Why your best thinking 5 years ago is your baggage today

We’ve always done it this way.

That’s your death sentence right there.

Sure you may be making money, you may even be profitable, but chances are you are no longer enthusiastic about what you’re doing and operating with head and no heart.

You could be stuck in a miserable dead-end job sitting in a grey cubicle for 40-plus hours a week earning a decent salary, yet feel uninspired and unfulfilled. Status quo is what you know. Every day you do things the same way you’ve always done them.

You could be stuck in the corporate world, drowning in meetings where you hear words like revolutionary and ground-breaking, disruption and mavericks; strings of fashionable phrases that speak about innovation but really take you on a peripheral walk offering superficial changes.

You could get charged by a great idea you have, to do things differently, yet too scared to go up against or completely give up the “security” of your day job and the regular pay-cheque it brings.

We’ve always done it this way.

The way it’s done in your industry should definitely not be the way you choose to go, unless of course you want to choose invisibility.

The reality is many people are great at what they do, but they aren’t fulfilled and they’re stuck spinning their wheels trying to get ahead. How do you breakout and move past the crowd?

By being the individual that you are – not just what you do, but how you do what you do.

We’ve been taught a standardised formula for success (a one-size-fits-all notion) which asks the question: What is the best way to achieve success?

Yet if we want to build great and thriving businesses, develop a great and thriving TT and operate in an equally thriving Caribbean region, we need to get the best out of everyone no matter who you are or where you are starting from.

In order to help everyone live up to their full potential we must begin by understanding and empowering them.

To do so we need to ask a completely different question:

What is the best way for me to achieve success?

How can things be different, if I am all me?

You really just have to be your real self, without exception. Deep down, you may already know how to be different, unique, and valuable in a way that no one else is.

The question is – do you have the courage to do and be who you really are?

• Do you have the courage to buck the status quo and speak out for what you really believe in?

• Do you have the courage to tell a prospective client your company doesn’t offer free consultations?

• Are you prepared to speak up about that checkbox for bureaucracy that may have made sense ten years ago but is no longer needed?

• Do you have the guts to explain that full payment for a project is due upon commencement?

• Are you able to confidently ignore or remove all of the folks trying to interrupt your day, and the plan you have for yourself, with emails or calls or texts?

• Are you okay maintaining the boundaries you have set for yourself and others and clearly articulate to the world what you are willing to do and what you will not willing to do?

In many businesses there are plenty of well-educated, talented people who spend a good deal of their time on pointless tasks and in pointless roles, in pointless meetings where nothing is accomplished.

The truth is, they are working towards superficial corporate “targets” while their creative potential is never fully utilised.

It might seem scary to be yourself, but in today’s workplace, it's far scarier not to be who you are.

The world is created in such a way that it's easy to get pulled into the rat race. It's easy to feel the forces trying to get you to conform, to assimilate, to comply with "how things are done around here."

But how things are done around here is a decision for only you to make.

Business owners, who were popular five years ago, no longer crowd the news headlines. Entrepreneurs who made zero shifts in their business models in the last five years have lost fortunes. Great leaders from five years ago now lead teams who aren’t performing because they continued to do things the way they’ve always done things.

Unless we can let go of everything we currently think of and do, we will fail to see the opportunities of tomorrow.

The core of who you are, and what you do, is the raw essence that has always powered you. You need to strip back to that essential core and create new ways to do things differently.

Whether you feel trapped in a dead-end job, taking the first steps on your journey into entrepreneurship; whether you think you are already on the right track, or if you feel in a dark place, directionless and adrift, I am here to help you answer one question: What is the best way for me to achieve success? To find out how I can help you, please send an email to possibility2profit@gmail.com