Most people make blanket statements for their resolutions. Things like “I’m going to get healthy” or “I’m going to make my business successful”. The problem with these kind of resolutions is that they are focusing on the outcome… Not the cause. It is very hard to establish the steps needed to actually accomplish these goals so we spend a couple of weeks working long hours or hitting the gym only to go right back to doing what we were doing before. Ask yourself “what habits or actions contribute to me needing to make this change?” Do you procrastinate at work? Do you skip breakfast?    

The easiest way to make a big change in your life is to take small steps. Pick one of these bad habits to change. After a while it will become automatic and you can pick another small thing to change. Before you know it, you will need to start making different resolutions every year because your past ones actually stuck! 

A wise teacher was taking a stroll through the forest with a young pupil and stopped before a tiny tree. “Pull up that sapling,” the teacher instructed his pupil, pointing to a sprout just coming up from the earth. The youngster pulled it up easily with his fingers. “Now pull up that one,” said the teacher, indicating a more established sapling that had grown to about knee high to the boy. With little effort, the lad yanked and the tree came up, roots and all. “And now, this one,” said the teacher, nodding toward a more well-developed evergreen that was as tall as the young pupil. With great effort, throwing all his weight and strength into the task, using sticks and stone he found to pry up the stubborn roots, the boy finally got the tree loose. “Now,” the wise one said, “I’d like you to pull this one up.” The young boy followed the teacher’s gaze, which fell upon a mighty oak so tall the boy could scarcely see the top. Knowing the great struggle he’d just had pulling up the much smaller tree, he simply told his teacher, “I am sorry, but I can’t.” “My son, you have just demonstrated the power that habits will have over your life!” the teacher exclaimed. “The older they are, the bigger they get, the deeper the roots grow, and the harder they are to uproot. Some get so big, with roots so deep, you might hesitate to even try.”

I got this story from the book ‘the Compound Effect’ by @darrenhardy . It is a great resource and I highly recommend that you read it. 

If it aint broke don’t fix it. A Timeless piece of advice. Far too many have wasted far too much time and money trying to fix or change something that is working perfectly fine. Change is inevitable, but change for change sake is lethal. But there is a problem. What if something is broken and people just haven’t realized it yet? For the last 30 years, business has been done a certain way. It has been about figuring out how many sales calls you need to go on and then making a pitch to as many people as you can to get them. How many times have you heard it’s a numbers game or to embrace rejection and just say next. It has always been about getting as many yeses as you can in any way you can to fill the sales funnel…  but if you haven’ t noticed, times have changed and it has happened in the blink of an eye.

The way we access information and communicate with one another is changing drastically, so the way you do business must change if you want to grow. Those no’s that used to not matter can now ruin your business. Word of mouth is running rampant with social media. We are entering an age where we are being forced to put ethics at the forefront of how we run our businesses. Shrinking our focus  to each individual we come across and making sure they get an amazing experience is soon going to be the only way to grow our businesses on a large enough scale to make an impact on the world and leave a legacy. Now more than ever it pays to care.