Is Your Business Still Flat During This Economic Recovery?

Bad Habits Can Leave You Out In The Cold

Habits are a nasty thing to get hooked on.  Most of my habits are bad ones.  Once I get hooked on them I produce a lot of unwanted results.  I keep on producing those little unwanted results because my habits remain in force.  My habits drive me to remain on track to keep doing what I have always been doing.  Hence, whatever the results are that come from my business models becomes the environment of how my business produces its life.  It lives with the results of my habits.  My habits run the show.

Let's face it.  Our bad habits dominate our results.  They dictate what we will or will not receive from our business efforts.  It is typically no simpler than that.  Our habits rule our results.  They dominate the pattern of results we receive.

How do we modify our habits?  What kinds of things must we do to make the right kinds of adjustments in our business leadership style to produce better results?  Where can we tweak the things we are doing wrong?

This is where most business owners find themselves operating.  They get trapped by their own minds doing their own things in their own ways.  They have developed these routine patterns that have become their trusted habits for how they prefer to lead the businesses they own.  They become settled in with their habits as they are.  They therefore, in turn, remain bound by those unfriendly results.  The bad results their bad habits produce.  We protect them with all of our heart.

When I got up this morning, I did exactly the same routine I did yesterday morning.  Did you know that?  I moved my patterns in essentially the very same ways I moved them the day before.  I did my habits.  I did them just the same as you did yours.  Oh yes, once in a while I change it up.  That gives me some false sense of control.  I might make my coffee after I start my blog work.  Usually I make my coffee before I start writing on my blog.  I switch it up once in awhile so I can give myself the illusion that I am still in control.  The truth remains, I am not.

Our habits drive our controls.  They dominate how we move, how we think and how we respond.  Habits clearly control what, when, where and how we move in our business worlds.  Our habits become our boss.  They may not actually clock in and physically show up to work each day but they sure know how to climb into the mind and place their quiet little hands onto the control grips of the steering wheel.  Trust me, your habits drive your ship.  All we do is work overtime on making sure we believe that is not true.

How do we combat this quiet little flaw?  How do we make sure our habits remain on the up and up?  How do we make sure we are not quietly controlled by the little things that hinder our success patterns?  How do we remain honest with this little subject?

Page two.

Bad Habits Can Leave You Out In The Cold

I have been blessed to acquire some business mentors in the later part of my business career.  One thing I can assure anyone who is considering the idea of taking on a business mentor, they will crush your patterns of thought somewhere along the line.  It is inevitable.  Get used to it.  It is part of the deal.

Another thing I can promise about what will be noticed when a business mentor comes into your life is that your mentor comes to your business environment with different ideas.  That mentor will see things hugely different than how you see them.  In fact, most of the time when this happens we tend to dismiss their ideas.  We wash them aside because we know more than they know about our business models.  So we disqualify their ideas and brush them off as inoculate duds.  They seem to lack the specific knowledge about the field of trade we own and as a result they have not had enough time to acquire our higher knowledge of our specific trade.  That's what we see.  That's usually how we respond.

Guess what?  This is exactly how we protect the bad habits we have acquired.  We know more than they.  We also do not desire to have them know more than us.  Consequently, we rule out their new ideas.  We kill trying something else out so we can remain steadfast in doing what we know and recognize.  We protect this pattern of business leadership because we do not like the uncomfortable feeling of the unknown.  This happens even when our production of habits is bad enough to destroy our ability to perform successfully.  As unsuccessful as our habits may have become we protect them with all of our natural might.  That is how they have become our habits.  We protect them.

In order to change where we need to change we must first identify what we are protecting.  If we are protecting production losses, that is one thing.  Yet if we are protecting a weakened self image, that is altogether another thing.  When it comes to production numbers versus our self image...image will win every time.  That is the primary reason why we protect bad habits so fiercely.  We are too busy struggling with our inner-self.  Our pride, our ego or our self-image has been working for a very long time on building a slant towards the side where our bad habits live.  This is how we quietly keep our bad habits in control.  Our self image has its way.

In a business, the numbers are key.  My self image has nothing to do with my daily deposits into my checking account.  Those deposits come from my business activities, not from my fluctuating soul.  This is a serious place where self taught business owners find their bad habits being protected.  The war comes from within.  Production is not the driving force, it is the result of what is happening within the rest of the mind and drive.  Small business owners use internal forces to help them make the business decisions they govern.  This is how they tick normally.  Rarely do they combine useful production indicators, relevant data trends and accurate numbers as their determining factors when changes are forced to be faced.  Instead, many of their most difficult decisions are governed by how they feel about what to do.  For example, I hate to terminate a friend.  In fact, I have been known to give that friend more leeway on wrong performances than many others who I do not particularly like.  The numbers reveal one option while the feelings produce another.  This balance is where most business owners get lost.  They rely on bad habits to drive their most crucial business decisions.  I am guilty of performing this way.

If your business is remaining flat during this economic recovery, something tells me you are not changing where you need to change.  Something tells me the patterns you protect that are quietly disguised in your business model are finding enough evidence to keep your habits traveling on the wrong path.  The unwillingness to change is dominating your future loss.  Your growth will remain limited.  Your production will not produce what it should and could be producing.  The results remain flat.  The protection will increase and the production will suffer.

I have been able to exist in business for a very long time while producing under-par results.  I suspect many of you have proven this to be the same with your leadership.  However, if you plan to become very big in your success models, killing bad habits is an essential move.  Falling out of love with those things you protect is the first step that must occur.  Get used to modifying what you are quietly protecting.  Try different things, examine new ideas and get outside help.  You might be surprised at how much your business can truly produce.

Until next time...