Habits and expectations are how we order and organize our world. But what happens when you find those very habits and expectations have begun to stifle your creativity and made life a little boring and predictable?
This is the time when you have to look at what are the rules you have set for yourself and what you can do to alter your thinking to get you moving in a different direction that provides more inspiration.
I used the word rules when really they are not rules at all but a mindset that leads to certain actions when we encounter various forks in the road. Again, mindsets or habits help us organize our lives so they definitely serve a purpose; but the task at this point is to take a careful look at what that purpose is and how it is working for you at this point.
Thinking seriously about how you want your life ordered means questioning the assumptions you have about yourself and your life, things like “this is the way I am”, or “I can’t do that”. And so, we have to look at how habits or ways of thinking that previously served you have been woven into your life but now no longer serve the protective purpose the were designed to provide.
One of the first things you want to do is begin to imagine how you want your life or business to be, and really focus on the things you would like to see happen and how they would play out for you. Once you have this image to work from, begin to ask yourself what are some of the things you decided in the past that might need reconsideration against the new image. Once you have determined the thinking process that supports a rule then you can begin to analyze what purpose it serves for you. Is it a rule that helps you or something you fell into because of patterns from the past, for example when you went to movies on date night, but you are not in a relationship right now?
The same applies in a business setting. If you look around and find you are doing some of the same things that your competitors are doing, it means you are simply one of many. One of the first rules of competitive advantage is finding a way to make you different while providing a similar service. If you have been making all the decisions, begin to listen to some of the people around you and be willing to try something new, even if it is on a small scale to test it out. At the very least, others will become more willing to bring you ideas that could potentially move you forward a lot faster.
The current podcast episode walks you through a number of steps to get you examining and breaking some of the unwritten rules you have established for yourself. Not certain you have a fixed mindset? Take the Mindset test based on Carol Dweck’s ground breaking book “Mindset”.
As you begin to open yourself up to different options and attempting new things, a whole new world will present itself. These different habits will propel your creativity down new roads and probably change how successfully you manage your life and your business.