What happens when you set a big goal?

You feel excited at first.

But then you start to feel uncomfortable.

You worry you might fail.

When the pressure mounts, you feel the urge to “buffer” to escape feelings of doubt and overwhelm.

You’ll eat the snack or drink the wine or buy another thing you don’t need.

You tell yourself you deserve it.

Meanwhile, you keep striving toward your goal. As the stakes get higher you resort to another kind of buffering.

Overmanaging your team.

You tell yourself it’s necessary. You think you’re safer when you’re in control of everything.

But it doesn’t work. The doubt is still there.

Plus overmanaging creates collateral damage. People don’t like being controlled.

There’s a better way. Once you get this skill, there’s nothing you can’t create.

Let’s say you want to double your business.

You know you need to increase sales but that means hiring salespeople or creating funnels and spending money and time.

Immediately doubt and resistance will surface.

So instead of hiring the salespeople or creating a funnel strategy, you’ll start to buffer.

You won’t realize you’re doing it, because it’s disguised as “work.”

Suddenly it’s critical to check what everyone else is doing. Did Kim finish that report? Did John collect those outstanding invoices? Did Emily meet the project deadline?

You urgently feel the need to find a good book on hiring but along the way you buy three other things you don’t need plus two more books you don’t have time to read.

At that very moment you realize you must register for that conference in San Diego and two hours later you’re deflated after reading the speaker profiles of your competitors.

Not only have you done nothing to increase sales but you’ve reinforced the habit of buffering to escape your feelings.

You’ve widened your neural pathways for escape. So the next time you want to do something new, it’s easier than ever to slip into the groove of buffering.

When you feel the urge to buffer, do this instead:

Nothing.

Give yourself the choice to either work on the goal with purpose and focus or just sit still and stare at a blank piece of paper. Those are your choices.

You work on the goal or you stare at the blank piece of paper.

You do not work on something related to the goal or something similar to the goal or something else completely that suddenly seems urgent.

You work on the goal or you stare at the blank piece of paper.

Entrepreneurs like to take action. It won’t be long before you start working on the goal.

Prune your buffering neural pathways and you’ll be astounded at what you can achieve.

Give your brain a job to do and make it work FOR you.