New Year Resolutions for your Midwife Business

So much has happened in 2019. This years top New Year resolutions were exercising, losing weight, save money, get healthier in general, and personal development. All of these personal goals can be applied to midwifery care and business success and failures.

Exercising can help manage stress during a busy work day. Exercise is one things most successful people do everyday. You’ll benefit from schedules and goals. If you’re not already setting schedules for yourself, working out is a great way to build that habit. Set time aside and give yourself goals you’re actively working towards, whether it’s losing weight or running a certain distance. Practicing discipline as you workout and seeing results will help you carry that into your midwifery practice, creating professional checkpoints to work towards.

Losing weight (even just a little bit) will really help your back with bending for a water birth and fighting an aging body. Most midwives really want to catch babies until their bodies don’t allow them to anymore. Chronic back pain is common with care providers, especially when obesity is added into the mix. Endurance comes from not having additional weight to carry around. I pick up my baby and always think what thirty additional pounds quickly added to my body feels like. When we are gradually add on the weight, it isn’t so noticeable. Our body does feel the strain and hurting from it. Ankles and knees crack and are sluggish to move in morning from extra, unnecessary pounds being present.

We, as midwives, promote healthy living and can do far more promoting healthy habits in ourselves that patients see versus preaching educational handouts about weight loss. Having a long history of obesity, it is very difficult to have patient talks about weight when I know I wasn’t honestly following my own advise. Your most valuable asset is time and health. NO matter how much money you make, it doesn’t matter when time is shortened from hypertension, diabetes, or cancer. Cherish your body like a temple, it is the only one we get in this life!

Saving money is important with personal and business goals. The best way to save money is NOT to scrimp on life and not living to your fullest. It is learning taxes and stopping to pay unnecessary taxes to the government legally through business ownership and tax write offs. Mileage, home office expenses, phone use, office and birth supplies, food for meetings, and marketing materials should be business expenses versus using hard earned income from a job. Increase your knowledge and value will inevitably increase your personal income stream. More money flows to people that increase more value to their community. Supply and demands are powerful concepts to master.

One of the most powerful quotes I love is from Warren Buffet, “The most important investment anyone can make is right between their eyes.” There is so much truth in this statement. You can have everything taken from you and still be very successful. You can go bankrupt and be homeless, but no one can take away your knowledge and skills. When an entrepreneur starts a business and it fails, another business model is started from the knowledge of mistakes from last business.

Each time a person starts another business venture, it is more successful than last one from the knowledge. Adding training, credentials, knowledge to your tool chest will make your skill set more desirable to the masses. Continue reading, learning, and never stop learning!

Last and most important goal is personal development. Spend some time learning about your inner self and how to debunk these mysterious subconscious thoughts that determine how you perceive yourself. The more insecure you are on the inside, the less likely a person is to be successful. The less time devoted to self care, meditation, exercise, leadership training, and psychology, the less outer change will happen. Life will continue day after day just the way it was with no attempt to change your future.

Everyone has goals and rarely live their ultimate potential. Don’t be a mediocre midwife. Do you have a massive birth center franchise vision for your area to serve more women? DO IT!!! Do you have a mission to start a non-profit that will house pregnant women that just left their abusive husbands to protect their family? DO IT!!! Do you have a dream to leave the hospital midwifery practice and start your own home birth practice? DO IT!!!

Take 2020 and make it your year. Start a vision board, make a business plan, create short term and long term goals with specific steps on how they will all be accomplished. Be your ultimate midwife and women! Take each day to make little habit changes that will become cascading forces with time. I have personally seen what compounding effects of personal development can have on personal and professional life goals. Break the glass ceiling we have all placed on our own potentials! M 2020 YOUR YEAR!