Are you guilty of ‘the Play It Safe mentality’?
I personally speak with hundreds of entrepreneurs each year.
Some I train, others I train on various business topics, and many call me, send emails, or catch me in the hallways to collect my brain.
They often ask me for the magic answer to help them grow their business.
You know the magic pill that will solve all your business problems.
It is a normal question. A question that I asked myself many times.
But not now.
During the last thirty years of business training and coaching, there is only one thing you really have to do and that is …
Take a reality check.
A reality check to see what works (keep it) and what doesn’t (stop it).
This will help you begin to clarify where you are.
The next step is to look at yourself.
I have always enjoyed the thoughts of Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
The first three habits surround the transition from dependency to independence (i.e., self-control):
They are:
1 – Be proactive
Stop being reactive waiting for something to happen. Get on your front foot.
Do what you know you should do.
2 – Start with the end in mind
Visualize what you want in the future so you can work on it and plan for it.
Change your life to act and be proactive. Grow up and stay humble.
3 – Put First Things First
Set your priorities according to what needs to be done in your business.
1) Important and Urgent
2) Important and not urgent
3) It is not important and urgent
4) It is not important or urgent
You can do this easily.
But guess that.
We self-sabotage.
We have what I call a Play It Safe Mindset.
This is where we don’t want to take any chances.
We sit down to see what happens when something new hits the market or when
wait until it settles.
Playing safe in the business you are in is dangerous. Playing safe doesn’t work.
- You need to take risks;
- You have to take a risk. You know it!
- You need to innovate;
- You need to keep moving forward.
Yes, it is true that if you take risks and keep moving forward you will make mistakes.
You will fail and fall from time to time; You won’t be able to avoid it, but you won’t.
The truth is, if you don’t make mistakes as you go along, you’re not learning.
You are playing too safe.
Walter Riso once said:
“Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from your failure is crime.”
Find your mistake and fix it.
So why not take a chance? This is the main reason.
You think of all the things that could go wrong.
You look at the long-term picture, it is too, too difficult, too long to get there.
It is known as the negative mental rehearsal.
Here’s a way to get over it.
See it in steps. Steps that are easier to take, easier to understand, easier to accept.
Take small gains instead of concentrating on losing the biggest goal.
And here’s the catch: reward your little successes. Small victories lead to big victories.
When you start taking risks, and please do so, do what’s easy first and establish small gains.
If you make a mistake, learn from it.
If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you will repeat them.
I am a witness to how business owners do not take risks.
Often because they go through a negative mental rehearsal.
It is like the golfer who reaches the water trap and knows when was the last time he threw the ball into the water. He’s concentrating on the water again and mentally rehearsing his ball by ‘plonk’.
Hit the ball and it actually goes off.
Instead, he should have focused on where the ball is going to land on the other side of the water trap: on the fairway.
An experienced mountaineer does not look at the ravine below with rocks of death jutting out of the raging waters when they come across the flimsy and unstable rope bridge.
They look at the rungs of the rope bridge to see where to place their feet on each rung.
They focus on where they want to be and not where they don’t want to be.
The secret is …
Don’t look where you don’t want to go. Take a look at the steps you need to take to achieve your vision.
But if you want to be in a better place than today you have to stop The Play It Safe Mindset.