Imagine you are a CEO, then you ask yourself a question: how would you manage your life with the following conditions of energy, time, and money that you saved for? Person A would respond, “If there are any problems that arise, I’ll just immediately get my assistant and team to solve them together.” However, their competitor (known as Person B) across the street in downtown Vancouver would respond to this question, “Let me check up with my team for any situations, and if there are, then we might as well plan ahead to stay prepared.”
From this passage, we can tell both have different behaviours in how they think and react to potential arising conflicts. Yet, Person B is acting with a proactive approach in their business by taking accountability, being organized, preparing with wiser decisions, and growing steadily. Therefore, this is an example that people can apply to their personal lives, as we can often feel overwhelmed with balancing school, work, and personal life without structure. As a result, we can respond to problems with high sensitivity of feelings, stress, and unproductivity, which neglectfully impacts the way we live and take control of our life. Therefore, it’s essential to treat your self-growth and mental wellness with an entrepreneurial mindset, using SMART goals and minimalistic financial systems to navigate your path to success
The CEO Mindset — You’re in Charge of Your Growth
For several years, in my economics class (which I’m often passionate about), the concept of scarcity—limited resources that we have with unlimited desires we often crave—stood out to me. We can be guilty of actions like impulse spending on our favourite snack, even when it isn’t needed currently to focus on studying. Nevertheless, we can become greedier with our unlimited desires, which could potentially bring satisfaction to our life.
For example, you might buy more of your favourite snack that is on discount in the supermarket near your study spot. However, it’s important to notice that, as ordinary people, we don’t need to act on every urge to buy, as that’s usually how we are wired. Instead, you can become the CEO of yourself by investing and allocating your limited resources (time, energy, money) to work on something else that can compound within your existing skills in your domain to achieve greater outcomes. This will bring you one more step toward success in your journey.
For example, planning your week like a mini business schedule, where you can allocate time for “departments” (study, rest, finances), is crucial. In my personal space, I set timed blocks on my calendar to create structure in my day and bring clarity to my mind when delegating urgent tasks. Often, many CEOs I come across fill up their spare time by investing in assets rather than consuming their unlimited desires. The reason their reflectivity is so quick and targeted is simply because they understand that their time in the day is limited due to tasks that keep multiplying from communicating with their assistant (maybe it’s just a funny joke!).
According to Benjamin Franklin (1748), “time is money” (p. 1), which emphasizes the economic opportunity cost of time—in this case, the next best alternative you sacrificed. Young entrepreneurs are taught that if you aren’t punctual and diligent in holding yourself accountable, then losing time is basically losing money. Additionally, it can lead to losing trust in yourself and from the customers you serve when you don’t use your time wisely.
For instance, doom-scrolling often happens when we don’t allocate our time in our schedule and when we are stressed about a task we would rather not do. The five minutes spent on social media to de-stress can also lead to an hour of distraction that you didn’t realize you lost. How much existing knowledge are you now in debt from losing brain cells while learning about other people’s lives instead of your own? This brings more self-awareness of the economic concept of scarcity and how business owners are taught to adapt to this situation.
SMART Goals for Everyday Life
Do you remember a goal-setting framework that you learned in elementary school? Generally, it was used to build off your skills from improvements that your teacher could see when publishing and writing your report card for your parents. Indeed, the framework of SMART goals is revolutionary and common, and you should keep using it because it’s timeless. It consists of the following elements:
- Specific: What role are you willing to take to achieve your goal? Answer the common “W”s, such as what, who, where, which, and why, to keep you focused (University of California, 2016).
- Measurable: What type of data (e.g., quantitative or qualitative) will motivate you on your progress in the journey (University of California, 2016)? How will you track it, and what do those results imply?
- Your desired results include why this goal is important and what success might look like as a significant milestone of performance planning.
- Achievable: This focuses on how much the goal matters to you and what steps you can take to realistically achieve it, including learning new skills or adjusting your mindset.
- Relevant: How does it relate to your goal that you want to reach?
- For example, if a business goal is to launch a new program/service and your team is working on the task, but the other division is not prioritizing that team’s project. It could mean that the goal is not relevant to get done first (University of California, 2016).
- Time-bound: Set your goals with a time that’s comparable to what you can do. When there’s time urgency, it also alerts you to act quicker on your goal instead of waiting for it to happen with minimal work completed (University of California, 2016).
For example, let’s say Julia has a major habit of doom-scrolling and as a ripple effect, couldn’t get her math homework done because it is daunting and boring. However, if she had set a SMART goal to reduce scrolling on TikTok by studying for 25 minutes first, then taking a 5-minute break and repeating the cycle, it showcases that she can get distracted for only a limited time before getting back to work. This is known as the Pomodoro timer technique, while aligning with the framework that we had set.
Just like business KPIs (key performance indicators) that follow the SMART framework, they measure the success happening through the company, department, or individual in achieving key business objectives (Twin, 2025). They are significant metrics to move forward with the company strategy and make better decisions (Twin, 2025). For example, how KPIs function varies depending on different departments. There are two types of KPIs:
- High-level KPIs: Target the total performance of the business, such as net profit and market share (Twin, 2025).
- Low-level KPIs: Target the processes in the departments and everyone’s activities, such as time it takes to respond to a call and the percentage of users who click on the website, resulting in a sale (Twin, 2025).
Therefore, KPIs are crucial for managers to evaluate and monitor performance, find areas for further improvement, and efficiently communicate their business goals (Twin, 2025). Overall, being able to understand how the business operates while setting SMART goals, especially using KPIs, brings more intention toward applying the concept in our daily life. It also highlights how specific, measurable goals help to reduce stress and give clarity. Furthermore, it can make us more motivated and hardworking to achieve them, setting up our path to personal success.
