In business, it’s always been a curiosity that a huge percentage of professionals, with basically all the answers available to them, simply choose not to do what’s proven, even if it’s easy. They prove “What’s easy to do is easy not to do.” Leaders say, set your vision, create your goals and develop a plan. We have learned to plan, to prospect, to manage time, to follow up, to breathe positivity. Yet until we internalize that teaching, we wish instead of plan, we procrastinate rather than act, we complain about others and the hand we’re dealt instead of optimizing the moment.
In personal life, we see the perfect parallel. The life lessons are everywhere. A new book with a new title and the old lessons becomes the new best seller. Yet without internalizing all the simple, elegant “easy” lessons, readers continue to make poor diet and exercise choices, to buy hope from infomercials and to allow personal pressure to mount from stinking thinking and negative perspective. And these ARE choices. Rather than copying the easy map for long-range success: setting the goals and mapping them out for family, social and personal time, many yet again review their lives feeling guilt and emptiness. They lack quality time spent with family, friends or their own personal pursuits. They long for yet don’t allocate time to exercise, read, pursue hobbies or just relax and refresh.
Pharmaceutical companies are having a heyday providing fixes for those who feel overwhelmed by business and life. Feel stressed? Pop a quick fix, feel-swell pill (usually spelled with an abundance of the letters V, X, Z, Q and Y). But the pill wears off and the cause of the emotional pain is still there. We are given a huge list of extraordinarily dangerous side effects (swelling! fatigue! dizziness! impotence! death! argh, etc) with each pharmaceutical ad before a perky, confident voice offers, “Ask your doctor if you are a candidate.” And enough run for that fix that the ad is profitable and the pharmaceutical stock is up. The lure of the quick fix, in spite of its danger, still causes droves to take the silver bullet and chance the side effect, rather than do the long term “easy” and plan the success and learn to deal with daily stress. Where did we get the idea that stress was bad? There is no music from a violin until the string is pulled or pushed. It is the stress on the string that makes the music. There is no great athlete without stress to sharpen skills, focus and motivation. Top sales professionals are aided by channeling their stresses for success. Stress is the pushback that creates strength. Therein lies the opportunity. Not every stress is Over-stress. Not every pain needs medication.
The survival of the fittest has always been nature’s way. Stir the pot every once in a while and watch what happens. The universe is impersonal. Challenges are created and those who are willing to step up usually rise to the top. Those who spend no time in whining and complaining, but focus on what needs to be done, follow intuition and instinct, create a vision and plan of action, stay committed and take creative risks focused on service are the ones who not only survive, but flourish. They come through every changing cycle with accomplishments, maturity, the best stories over dinner, and are in position to take advantage of the next bull market.
To invent the wheel again is not a wise use of time. Strategies and technologies on the face of business may make some cosmetic changes, but humanity hasn’t changed. The same basic approaches and personality traits still work and win.
Your business and life grow only when you do. For things to change and get better, you must change and get better first. To make your business worth working and your life worth living is all in your mind’s choice.
10 Jump Starting Ideas
1. Come from gratitude for who you are, the skills and knowledge you possess, for whom and what you have around you, for where you are and for all the overt and, so far uncovered opportunities.
2. Celebrate how far you’ve come. In the toughest of times we must diligently recognize our own accomplishments in the arena where the challenges exist. Have you been more open, disciplined, patient, assertive, calm, appreciative? How are you better now than before?
3. Ask yourself how you may serve. Providing enough to others of what they want will get you what you want.
4. Develop a playoff action that forces you out of your ego-centric predicament of “woe is me” thinking. Stop thinking about your problems by putting the emphasis on something you can DO, not just think about. The name of the book by Napoleon Hill is “Think and GROW Rich” not “Think Yourself Rich.”
5. Take baby steps. Small changes create huge victories. Do something positive which contributes to your vision of the future, every day. For many who only recognize what is negative or neutral, start acknowledging what you have done with no judgment as to the “size” of its significance. Build on that. Horses can win races only by a “nose” but we remember them as 1st Place.
6. Leave your business day on a high. Don’t quit the day out of frustration or ambivalence. Make the extra call. Prepare the report for tomorrow. Confirm tomorrow’s appointment. Get one more tidbit of information that will help, etc. Just one more effort. Go home to your family and friends with a feeling of accomplishment. They will feel it and reciprocate.
7. Spend quality time with your friends who are positive, supportive, up beat and moving forward. Choose your company carefully. And when with those who spread cynicism and gloom, who swear they are “just being realistic, not negative,” be vigilant to allow their negativity to be a “gift” for you – a reminder of how you could be. Allow their choices to remind you that you have other options and be inspired to choose possibility and solution thinking. A cynic is one who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. We are all, by our own choice, either part of the problem or part of the solution. We may not change the naysayers, but we can control ourselves. Choose the interesting and stimulating in yourself and in others. You don’t need to agree with others to share their passions and thoughtfulness and be enriched by them.
8. Read for your mind and soul. Sure, it’s important to keep up with world events to be able to make informed choices in voting and important issues. And also make time for non-fiction and fiction. Biographies, histories and motivational books inform and stretch your perspectives. Fiction stimulates imagination, improves vocabulary and is a great stress reliever. Work on your Self.
9. Take time off. Create the “good old days” as you will view them in just a few short years by planning to take time off every week to switch gears and refresh. Vacations don’t need to be expensive or long to be terrific and emotionally valuable.
10. Make daily time to relax/meditate/do self hypnosis/yoga/be still. You know it’s important. Just begin. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth starting. No big or little. No good or bad. Just DO.
This is obviously a short list of 10 jump starting ideas that can be done proactively to be less the victim and clearly in control of your life in these interesting times. What are the important issues for you? Write them down and bring them into your everyday life. Once the resistance of creating a new habit is behind you, the new behavior is yours to enjoy forever. It’s worth it. You’re worth it.
