The mind is a bit of a mystery. If you tell someone “not” to think about something, that is the first thing they think about. The title of this Blog came from a talk that Simon Sinek was giving where he wanted to prove to the audience that you can’t have a negative thought in your mind.
Sinek explained that when you are skiing down a slope, through the trees, if you think about the trees, you will hit them. Skiers that don’t hit the trees think about the path between the trees and more or less never see the trees.
The same thing happens when you are watching TV. The minute you start thinking about buying a car, it is as if the advertising world read your mind and started showing more Car commercials.
I want to make it clear here that we are talking TV and not the internet. The Internet knows! I am not joking, there was a lot of research put into how to make sure you see ads for the things you want on Facebook or other platforms.
Did the TV advertisers really do this? Do they know? NO! They don’t, but you are now aware of the commercials where most of the time you ignore them.
Like I said above, the mind is a bit of a mystery, but in this instance, it is a little easier to figure out what is going on after all. Our brains evolved to keep us safe. If we heard a noise in the night, our brains would scan the known set of sounds and come up with a list of potential threats. Once one is identified, you become hyper focused on that potential threat.
You can’t help it. If you hear a noise in the dark, even if it is in your bedroom at night, your mind races to figure out what monster will get you!
Why is this important in business? The business owner has a million things to think about on a daily basis. There are customers to satisfy. There are employees to help. Questions to answer and many more. When the company is small, it is pretty easy to keep most of those things sorted out and get into a rhythm. Once your business gets big enough, however, you can no longer bounce from thing to thing and know where everything is at. You become hyper focused on the “threat.”
“It’s my business, what threat?” you might ask yourself. That noise in the dark that you can’t identify. That feeling that maybe your employees are not doing what they are supposed to do and you have to check on them.
This is why it is so important for all business owners to continuously ask the question, “Is it time to hire management.” Note I said “hire” and not promote someone. I am not going to insist that no one in your organization is capable of being a manager, but most times people get promoted for the wrong reason, they are good at their job. Well, if you take the best employee and promote them, who is going to do their job?
We must focus on the path and not the trees or the obstacles. Bringing someone into the organization that is a positive thinker and will figure out how to grow the business and create room for the owner to do what they are good at is vital. So focus on the positive and what great things will happen with you hire a professional to manage and stop imagining that the tree brushing up against the side of the house is a bear.
For more tips on how to focus on what matters in your business reach out at rick@gramatges.com
Gramatges Consulting 