Does This Stumbling Block Hold You Back as an Entrepreneur?

During my recent Three Principle training weekend we were discussing the qualities of an entrepreneur. We were asked as a group to share our thoughts on what we thought they are. And interestingly enough, out of a large group of mainly entrepreneurs, it wasn’t until about 15 minutes had gone by that someone came up with the quality of “action”.

And that’s when Jamie Smart, our trainer, shared how unsurprised he was. From his experience this always comes very low on the list, or to put it another way, action is a stumbling block for lots of entrepreneurs.

Sound familiar?

One of the many other qualities of an entrepreneur we ascertained is creativity which is fabulous on the one hand and totally necessary, and then on the other, we can spend an awful lot of time in the planning, more planning and creation stages.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to create a stunning service or product, afterall we want to serve our clients in the best way possible.

However, if for example, we are not taking action in letting people know about our service or product, a.k.a. marketing, then the action piece has become a stumbling block. Or if we find ourselves doing a bit more research on a topic for the 10th time before writing the first article for our blog, that might be a place for taking action.

A really helpful exercise we did at the weekend was to write out all our own personal reasons that we were aware of for not taking action. A good reason for doing this is that when we know what our own reasons/stories are, it’s easier to spot them when they come up.

Not to say you will instantly spot them, that’s for sure, I know I don’t.

And the next thing we did was to look at those reasons/stories from the standpoint of understanding the inside out nature of life.

How insightful and very powerful it was for me. Even though I have an understanding of the inside out nature of life, I realized just how much I am still fooled into the outside in way of thinking.

For example, one of my reasons for not taking action can be because I think I have to have a plan. Well, to me right now, in this moment, as I write this article, that clearly is not true. I know now I can put one step in front of the other and see what happens, no plan required.

I know there are times when having a plan is better than not having one, like if I am meeting someone for dinner, it’s best to know where and when or I could be wondering around all on my own for a very long time! But that doesn’t mean I have to know the rest like what I’m going to wear or what I am going to eat and what time we will finish and so on.

But that’s what I tend to do with my business. I have an idea and then think I have to have a really good plan to bring it to fruition, and guess what, it doesn’t even get out of the starting gate because I can’t come up with the good plan.

The really important point that became obvious to me when I looked at it from understanding the inside out nature of life, was that having to have a plan was just a thought that I noticed I had over and over again that had me feeling insecure and uncertain which meant I didn’t take action.

The thoughts around needing a plan before I could take action were just that, thoughts. And thoughts come and go constantly, I really don’t have to believe those thoughts because they are only thoughts, they are not real.

The thing is I’ve got into a habit of believing them and taking them for granted and being true, but really I could have a dozen other thoughts and believe them to be real too. So what is real?

Well, there are definitely things happening in my life that even as I think about them don’t change regardless of my thinking. I can’t make the fact that my car wouldn’t start this morning change by thinking about it in a different way, but I can experience it in lots of different ways depending on the thoughts I am having.

So taking it back to the reasons we have for not taking action … I encourage you to make a list of all the reasons you have for not taking action in your business. What stops you?

And once you have the list, just reflect on it quietly and gently, and see if you feel they are really true for you. Or could there be something there about recognizing that it is all thought, and you know that thoughts come and go and so there is no need to take them seriously?