in your business every day, your business dies. A much healthier approach is to appreciate that you and your business are two separate entities. You are a human and your business is not. You created your business and you should have control over it. You should be giving your business instructions on what to do.

Relevance to you. One of the primary roles of your business is to support your lifestyle. The question is, are you living your best lifestyle right now? How should your business work so that you can live the way you intend to live? You created your business because you wanted to live a certain way and your business should help you execute that picture. The fact that you built your business to require your intense daily effort is inappropriate.

Instead, you should be building your business in a way that requires less and less of you as time goes on. This transition is a process and you won't do it all at once. Our job is to help you all along the way. On the other side of this transformation, there's a much healthier relationship between you and your business. As a matter of fact, your business gets more done because more people are able to work in it and work on it. You can also get more done because you aren't tied to the solo relationship of working in your business. It's a better deal for both you and your business.

Being passionate about what you do is a wonderful thing and many times it is vital to the success of your business in its early stages. However, this passion has the potential to turn into an addiction for both you and your business. You crafted your business and you have the power to give it a life of its own, in order for it to continue to grow without you being present at all times.