If I haven’t already mentioned it, allow me to tell you that I’m a 5-planet Virgo, a 1 on the Enneagram. And if that suggests nothing to you, it adds up to a controlling, detail-obsessed, type-A, overworking perfectionist.

It’s taken years of non secular practice, healing and sheer cussedness, but all of that has calmed down incredibly. Turns out that a core fear, exacerbated by some post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, were running the show.

Stop. Listen? Feel that hum? Hear that whine?

That is the agonizingly unpleasant pressure that I, and unhappily most entrepreneurs, feel, driving us to get as much done as feasible in every moment.

Barely is it a nice thing. Often it doesn't really work. I have been seeing it crop up in our customers recently, and I thought I would make you think of 5 places to stop letting the hum and whine drive you.

1. Your Initial Promotional Message

Your sales message, what some call the “elevator speech” and what we call your “One Motivating Sentence”, gets plenty of responsibility dumped on it. Folk pin all their hopes and expectancies on what's really just a sentence or two. Give it some space.

Your primary marketing message shouldn't try to move somebody from a total stranger into a raving fan customer in one sentence. Nor does it have to provide an explanation for the full range of all your services. Neither is it responsible to be the deepest expression of your heart.

It’s the first time someone hears about you. Don't be so intense or overwhelming. Take it down a nick. It’s O.K, there is time for all that other stuff later . Especially if you do not freak people out with that first sentence.

2. Your Offer

In piecing together an offer, you want to craft it punctiliously, with attention paid to what’s essentially possible in your clients.

Your offer should not expect folks to drop everything else in their lives so that they can complete 20-40 hours of assignments you give them. Your offer should not expect people to duplicate the learning and integration that you yourself have done over the last 20 years. Your offer does not have to get your customer to the moon and home again.

3. Your Income Goals

Whatever you are pushing now, it doesn’t need to meet your income needs from now until perpetuity. Yes, I know you want additional cash. Still, you don't need it all at once.

Backing off your aspiration/survival fear 1 or 2 notches means that you don’t need to attempt to earn your whole year’s revenue goal in the following offer. Count up what you truly need, and it could be a bit less than you were imagining.

One of my clients was worried about her business being able to provide for her. During the process of our conversation it became obvious how much she valued a simpler life over a giant number, and her income goal abruptly felt truly reachable, particularly if she gave herself one or two years to get there.

4. Your Conferences

Regardless of whether you're solo, you have meetings. If they are just with yourself, you may not call them meetings. Or, you may have found yourself with an admin assistant, or other team members, and you do have conferences.

The disposition is to cram all things into every single meeting. It becomes a rushed, upsetting slide through a tangled mess of little picayune details and gigantic picture philosophical questions. It is a mess, and it doesn’t need to be that way.

Have another meeting. And another. Deal with tiny details in one meeting. Wrestle with a huge philosophical, foundational issue (only 1, not 3 or 4) in another meeting. Meetings can be enjoyable and productive if you slow down and don?t try to do too much in every single one of them.

5. Your Down Time

The first 4 years of parenting twins left my wife and I with valuable little time to ourselves. When we probably did get it, there had been a babysitter waiting at home, and a long dry spell on either side of it, it looked.

Therefore pressure’s on for the “perfect” date night. Or the perfect afternoon off. Boy, does not that sound like fun? Not.

Allow yourself to have regular enough down time so that each time doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be tricky to identify what is really going to nourish you during down time. Watching a video? Reading a book? Going for a walk? Meeting a pal? Getting an enjoyable errand done?

Take down time breaks continually. That gives you the freedom to be imperfect everytime. You can experiment, be frolicsome, have fun, discover what actually nourishes you.

Compassion, Anyone?

I’ve been as guilty as anyone of pushing much too hard in all 5 of these areas, and more. It has been such a journey for me to learn that irrespective of how many times folk say baby steps that it’s literally true.

And yet, when you do take some time to slow down, you'll be surprised at how much more delightful and quickly your business can go on. My challenge to you is to cut down on one of those areas straight away and see what you notice.

Mark Silver is a spiritual marketing teacher who works 1 holistic and alternative enterprises to help them grow without losing their heart. Join his widely commended newsletter on religious business practices