You know what to do, but are you doing it?
This isn’t a listener suggestion, rather it was inspired by things I’ve seen working with and listening to some of you, my clients and connections. For example, I’ve had people come to me and say that they’re not getting the response they want from their inquiries, and that they’re following what I taught them. Yet, when I look at how they’re replying, it’s not at all what I taught them (or have written about). Now, my way isn’t the only way to do things, but when you’ve convinced yourself that you’re doing something new, when you’re really doing things the same old way… and it’s not working, you have to take a hard look in the mirror.
Listen to this new 8-minute episode for ideas on how to break out of the trap of not doing what you know you should be doing, personally and professionally.
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
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When you know what to do, but you’re just not doing it. Listen to this episode. See where I’m going with this one. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. This is not specifically a listener suggestion, but it’s certainly prompted by listeners and some people in my audience, some things I’ve seen recently, and that’s people have come to me and said, hey, I’m having trouble getting ghosted. Let’s use that as an example. And I’m responding exactly the way you taught me, and it’s just not working.
And I say, okay, so show me what you’re doing. And they show me what they’re doing. And I take a look, and it’s not what I showed them to do. It’s not what I suggested. And I’m not saying that’s wrong. Just because it’s not what I said doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But if you’re coming to me and saying, I’m doing what you said and it’s not working, and I go look and see, well, you’re not doing what I said, well, okay, there’s a disconnect in there, and this is just a human nature thing. We fall back into our patterns.
We fall back into what’s comfortable, and doing something new is uncomfortable. If you’ve heard me mention before the Adam Grant book hidden potential and being okay with being uncomfortable, and that’s how we get past these things. Whether it’s a personal thing, like trying to exercise more, lose weight, stop smoking, learn a new language, whatever it is, to be uncomfortable, you have to get through that discomfort until you get a point where now you’re comfortable with doing those things or not doing those things, if you’re trying to stop doing something there. And this came up again today on this call. There were a bunch of people on and somebody said, okay, I’m doing this the way Alan said and he said what he was doing. I was like, that’s not the way I said to do it. So part of this is also human nature, where you hear things from different people and then you associate them with certain people, maybe because you wanted to have come from that person, or maybe because you’ve just heard so many different differing opinions. Again, I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, just differing opinions.
And we all have opinions, right? Everybody’s got one. They’re kind of like belly buttons. Some people say they’re like other things. So when you come up to a point where you know what you’re supposed to be doing, and you’re just not doing it. I guess it comes down to whether you’re conscious of that or not, whether you’re aware of that or not. And its, some things are easy, like you’re, I don’t know, you’re scrolling on social media and you get caught in another post or another video or another post or another video and you’re like, you know what? I really should be fill in the blank. Doing something else, going to sleep, spending time with people that are important to me, doing some work, whatever, we know it, but we get caught in that and are we conscious of that and we’re able to say to ourselves, no, this is what I need to do. This is a time management thing, I’m sure.
But we need, we know what we need to do. And also we have to say to ourselves, if what we’re doing isn’t working for us personally, professionally, or both, then there needs to be a change. And it’s up to me to make that change. You can’t make other people change. It’ll work temporarily. It won’t work permanently. Especially hard things like telling somebody to stop smoking doesn’t work unless they buy into that. Telling somebody to exercise more or lose weight or work less or drink less or whatever, it doesn’t work in the long haul unless that person buys into that as well.
And you’ve probably experienced that yourself, somebody suggesting that you do or don’t do something and you can do it for a little bit, kind of like New Year’s resolutions, and they’re all done by, what is it? Is it, do you even make it to February? I’m not even sure if people make it to February with those. So where are you in this process? What are some things that you know you should be doing? And maybe it’s delegating. Maybe that’s something you know you should be doing and you’re not doing it because. Fill in the blank. I know with me, when I finally decided to hire a virtual assistant, that was a game changer for me. When I sat down and looked at the things that I was doing, I was actually, my epiphany was I was sitting on the sofa at night with my wife, watching tv with my laptop, doing work and doing things that I personally didn’t need to do. They needed to get done, but I didn’t need to do them. And that was taking away personal time.
It was also not freeing my brain up, besides, to pay attention to what’s in front of me, which is my family. It also doesn’t free your brain up for new ideas and new thinking, because I’m caught in the doing, not in the strategizing, not in the idea facing. So we need to take ourselves out of that. And part of it says, hey, can I afford to do that with me? The answer was absolutely yes. And it wasn’t about do I have the money or not. It’s like I can afford to do that because I need to, I need to free myself up of those other things. I need to be able to turn off at a certain point and handing these things off and now getting them done is liberating. And I think sometimes we think, well, I can do it better, I can do it faster, et cetera.
And the answer is sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes the person you give it to can do it better and faster and teaches you things. And that’s what I’ve learned along the way with my current and other virtual assistants that I’ve had. So what are some of the things that you know you should be doing and or not doing and you’re just not taking that action? What’s holding you back? Is it a fear of failure? Because fear of failure shouldn’t stop you. Because if you think about what the worst thing is that could happen, I’ve it done a podcast just on that. It’s usually not that bad. It’s usually not the catastrophic thing that could happen. If again you do hand it off to someone and they don’t do it as well as you, but it still got done.
Was it done well enough that the results are good enough and then can they be better? Because part of it also is when we hand things off we have to be a better teacher teaching someone the results we’re trying to get. Yes the processes as well, but maybe their process will be better to get to the same results. I’ve had that happen with my son. There was a story that I told where when he was working for JP and Morgan Chase, he had a process that took three weeks and he got it down to 6 hours because he thought hey were getting the result. Why does it have to take that long? So don’t always think I can do it better and faster and thats a reason not to hand it off because then you’ll never hand anything off because you understand it better. What you have to do is get the other person to understand what you’re trying to accomplish and then let them do it. And failure just means you tried something and didn’t get the result you wanted. Not trying is actually the big failure because then you can’t even get there.
So think about it personally. Think about it professionally. What are some of the things that you know you should be doing or you want to do and you’re not getting there? What is stopping you from doing that? And is that under your control? And if it is, take the control back, put your hands on the wheel and steer yourself towards the results that you want. And you’re on the way. And that’s the key. You don’t have to get there today, but you’re on the way. Thanks for listening.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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