So a while back I was travelling to the seaside town of Brighton from my home in South London on my way to a fantastic painting retreat.
Anyway, I headed off to my main departure point, Victoria station. Once on the train and travelling south, I noticed we passed through Clapham Junction. “Damn!” I thought, “I could have started my journey from that stop (which is much closer to my home and in the right direction for Brighton) instead of going all the way to Victoria”. I shrugged thinking, ‘ok it’s not really a big deal’.
But then a little while later we passed through East Croydon a station even closer to my home and on the route to Brighton. “Whaaat?!” I had to sigh: I had just wasted over an hour travelling in the wrong direction.
Now I’ve lived in London for over 30 years, I’m pretty organized and I know my way around South London pretty well so… why did I do this? The answer is habit. I am so used to going to Victoria for certain journeys that I didn’t even think to look at the rail map to consider my direction of travel. The other contributing factors were it had been a busy week and I didn’t even stop to ask my usual question of ‘how can I save time here?’.
So I made a mental note not to waste time like that again in the future. Not just on train journeys but in everything where saving time will make a positive difference to me.
Disrupt then Develop
Are you aware of your direction of travel? Is it time to disrupt your unhelpful and habitual approach to things?
Many small business owners and freelancers have literally been taking the same approach over and over again and wondering why they are not getting new results.
We’ve all heard that saying which goes something like, “if you keep doing the old same thing, you’ll get the same old results” but how many of us really take this wisdom seriously by looking at our own lives?
It’s time to become aware of those old unhelpful habits. Unhelpful habits can include things like:
- not knowing how many clients you have or what your income is (this is surprisingly common)
- not knowing what your expenses and profit figures are
- having a messy desk and chaotic filing so you have to keep looking for the documents you want
- saying mean and prejudiced things about yourself like, “I’m too old”, “Yeah but I’m not as good as her” and “I’m not in that league”
- mindless morning routines that stall your day such as hours lost on Instagram
When you regularly remind yourself to ‘disrupt’ your habits and then develop new ones, it’s easy to start making small changes that make a big difference to your results.
Top Tips for Disrupting Habits that Delay your Dreams
So, here are some areas where it’s worth checking if you need to create new habits:
- Your Environment – what‘s in your immediate working environment that stops you from being the best you can be?
- Your People – who are you hanging around professionally and personally that drain your energy or drag you down mentally?
- Your Thoughts – what thoughts do you have about your business or yourself that totally dis-empower you?
- Your Actions – what are your regular routines around your small business or freelance career that are wasting your time and money?
I invite you to take a few moments right now to jot down your answers to these questions.
Then get started today – even if you take just a small development action, it will start to make a difference.
Be a Clear, Confident Champion for your Business – today