Discouragement Stops Auto Repair Shop Owners from Moving Forward

Discouragement by Rick White, President 180BIZ

We're all super-achievers; we all want to push for that next level. But the reality is you're going to get discouraged. Let's talk about what can cause the discouragement and then identify what you can do about it so that you can keep on moving.  The danger when getting discouraged is that it stalls you out. It stops you from moving forward. Well, I want to help you with that. 

The first thing that can cause you to get discouraged is comparing yourself to other people. Recognize that you are running your own race. When you compare yourself to someone else, whether it be social media likes or “hey, they're doing this in sales” or “look at all the customers they have and I don't have.” What you're doing is comparing your beginning to somebody else's middle or maybe even their end. And that's not a fair comparison. You are in business not to beat someone, but to achieve. You are there to be your best, not be better than someone else. The only person you should be comparing yourself to is who you were yesterday. So the first thing that can hurt you is comparison.

The second thing that can cause discouragement is seeing lessons as failures.  Imagine a little baby. And that baby starts to walk and falls down and you say, “You stay down there, you are trash. You're no good. You stay there, you are useless. You can't do that.” Can you ever imagine doing that to one of your children? I can't. What did we do? We encouraged them. “Hey, great job. Let's go. Let's get better. You can do one more step. Let's make it happen.” And we would get them excited enough so that they would stand up and do it again.

So, when did that change? When did we start expecting perfection from the beginning? When did we ever do something perfectly the first time? You must allow yourself to be a toddler.  When you're starting something new you must allow yourself to crawl and walk and then run. Give yourself permission to be a toddler and learn the lessons. Don't think of them as failures. Look at your business as a giant science lab and you're there to prove theories. So, you have this theory about something and you're going to run an experiment to see if it works.  You're going to get a result that will either prove or disprove your theory. That's all it is. And then it allows you to begin again more intelligently to either tweak your theory or to say, “You know something that's really doesn't work for me. Let me find something that does.” Never, ever, ever should feedback be considered a failure.

The last thing I see all the time is shop owners that somehow, someday something happened and there was a shift. Think about it, when you first started your business, how excited were you? You felt like, “I'm going to set the world on fire. I am going to absolutely take the world by storm.” All you saw was potential. And then over time, your focus shifted from the potential to the problems. Now all you see are problems. When you're discouraged, all you see are problems.

In the beginning, all you saw were the flowers and you thought that was beautiful, but then your focus changed and now you don't see the flowers anymore. All you see the weeds.  Understand what optimism is. To be an optimist does not mean you sit there believing that there are no weeds. That's not optimism. That's delusion. Optimism sees the potential, focuses on the potential, recognizes, and deals with the problems. Optimists believe that no matter what comes up, they have the ability to overcome them. So stop staring at the weeds. When was the last time you asked yourself, "What's good about this? What is amazing about my business today? What are the opportunities that I'm not taking advantage of today that I could and should be that will take me to the next level?"

And the last thing, and this is something I don't see often, that discourages you is when you're not on the right path. When what you're doing is not really what you love or you've lost sight of what you love. It's when you lose your purpose, you lose your mission, you get stuck in the tasks and it gets old so fast and burned out. But when you can remember why you're there, why God put you in on this earth, doing what you're doing, the people that you get to serve and make a difference in their lives, it's always great. I can tell you for a fact, and I suffer from this too. Every once in a while I get stuck going through the routine instead of remembering the impact that I can have.  And once I get tapped back into that impact, you better watch out. I'm on fire.

Discouragement means you don't have hope for the future. You've lost it. You must get back to having hope.  John Maxwell once said, “When you have hope in the future, you have power in the present.” That is such a great quote. So I'm going to challenge you today. In what areas of your life are you discouraged and why? Are you comparing yourself? Are you seeing your lessons as failure? Or are you staring at the problems instead of the potential?

You can fix this and you can become something that's really amazing. Don't live smaller than you could and should be. Les Brown said, “Don't die rusted out, die worn out.” Die so that there's not a bit left of you, that you have played every game, every play with every ounce of energy that you have. That's when you're going to be amazing. That's when your business and your life are going to be amazing.

So, the word of the day is DISCOURAGEMENT. And I hope I've shown you today how to kick it right to the curb because it's not serving you. Step back, grow, learn, and become more.

Take care and God bless.