If you reach a plateau in your business or are not getting the results that you want, doing a review of where you are being delusional about your business, and/or where you might be lying to yourself, either consciously or subconsciously, can help you break through and achieve the success you are working toward.
In my corporate job we used to say, “the problem is never the problem” which means that the problem you feel is not the problem you actually have. If the only thing that you are measuring in your business is revenue, you’re going to have a hard time breaking through, because most of the time the problem you feel is not the problem you have.
Anything that happens in your business that is predictable and repeatable is a process. Whether you realize it or not, your business likely has processes in place already, even if you do not realize what they are. Whether it’s paying bills, posting your online content, preparing and sending a newsletter, invoicing clients, or doing the actual work that you do with clients, or any of the million other things you do in your business, you have a process for how that happens.
Waiting means not doing something and coming up with extremely logical reasons for doing so. It is sneaky because we have ourselves convinced we’re doing the right thing by not taking the new action, compared to procrastination which we know is going to cause us problems Waiting is harmful to us and our businesses because when we wait to solve problems, we are just prolonging our suffering.
I believe that you need two guiding lights, or sources of inspiration, in your business. First, you need a really clear goal of what you want to achieve. Second, you need to have a strategy that gets you to that goal. When you have a clear goal plus a strategy to achieve that goal, it services as a litmus test for all of the decisions that you have to make in your business.
Who do you need to be, or what do you need to believe, in order to make yourself successful at these efforts and not succumb to the feelings that lie to you? How do you avoid the imposter syndrome and the scarcity mindset? Where are you tied to your process instead of wanting to provide solutions? And finally, where are you holding onto something so tightly that you are not seeing the opportunities in front of you, so that you are being held back instead of propelled forward?
When it comes to actually putting your plan into place, the idea of who you need to be becomes just as important – if not more important – than what you need to do. Because, if you cannot actually implement the plan, it’s just a to-do list of things you wish you’d done. Fortunately, there are things that you can work on in order to develop the traits you need to create a thriving, successful business.
If being a business owner equals being the Chief Decision Maker, then your success is directly tied to your ability to both make and then act on those decisions. Fortunately, there are ways to improve decision making in your business so you are proactive instead of reactive and your decisions lead to successful growth.
Inspired action, plus positive expectations, equals inevitable results. I tell myself this all the time. It’s written on post-it notes all over my house. So, be aware of how you feel physically and how you feel emotionally when you are making all of the decisions for your business. Are you making them out of inspiration? Or are you making decisions out of fear and scarcity? Because decision making out of fear and scarcity is what leads you astray.
It is not easy to call ourselves out on things we know will help us, but that we are actively avoiding doing. Fortunately, there are ways to break through the fears and the stories that we tell ourselves that stop us, so that we can do the things and take the steps that we know will make a huge difference.
