Article contributed by Mark Sutherland.
Over the last few months I have had six clients who are not maximising their skills and business acumen.
In my coaching sessions with them I have been observing a reticent attitude when it comes to stepping forward outside their comfort zone.
With some gentle prodding they have told me about how they have had a bad experience in a previous role or a failure in business ownership. In essence they are being controlled by their past. They have an expectation that they will fail again.
Here are some tactics you can use to stop the past holding you back.
Acknowledge that your past does not control your destiny.
Your past is in the past and not right here right now. The only thing that can stop you moving forward right now is the self-limiting belief you have created. The future is an empty canvas waiting for you to paint a new business-life. When you create a self-limiting belief you can also un-create it.
Give yourself permission to move forward.
You are good person; I doubt you went out to fail on purpose. You are not the only person who has failed at something. Look in the mirror and give yourself some heart felt permission to move on in a positive proactive way.
Change your perspective and acknowledge your past successes.
Create a list of all the things you have succeeded at. This should be a significant list. Look at your previous roles and the differences you have made, consider what you have achieved within your community, church, school, neighbourhood and of course your family relationships. They will be plenty and they are because of you.
Do an ‘opposite’ list.
If you are struggling to figure out what you want going forward, do this exercise. Create a list of what you don’t want to be or do. Then write down the ‘opposite’ of everything on the list. Boom! You now have a list of what you would rather be doing.
What did you learn from your failure?
Here are some real world learnings from different clients…
- Stay on task with my core business
- Fully research the next ‘great thing’ before making a decision
- Maintain my systems and processes to keep costs down
- Keep a close eye on the amount of rework and why it is happening
- Don’t bury my head in the business, stay awake to the economic changes that could affect my business
- Delegate or sub contract specialist work so quality is high and the customer is happy
- Make quicker decisions and act faster before issues become serious
Mark Sutherland has 20 years experience in coaching executives, managers, self-employed and business owners, and 28 years of experience coaching elite athletes including Olympic and World Champions – http://www.marksutherland.co.nz/
2 comments
Interesting article Mark. I am wondering about the idea of letting go of past mistakes – not letting them continue to control your current life. I cant help but think that one important step in this process is to take ownership/responsibility for your past mistakes. To ‘man up’ as it were – yes, you stuffed up AND, you have moved forward. I can forgive anyone for a mistake – but what I find hard to do is to suffer someone who blames everyone else for what happened – these are the ones who I have a deep suspicion of – that they are simply trying to re-package themselves and who are likely to do the same things over and over.
I have just come across the following paragraph in Steven Covey’s book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:
People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgement. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intentioned, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.
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