There I was again, blaming my business. A client canceled their software contract and I was thinking, “They don’t like us, we’re not good enough.” Followed by, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Thoughts like this make you feel inadequate. Even worse they act like a magnet, dragging memories into your mind of other times you felt the same way.
The time you didn’t get selected as a speaker. The time your team missed a big deadline. The time your best employee quit.
What’s really happening is you’re wasting time in the present reliving negative past events.
Like all type-A business owners, you won’t stay there long. Pretty quickly you’ll switch your focus to taking action.
To look for another client, to refine your solution, to hire a business development expert.
But if those actions are fueled by feelings of inadequacy, you’ll sabotage your success.
Repetitive thoughts create a superhighway in our brain. The more often we think the same thoughts, the wider the highway, the easier it is to travel.
Over the course of our lives, this is how beliefs are created.
Patterns of thinking turn into beliefs that become the lens through which you look at life.
Then you start seeing more of what you expect to see.
I used to think the voice in my head that criticized my business 24×7 was helping me. That it was motivating me to be a better leader and grow my business.
But now I know the opposite is true.
What it really does is reinforce negative beliefs and widen that superhighway.
The other problem is the way it makes us feel. And how we feel affects what we DO.
It will slow you down because you’ll waste time with negative thinking, and take frantic (and ineffective) action filled with doubt.
Here’s a much better way. It’s a simple brain hack that I use all the time now.
When confronted with any negative situation, instead of allowing your mind to think whatever it wants, make it work for you by directing its focus.
Ask yourself these questions:
1. What can I learn?
2. What’s good about this?
3. How do I want to feel?
4. How would my best self act?
We’re in a relationship with our business, which includes the way we think, feel and act.
Skip the blame, negative emotions, and wasted time.
Prune those old neural networks to create room for new superhighways that work FOR you.
Do you feel trapped, exhausted and frustrated by your business? I grew my business by turning it in to an asset and making it work for me. You can too. Check out my book, Loving Your Business.
