Clients often struggle to be effective in their businesses. 'I know I should be more organised/work harder/be more creative/
entrepreneurial... ' I hear these expressions of frustration frequently. If, like me you see business clients, you will have heard these too. So many of us can see how to be more successful in business, yet the path to effective action remains blocked.
And it’s not just in business we have problems. Our personal lives fail to live up to our expectations, even when the steps to change are obvious. Whether in our personal or business lives, our response this is usually to reach for another 'how-to' - book, course or coach - in the hope that someone else has an answer.
Judging by the proliferation of courses, books and coaches, answers are not in short supply. But how useful exactly are answers?
Underlying the hunt for the definitive answer to our problems is the belief that we are not up to the task. We too often buy the story that we're not that person; not creative enough, not an entrepreneur; not a manager ... We believe that who we are is fixed, immutable. Our shortcomings are locked in and won’t change. All we can do is try hard to follow the answers that someone else has given us.
Of course, following a template someone else has given us can be useful - up to a point. The ‘cookie cutter’ approach works well if all you need to do is repeat the same actions time after time. It works for fast food businesses and the like.
What is lacking is the flexibility and responsiveness of a truly engaged human being. If you want to be creative; if you want to respond to changing circumstances, you need something more.
The answer, of course, is within.
Most of us use a small fraction of our inner resources. Our minds are an inner world of possibility and resourcefulness that is often locked behind a wall of internal beliefs and rules.
Rather than asking someone else for answers, we need to ask ourselves: ‘Which parts of me can I engage to do this work?’
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