Is the Need for Certainty Strangling Your Business?

by Rick White, President 180BIZ                                                      (Estimated Read Time 5 minutes)

We're talking about certainty. What do I mean by that? You aren't doing something new or changing something or hiring someone or letting someone go or adding a new service or whatever it is because you are not certain it's going to work. And all that uncertainty that bubbles up inside you prevents you from taking the first step. How can you know how to do something if you've never done it before? No amount of learning will help you with this.

Open Loop Thinking causes us to stop doing.

When you start thinking about something you need to do or you want to do, you keep thinking about it over and over, it typically causes “Open Loop Thinking.” This is where you think about it, “I need to do this. I want to do that, but this must be done first, but I need to do this. And as you have all those thoughts, your stress goes up, and guess what? You say, “whoop, I'm out. I'm overwhelmed. I'll do it later.” And now that actually gets worse, right? That's “Open Loop Thinking. You think 1, 2, 3 things and then stop because it's overwhelming. This is like saying, “Hey, I won’t leave my house to go to work until I know all the traffic lights are green.” I hope you can how ludicrous that sounds.

The real education comes from doing.

You have fear inside that stops you from growing. It's the doing that gets you the real education. It's where you say, “Oh, that didn't work. Let me do this better. I don't know enough yet. Let me learn something.” So, then you learn something and then you think, “Wait a minute. I don't know enough yet. Let me learn more and let me learn even more. Now you’re back into Learning Mode. Staying in Learning Mode creates a false sense of progress. That’s where you never feel ready, and you feel like an imposter. But you know something, go out there and do it. As Tony Robbins says, “Don't let the tyranny of how prevent you from doing.”

First, know what you want and why.

Here's what you really need. Have a dream, a desire, something. The first thing you need is to know what you want or where you want to go. The second thing you need to know is why it's important. When you understand your why, it really hits your heart. When it's emotional, it's everything.  You want it to be a one hundred percent pleasure, one hundred percent emotional about how good it's going to feel or how you will be able to serve others, or how you will be able to step up to be what you've always wanted to be for your family or how you can prove to the other people that said you couldn't do it, that you did it.

Make your why one hundred percent emotional

One day I was I was telling my dad that I would start a coaching company. My dad looked at me and said, “No one will pay to talk to you.” That's what he said to me in 2006. My why was to prove him wrong. I'm blessed that my dad's still here, but occasionally, nowadays I'll go see him and bring a P&L. Then I say, “Look at this, Dad.” That's a why and it feels good. I proved him wrong. Are you the same way? Always have your why. It creates so much clarity. You must know exactly what it looks like. When you can take that inside and start acting on the outside, it makes all the difference in the world.

An unwanted outcome may just be what you need.

What's holding you back? Is it a fear of failure? Is it a fear of ridicule? You know what I mean, where people might laugh at you. Is it a fear of rejection? Failure is such a bad word in our language. Failure is when you get an outcome that wasn't anticipated or wanted. Just because the outcome wasn't what you wanted; it could be the very outcome that you needed. Do you hear me here? It is an outcome that you actually needed because it's those lessons that get you and me to a point where we go. When you do something new and it hurts, you don’t like it.  You’re right, it sucks. But as we go through that suck, as we push through it we get better and better, we refine it and do even better. Suddenly you think, “Wow, look at where I am. This is amazing.” When you're going through the suck, don't think about the suck. Suck is when you're doing something new and it's painful and uncomfortable. That doesn't really suck. It's just different. We must embrace that difference so we can get better so that you can become what and who you want to become.

Is the need for certainty strangling your business?

You can create the business you've always wanted. This need for certainty is strangling your business because you're not making decisions until you're certain that it will work out. That doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't fly in life. That's not how we're wired. We're wired to want something, to desire something, to want to serve someone, and we must give ourselves that gift of being uncomfortable, of learning, of being a student.

Give yourself the gift of suck.

One of the things that I worked very hard on my entire life is to be a lifelong student. Learning doesn't stop at high school. Learning doesn't stop at college. I will argue that learning really doesn't start until after those things. Up to that point, you're just taught to memorize, like your times tables and division, where to put a comma, and stuff like that. You must give yourself this gift. And when you're going through the suck, when you're going through that uncomfortable stuff, don't focus on what you're doing. Focus on where you're going. When you're focused on your why, that is your fuel. That will keep you going.

Now you do it, debrief, do it, debrief, do it, and debrief. Each time you debrief, it gets better and better because you learn from what you just did. You're fine-tuning it.

We have our Shop Owner’s Round Table, on the second Thursday of every month, 7 p.m. Eastern, and we would love you and your friends to drop by. Shop owners only. And then we have our upcoming Pocket Business Genius webinar on the second Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time. 

God bless. stay safe, have some fun, and go make some money.  Take care.

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