When you are stuck and scared...

[Power Lunch Club]

There are a lot of people in business which are feeling stuck and scared at the moment... paralysis is setting in... the are not thinking straight...and they can't seem to do anything to improve their lot...they just wait, hope and pray, staring at the phone willing it to ring!

Sadly, that's not going to do it for them...people have to take action now... and the best way to take action is to ask yourself a very simple question, "What's not perfect yet...???"

In that situation, an answer to that question is bound to come up... so, you immediately start correcting what is not yet perfect...

That procedure will have three effects:

1. It will shake you out of your inactivity... get you to move again and take action...
2. It will take your mind off the possible negative consequences of your situation...
3. And, it will get you back on the way to recuperating your life...

No adverse condition, except death, is as bad as we think it might be when we are in a rough spot... and, there is always a way out...everything can be sorted

Believe in your capacities, take action... and keep the faith... that's the corner stone of all success in life and business...

My thought's anyway.

[frockery]

You glass is always at least half full, Gordon, and we can always rely on you to lift our spirits (once you've drunk your own).

I am hoping my phone will stop ringing (and that I can tear myself away from SBF) so I can get on with some work. It's the Friday effect, I fear, when all motivational talk falls on deaf ears.

[barryhynd]

I think really it's all down to the mindset. If you've ever read Napoleon Hill's Think & Grow Rich you will know what i'm talking about. There's a stat that says if you hear something 21 times you actually start to believe it and with the amount of doom and gloom in the newspapers it's becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

Some great advice Gordon becuase it's so important to keep faith in your own abilities and to trust your gut and instinct to make the right decisions. I still get butterflies about SBF every morning when I think just what potential it has and that's what fundamentally keeps me going as opposed to believing what everyone wants us to believe

[Mark Lister]

Funny, something I just posted on my blog (at Business confidence?? Mark Lister Coaching) kind of ties in with this.

I was thinking about how often we hear the phrase "We need to see a return of business confidence." I was wondering exactly what that means - I'm not quite comfortable with it.

I concluded that for me, confidence is something you have in yourself, whereas what you have in other people and the wider world is trust. So there's an alternative to waiting for business confidence to start ringing the phone: cultivate confidence and trust.

Confidence is about knowing you're good at something. On that score, remember you're at least as good at what you do now as you were before the credit crunch. Probably better. It's good to remind yourself of that.

That leaves building trust. That's about connecting with customers. We need to be out there doing that more than ever. OK, not news, but I think it helps if one keeps that specific focus on building trust in mind when networking and marketing.

There's plenty of businesses that cut back on the trust-building measures at times like these - that leaves openings for the rest of us. Also, perhaps this is one of the ways we small businesses have an advantage - the trusty wee guy, versus the profligate big companies who waste money on flash offices etc and charge accordingly.

So here's your challenge! Do something each day to build a little more trust in your business.