Building Your Financial System
Most businesses manage their finances by being able to report their performance and financial positions. The three main financial statements include:
- The income statement indicates the company’s financial performance over a specific duration of time, such as a year or a quarter, by determining their profit and loss (Godfrey, 2023).
- The balance sheet follows the basic accounting equation of assets = liabilities + shareholder equity. It highlights how much the company owns and owes at a single point in time, such as the last day of the year (Godfrey, 2023).
- The cash flow statement analyzes the movement of cash flowing in and out of the business over a duration of time to determine how well the company can pay its bills (Godfrey, 2023).
Together, this forms detailed data that investors and stakeholders use to determine the company’s performance and outlook (Godfrey, 2023).
However, another financial statement method is using zero-based budgeting (ZBB). This is where each department sets their budget to zero, and once money is given by their boss, they can operate and organize where each spending should go for each category of their department (Google, 2024). This helps to reduce extra purchases while also making improvements to drive business success forward. Moreover, it represents the model of spending where every dollar (unit of energy) has its purpose, allowing them to justify their decision on spending rather than relying on last year’s budget (Google, 2024).
By applying this business concept to our personal life, we can save more money with satisfaction and reduce impulse spending by tracking our income and expenses, leaving extra money floating around at the end of the planning cycle (Google, 2024). Another example is that businesses can allocate their funds to invest in employee well-being, such as technological investments for maximizing productivity, health plans, and ensuring a professional workspace that meets their standards (Google, 2024). In our personal ZBB, we can apply this example to allocate our budget into wellness (self-care, gym) to further invest in ourselves, helping us become a better version of ourselves that we are grateful for.
Monthly Check-ins — Your Personal “Performance Review”
So, ask yourself: how’s your mental and financial health? If you are unsure or stressed because you don’t have enough knowledge, are afraid to be judged, or your life is a complete mess due to busy schedules or other personal problems, then just letting you know. There’s no rush or worry, since you are not alone! Instead, what most CEOs recommend is journaling because that helps to sort out their thoughts and clarify their intentions to continue with their business vision (Dafney et al., 2024). A case study from Dafney et al. (2024) highlights a sales employee who wrote her questions down on a notepad rather than just carrying them in her mind. This helped to increase curiosity and allowed her to ask clearer questions during a meeting. Overall, viewing our introspection and understanding how it can increase our self-consciousness and social intelligence are vital critical thinking skills for most successful leaders (Dafney et al., 2024).
In my daily life, journaling is a good skill for me to grasp for teaching life lessons and releasing my emotions, but I don’t do it every day because of lack of time with my busy schedule. Instead, I treat it like quarterly reports, where it provides me a snapshot of my current spendings (experiences or recorded thoughts), and I do it sometime in the week or more, depending on my stress levels.
For the business itself, this is crucial to evaluate the whole company’s performance and provide key relevant details that managers should be aware of and understand about the business direction (James, 2021). However, this is tracked over a 3-month period to keep comprehensive data (James, 2021). Except, journaling isn’t used for this!
To start a reflection, here are the following steps:
- Ask open-ended questions through the common “W”s and “how” (Dafney et al., 2024).
- Apply yourself into three reflective stages of what, so what, and now what to reflect on experiences, challenges, and future implementations (Dafney et al., 2024). This framework helps to activate the limbic brain (responsible for emotional and behavioural responses), while the frontal case (responsible for system 2-like judgment and decision-making) is motivated to get the results (Dafney et al., 2024).
Though, the most important concept to understand is that your goals are tied to flexibility and resilience, so feel free to adjust and re-visit your goals often to ensure you are updated throughout!
Why This Improves Mental Health
In conclusion, when a business has a structure in their team to do cross-collaboration, it leads to a greater sense of control. This helps to reduce uncertainty and anxiety, and we can tailor it to our life as well. Nothing stops us from handling our life as a business because their main objective is to represent their personal brand through high-quality work and professionalism. Within ourselves, creating a personal brand to represent our image, especially to our social network, is crucial. Taking control of our life through positive mental wellness leads us to hold our chin high and walk with confidence. As we are stable and consistent with the existing skills we have, by building off our SMART goals, we carry sustainable growth in personal and professional development to promote future opportunities while being consciously aware of ourselves through journaling. Instead, we can create an example to represent, similar to many businesses in the downtown Vancouver, with the core mindset of person B.
If businesses can have a clear strategy, challenge themselves with consistency, and maintain balance, then why not we become like them? Start being the CEO of your well-being.
References
“Advice to a Young Tradesman” (1748).
Dafney, N., McGowan, P., Rogers, B., & Eastman, C. A. (2024). Should journalling matter to organizational leaders? In Transformational Sales Leadership (1st ed., pp. 92–106). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003330424-6
Godfrey, Grant. “What Are Financial Statements.” BDC.ca, 2023, www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/entrepreneur-toolkit/templates-business-guides/glossary/financial-statements.
Google. (2024). Gemini [Large language model]. https://gemini.google.com/
James, Margaret. “Quarterly Report.” Investopedia, 28 May 2021, www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/122214/what-quarterly-report.asp.
Twin, Alexandra. “KPIs: What Are Key Performance Indicators? Types and Examples.” Investopedia, 15 June 2025, www.investopedia.com/terms/k/kpi.asp.
University of California. SMART Goals: A How to Guide. University of California, 2016.
Note: The Free Your Mind Mental Health Society is an independent youth-led organization. The contents of this blog are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. In the event of a medical emergency, please call your doctor or 911 or other local emergency numbers immediately.
