It’s a lot easier to find excuses then it is to find reasons for business success or failure. It is so easy to throw up your hands when things don’t go your own way. What is hard is taking failure and turning it into a way forward. To put things into context, I came across some interesting “failures” in history that inspired this article:
- Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime.
- Winston Churchill lost every election until becoming prime minister at age 62.
- Henry Ford went bankrupt five times.
- Albert Einstein was a terrible student and was expelled from school.
- Sigmund Freud was booed from a stage.
Great ideas, strong efforts and Intelligence mean nothing without the guts, passion, and tenacity necessary to make your dream a reality. But often, people fall back on excuses and give up on trying to reach their goals. Most of us have dreams – and many of us have big ones – but few of us see them through. Here are key ways to jump off the excuse train and forge the path to your goals.
Avoid blaming others
One way to try to excuse success is to blame others for your shortcomings. Such small-minded business owners know this and look to deflect fault away from their own deficiencies. That’s why they’re so cranky and eager to point out others’ mistakes. They hope that by causing others to feel inadequate, everyone will forget how off the mark their own performance is. Don’t blame anyone, for any reason, ever. It’s a bad habit.
Stop wasting time
Not everything needs to be done in place of sleep. Whether you work for yourself or a boss, you owe yourself or your employer solid time. You can’t cut that out. You can, however, cut out television time, meetings, and anything else that gets in the way of achieving your goals. Replace entertainment with activity toward your goal. Filter through the noise and the time wasters.
Don’t wallow in self-doubt
You’re alive to succeed. Stop comparing your current problems to your last 5 small business failures. They are not the same. You are not the same. Here’s something to remember: Your entire life has been a training ground for you to capture your entrepreneurial destiny right now. Why would you doubt that? Stop whining. Go conquer.
What can I do better?
And then do it next time. If you spend years earnestly trying to be better, that’s exactly what will happen. The next best thing toward doing something amazing is not doing something stupid. So, learn from your mistakes, and use the lessons to dominate your small business success now.
Fuel your passion
Exercise is a great example. This is an area of improvement for me. Living in the moment and running your business at its prime requires you to live at peak performance. A huge part of mental fitness is physical fitness. A fitness or running partner is a great way to refresh physical competition. Work with a personal trainer to keep you paced. Physical activity accelerates mental motivation.
Apologize for bad attitude
Do this once or twice, and you’ll snap out of your funk fast. When you start genuinely apologizing for being a bad influence on those around you, you learn to stop whining and start winning. I can’t stand whining. But the fact is that some people do not know they are whining. If so, tell them. Better yet, encourage people to tell you if you are.
The rule of thumb is to turn excuses into successes. We all come across road blocks in the life of our small business and we need to overcome them not avoid or excuse them. They provide great learning opportunities. If can find sound strategies to conquer those setbacks and benefit from them, then we are well on the road to Keeping Life Current.
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