Never confuse efforts for results!

In my book “The Prosperous Leader” I mention 10 great quotes I learned from my father. In this post, I will discuss the first one “never confuse efforts for results”.

In my own work with Entrepreneurs and SMB’s, one of the biggest challenges in reaching success is the tendency to either “blame” others for their failures or to find “excuses” why things didn’t work out.

Covey calls this, outside in vs. inside out. Meaning people tend to excuse their own shortcomings and failures because someone else is to blame. Their thinking goes like this: I can change and achieve my goals or success if “someone else” (fill in the name) would change first. i.e. If my boss would just change, then I would change. The problem is that we cannot control how people act, we can only control how we react. The only person we can change is ourselves.

The other challenge is using excuses. Many are so used to “negative thinking” that they automatically think negatively. Dr. Daniel Amen calls it ANT’s (automatic negative thinking). We automatically assume things wont work out or predict failure and therefore we don’t even try.

Interestingly enough 95% of things we worry about never happen, yet we keep on worrying! Additionally, the biggest problem is not failing it’s the fear of failure that doesn’t allow us to succeed.

So remember to squash the ANT’s.