Your ability to succeed is in direct proportion to your ability to solve your problems.
I once read that somewhere and was worried.
If I’m being honest, over the years I’ve had to teach myself how to get good at being decisive with solving problems in my business. I’m a classic “what-if’er” and it has bitten me in the butt more than once.
And I know that I’m not alone in this.
Creative people entering into the world of business tend to be way more contemplative; “perfectionists” (not a real thing, in my opinion) that don’t always have the experience or the personality type to make swift business decisions. You’re dreamers and visionaries; you paint pictures in your head of what you want your business to look like.
These are great things.
But sometimes they can result in struggling to make finite decisions.
And because of this, the problems that you’re facing don’t get solved or the options you’re presented with don’t get chosen, which keeps you from making any progress.
The issue is that it’s important to get good at problem solving; it can’t be ignored. Why? Because decision making does one of two things:
- When it’s the correct decision, it allows you to clear the space in your brain to focus on other things.
- When it’s the incorrect decision, it allows you to fail fast, adjust, learn, and move on.
When you hem-and-haw, you make no progress. You continue to stress over the problems or the options. And you make it very difficult for yourself to reach your goals– to succeed.
I found it particularly interesting how much time I freed up when I started to become a better problem solver.
For so long I was really good at believing how busy I was. When really, there were several things hanging over my head that just required making a decision.
A decision, that’s it. But I struggled.
I wondered what the right decision was and I fretted over making the wrong one.
So instead, I did nothing. And I constantly felt that I was in a state of “too much to handle”.
And I think this tendency shows up in all different places:
it shows up in your incomplete email pitches, staring at you from your computers
it shows up in your new collection that has too many styles because you love them all
it shows up in delayed product development because you can’t choose which fabric is best.
it shows up in stagnant marketing because you can’t decide what kind of content your want to post
The best thing you can do is understand that there will always be times when you make the wrong decision. And that’s OK.
Always being right is not what makes anyone a good business owner. What makes us good business owners is our ability to be OK with the fact that we won’t always be right and making decisions anyway.
What’s hanging over your head this week? Make a decision and keep moving.
Lots of love and encouragement,
