Thoughts & Actions That Block Entrepreneurial Success

Thoughts & Actions That Block Entrepreneurial Success

It’s hard to believe that your thoughts can play a huge role in whether or not you’ll experience success or failure. Not only that, they might even cloud success, forcing you to downplay it instead of proudly celebrate it. This is especially true if you happen to be female, but both males and females experience issues that can block success.

Having Imposter Syndrome – This is a true condition that a lot of men and women have. No matter how much success and kudos they achieve, they feel like a fraud. A good book by Harold Hillman can help you with this problem if you have it. The Imposter Syndrome: Becoming an Authentic Leader will help you realize that you’re uniquely qualified for what it is that you do and how to accept that.

Comparing Yourself to Others – You’ve heard of the term “Keeping up with the Joneses’” and it applies in business, too. Entrepreneurs often make a huge mistake thinking they need to be just like their competition but, in fact, the main reason you study your competition is to see how you can be different. You’re a unique person with your own way of doing things and this is what makes you great.

Being Too Skeptical & Negative – Sometimes experience can make people become too negative and distrustful, which can cause you not to put your feet through a door that can mean great success for your business. Try to trust yourself that you know how to study a situation and determine whether it’s for you or not.

Being Preoccupied With What Others Think – If you spend all your time thinking about what everyone around you is thinking, you’ll never be able to be truly successful. Instead of thinking about what others think, consider what you think. Can you look in the mirror every day and be proud of your actions? That’s what’s important.

Overthinking Every Situation – It’s good to look at situations from every angle, but once you do that you should be able to make a decision. Overthinking stems from a fear of failure. While it’s not a bad thing in and of itself to worry about failure, if you’re too afraid of failure you may end up procrastinating on your decision, which can make it worse. Trust your instincts.

Not Believing In Yourself – Many of us are taught from a young age not to believe in ourselves. It’s not that our parents meant to do that, but maybe they were trying to keep us from being sociopaths. However, to learn to believe in yourself you need to have some examples of success so you know what it feels like. Push past your discomfort, put yourself out there, trust your knowledge, and move forward.

Dwelling On the Past – In business there is a term called “sunk costs” that you must learn. This theory says that only future costs matter when making a decision. Even if you spent a million dollars on an idea, but after giving it your all you’re still losing money, it’s time to get out. If you make every decision based on past actions you’ll never get to move forward.

Believing That Perfection Exists – One of the biggest blockers of all is thinking perfection exists. Even thinking that any type of perfection exists can cause a problem with procrastination and not getting things done or changing your mind too much. It all boils down to accepting that good enough is good enough. You can always improve later.

Overcoming these success blockers takes accepting that you do them and that they exist. If you have often called yourself a perfectionist, take a hard look at yourself and you might find that you’re not a perfectionist at all, you’re just scared to be wrong and to fail. Let that go and move forward so that you can put some success under your belt. The more you know how that feels the more you’ll want to experience it.

Letting Go of Getting Kudos for a Job Well Done

The professional athlete, Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” While Gretzky probably got a lot of kudos and screams when he made the shots, he probably didn’t get many attaboys and attention during practice and definitely not when he missed. As an entrepreneur you’ll need to learn to be your own cheerleader. You’re not going to have a boss to praise you, and if you’ve done your job right surrounding yourself with a good team, they’re going to challenge you and question you, not pat you on the back all the time.

When you have the mindset of an employee instead of a business owner, you tend to take that weekly check as kind of a type of kudos for your job well done – even if you didn’t really do well. After all, when you are paid hourly, or even on a salary, you often still get paid even when you’re not very productive. But, when you’re an entrepreneur, you only get paid when you’re productive.

Deliverables Over Busy Work – As an entrepreneur you’ll need to determine which actions you need to take each day to make bank. It’s all in the deliverables. It’s not how you do it, when you do it, or anything else but when you’re done with it and give it to your client. That’s when you make money.

Time Is Money – If you’re spending time each day messing around on social media without a goal in mind and a plan of action, then you’re just wasting time. Determine what your time is worth. Figure out how much you need to earn a year, divided by how many hours a year you plan to work. If it comes to $125 an hour, do you really want to waste that time doing something you could get someone else to do? Is it really worth it to waste playing Candy Crush? No one is going to yell at you, but your bank account will notice if you don’t take action.

Participation isn’t a Thing – No matter how often your parents or coaches told you that showing up is all that matters, sorry, it’s not. You also need to produce. There is no prize for you if you just show up, but there is a prize later if you do the work that needs to be done in a manner and within the time frame you have.

Producing Is Imperative – Let’s say you work as a maintenance technician for a technology firm. As a perfectionist it takes you 8 hours to complete your daily tasks and those that don’t get done just move to the next day. It’s no big deal because you’ll get paid anyway. But let’s say you decided to start your own Handy Man business. Now you’re in a situation where if you bid a certain amount on a job if you take too long you’re now losing money.

The thing is that you have to produce to earn a living as an entrepreneur. You’ll need to learn how to bid properly, or price your product properly, and spend your time smartly in order to see a return on your investment, which will be how you get kudos in the entrepreneur world.

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