Sometimes your mental state can prevent you from figuring out how to grow your business, driving you to believe that growing your business is impossible – and if you believe that for long enough, you will begin to convince yourself that you don’t really want to grow your business.
Remember the Four Reasons
In a my last article I wrote about four questions that we can ask, that helps us to figure out if our biggest challenge lies in what we want, what we believe, what we know, or our mental and emotional state. To grow your business you need to start with desire. You must actually WANT to grow your business. However, even if you want to grow it, but you don’t believe it’s possible, you will most probably not take action to grow your business. Sometimes, you might really want to grow your business, absolutely believe it’s possible, but simply not know how to grow your business. And then, there are times when you have all those three in place. You really want to grow. You truly believe it’s possible. You have a clear plan. But mentally and emotionally you just do not have the strength to do what is needed to execute that plan.
Sometimes they all hit you at once
That’s all good and well, but if you’ve been living for more than ten years, you have probably experienced that sometimes it feels like all four of those are just attacking us from all sides. Very often when this is the case, it is because hopelessness has darkened our minds and hearts.
Your mental and emotional state can darken everything else
When you are tired, it is difficult to think creatively. When you are properly worn out, it becomes nearly impossible to think creatively or clearly. In this mental state, it is as if all your problems fuse into one large overwhelming dark cloud – and there is no silver lining. No matter which way you turn your thoughts, your mind’s eye just sees difficulty and hopelessness.
If you are in this state it is unlikely that you will be able to think clearly to work out where the constraint in your business is, and then to peel back the layers until you can clearly define what it is that you need to know, in order to move your business forward.
If you cannot figure out how to move your business forward, you will begin to feel that growing your business is impossible.
As a self-defense mechanism, once you’ve convinced yourself that growing your business is impossible, you will begin to tell yourself (not necessarily consciously or deliberately at first) that you actually are quite happy with your business being just the way it is, and that you do not really want to grow it, anyway.
Protecting your spiritual, emotional and mental wellness is paramount
It is this understanding that has helped me to grasp the importance of looking after my mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness. If you are an employee who can receive guidance regarding what to do from an employee, you can create a certain level of success by just doing what you are told to do, to a great level of excellence.
However, if you are an entrepreneur, and life is presenting you with just a dark cloud that you need to pierce with the light of clear thought and creativity – Then you cannot afford to just keep driving yourself forward. You have to build routines into your life that will refresh and restore you.
Many entrepreneurs I work with – and I have experienced the same for most of my life – feel guilty when they are not grinding at least as hard, and generally harder than their employees. The reality is that when you do this, you are not serving yourself or your employees very well. On the other hand, if you begin to implement the disciplines of things like spending enough time with God, getting enough rest, getting enough time out in nature, getting enough exercise, eating healthy, and spending time with family and friends, you will be feeding your mind, soul and spirit. This will enable you to build the state of mind you need to rekindle your desire for growth, muster the faith that it is possible, grapple with the dark clouds of difficulty until they become clear and you know exactly what problems you have to solve – And then muster the resources to solve those problems.
Blessings to you
Ashton
Grow Your Business
5-2-50 is a community of Christian small business entrepreneurs eradicating poverty through creating good jobs and building wealth. We focus on business growth in both staff numbers, to create jobs, and net profit, to generate wealth for reinvestment, whilst freeing the founders from the day to day grind of their businesses, to build what God is calling them to next.
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