My word for this week is Mindset.
In our Bricks or Sticks Community for business owners, we often discuss three types of business owner mindsets: Reactive, Proactive, and Predictive. People with predictive mindsets were born that way. They can see well into the future and know how they plan to get there. People with predictive mindsets usually don’t need communities like Bricks or Sticks. The rest of us must live and work with our proactive and reactive mindsets.
The key to success is learning to make a proactive mindset our default selection—being proactive means anticipating challenges, planning ahead, and not handing over our time and daily agenda to someone else to control. Those are the actions of someone with a reactive mindset.
A reactive person wakes up in the morning, ready to seize the day, and then looks at their phone before their feet hit the floor. That is usually when they forget their agenda and start responding to an unhappy employee, a complaining customer, or a supplier who keeps losing their orders. The reactive mind keeps putting out the same fire, time and again, without ever taking the proactive step of determining the root cause of that fire—and THAT is the biggest difference between success and failure.
Having a proactive mindset allows people to control their circumstances rather than be controlled by them. They know new work problems will pop up almost every day. However, they will not allow the same issues to reappear without dealing with them effectively. They will also prioritize the problems confronting their agenda for the day. Sometimes, they must react immediately; other times, they may delegate the issue to someone on their team or respond later in the day after finishing the urgent and essential work on their Task List. While being reactive is sometimes necessary—especially in emergencies—living in a constant state of reaction can lead to missed opportunities and burnout.
Practice using a proactive mindset today. Don’t let other people and their issues control your time and push your mindset into a prolonged reactive state.
Seize Today!
