Why you’ll never notice the change until it’s already happened (how to spot a mindset shift, and how to reverse a mindset)

You’ll never notice some things – until they happen all around you! Yes, that’s right. The very foundation of our businesses can shift and slide around our very feet, unnoticed, until we find ourselves in a smaller office, our legs cramped up against our cardboard box desk, working from a desktop PC that hasn’t seen a software update since 1997.

Good or bad, it is so easy to slide out of your creative zone, into a management mindset over the space of a year, two years, 5 years

You may find yourself…

• Not coming up with new ideas,
• Going to work, leaving work, not entirely impressed…
• Dealing with problems and putting out fires,
• Focusing on the unfixable problems,
• Finding less and less time for yourself,

Perhaps you may even notice your profits fading by the day– or even your staff being undynamic, eyeing your office clock, waiting to knock-off… To be honest, who wants a business like that??? Sometimes, we need to hit that wall. But here at Zoomination.co.za, we don’t want you to hit that wall. Not just yet. We’d like to give you something to grab onto, and that “something” comes in the form of changing our actions. Because if actions determine our motivations, we need to take better actions. After all, as Henry Nouwen put it, “You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.” Let’s take some positive actions today…

1. Identify The Habits That Aren’t Serving You

With emphasis on seeking self-awareness of your situation, now it’s time to write out some of your thoughts onto a piece of paper. Generally, journaling is a good habit to keep, because writing your thoughts out provides a 60cm distance between your brain and what you’ve been thinking over-and-over for the past year, two years etc. You can’t build something entirely new with the same mindset that built the business you have right now. So generally, one good rule to think through: “If your thinking habits center around the things you can’t actively do anything about as yet, perhaps that isn’t serving you.”

For example, we have found that South African business owners are brilliant at identifying the problem. We can describe it to you very well… and that’s where it stops. You’ll often find the average SA business owner saying something along the lines of: “Well, you see the problem with this is… etc.” But you see, when you spent 90% of your time describing the problem… you’re not actively doing anything to solve it… and solving problems is where the creativity is generated. Disidentifying you from your thoughts is a good start to seeing that they’re not necessarily true. And that’s where you can fix the problem.

2. Invest In Others’ Creative Output

What do we mean by this? We find that a powerful way to enhance your thinking (once you’ve worked on identifying your older, stodgier methods) is to surround yourself with the creative ways others think. The internet allows you to connect with powerful thinkers of our generation, and the generations past. We like to hammer on this, because in the exact same way we allow ourselves to slip away because of being dulled by time, failures and disappointments…

We are capable of sharpening ourselves up on the experience and creative thinking of others. As the business owner (you), your business, partners and team are affected by what you bring to the table. If you walk into your business with new ideas, new lessons you’ve picked up from business-learning courses and new goals – it sends across the board the underlying idea that you are trying! And perhaps they can too! So, we’d recommend a healthy dose of reading business-related books. These allow you to “sit down and have a coffee” with the author, reading into their thoughts, ideas and ingenious ways.

These two habits help you get a better sense of where your head is at,

and helps you learn that there are (in fact) better ways of doing business! It’s time to think new thoughts – and sometimes, with unconventional ways, you’ll slowly see a shift in how you see business. And maybe, you’ll be able to build something better.