I regularly share some of the most important shifts a business owner can have in their thinking.
Here’s three.
# 1 is the most important shift of all – the recognition of you as cause of every effect in your life.
Now that’s too bitter a pill for most people to swallow, which is why most people are either struggling, just getting by, or wallow in mediocrity at the wrong end of the cause and effect equation.
I don’t know what success looks like for you, but I do know this; unless you’re living it by means of your results, then whatever you’re doing week-in, week-out clearly isn’t conducive to your objective.
Take environment for example. That’s # 2.
I’ve been banging that drum long and hard, with bloody good reason.
Environment shapes, makes or breaks you.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you don’t find extraordinarily successful people hanging out in mainstream (now there’s a word that should disturb you) business networking groups such as BNI, Chamber of Commerce and Institute of Directors.
Why?
There’s no growth for successful people there.
Birds of a feather flock together.
No one thinks in these environments. Everyone’s doing what everyone else is doing and if you’re in any doubt of that easily observable reality, take a look at their results.
They’re all struggling or just getting by.
And just like pigs like to wallow in muck, they’re marinating in minds of similar ilk.
Let’s not shy away from the reality of life as a business owner.
If you intend to plod along the well-trodden path in sheep-like fashion, working harder and harder to live somewhere between the constant struggle of keeping your head above water to the “euphoria” of comfortable mediocrity, keep following the crowd.
You don’t have to think when you’re following the crowd.
And where do you find most of the crowd in entrepreneurial circles?
It’s not at networking events. It’s not in masterminds. And it’s certainly not in environments of growth-orientated, successful-people.
No, as contradictory as it might seem, you find most of the crowd alone.
Few paths are more lonesome than the entrepreneurial way.
You can be surrounded by a battery of employees and be the loneliest person on the planet.
And that’s what most people do. They try to do it alone, when no one achieves anything of significance alone. Take a look into every successful person, not one of them did it alone.
Walking the entrepreneurial way alone is the dumbest game of all.
Which brings me nicely to shift # 3.
Modelling.
Who are you modelling in your life?
Chances are you’ve not given it much thought.
Bingo.
There it is.
And you’re not alone. Most people don’t. Why would they? They’re not educated to understand any of this. Were you programmed to think this way?
I certainly wasn’t.
No one in my environment told me about the three shifts.
I had to discover this stuff for myself.
I had to unlearn.
I had to deliberately put myself in a different environment. I had to put myself among people who didn’t think and act in the same way I’d been programmed to think and act.
The point is, everyone’s modelling somebody. Like it or not, you are and if you want to know if the calibre of person you’re currently modelling is up to scratch, check out your results, they can’t lie.
You’re not alone. Most people aren’t thinking about who they’re modelling at all.
They’re not intentional about it.
It’s not a conscious act.
And so they model by default. Which in the vast majority of cases means they model the average of the people they’re surrounded by and most people are surrounded by people who are living very average lives.
Back to struggle and abject mediocrity again.
Living an average life of underachievement doesn’t mean a person lacks talent and isn’t capable of achieving great things in their life, it does mean, however, that at some level they’ve chosen not to.
Success is a choice. Wealth, in every area of life, is a choice.
What are your results telling you about the choice you’re making?
I don’t need to know the answer to that question, but you do.
Christian Simpson is the UK’s leading coach and mentor to business owners and entrepreneurs. For COMPLIMENTARY ACCESS to tried, tested and proven entrepreneurial success strategies, click here
