When things don’t go as planned, there’s a tendency to back off and let opportunities fade away, or let others handle things while you stand on the sideline.  While a sharing of expertise on projects can be worthwhile, other times not stepping up and leaving things to others can become a negative pattern.  Are you feeling reluctant to try new things because you don’t want to fail or you feel you’re in uncharted territory? 

In our careers we’re often confronted with new challenges and it’s this reluctance to sail ahead that makes the difference between successful business people and those less successful.

“He’ll get the offer, so there’s no sense positioning myself for it.”  “No matter how much I market, it won’t change my client return ratio.”  “There are so many others that do what I do, regardless of my speciality or branding, the client can’t tell us apart and I probably won’t get the business.”  “I can do it, but if they can’t see that, I’m not going to bother asking.”  If any of this sounds like you – or some similar version of career reluctance - then it’s time to revamp your career commitment and relook your strategies to turn your results around.

The first step will be to make a new commitment to your work.  Without that willingness and belief in the possibility of new results and your deserving of them, along with your belief in your capabilities, then this list below won’t apply.  (Hint:  If you weren’t willing to revamp things or work towards improving your career outlook, then you probably wouldn’t be reading this).

1.  Make a list of successes you’ve caused within the last 6 months to a year. 
2.  Examine the list and circle any similarities (noting dissimilarities) in how those came about.
3.  Recognize specific actions you took that led to positive results to decide if you’re willing and able to replicate them.
4.  Make a list of anyone who was your ambassador or a beneficial contact then to retap them if needed.
5.  Decide your most important current objectives for your business or projects now and what resources you’ll need.
6.  Let go of any projects you honestly don’t feel ready or able to head up and don’t fault your decision to do so.
7.  Notice if your reluctance has to do with stronger personalities that surround you and practice being assertive, while never exhibiting any feelings of distrust or jealousy in what they do.
8.  You can delegate by empowering others and demonstrating appreciation, while remaining in control of a project.

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Sometimes prospective clients investigate coaching with me because they are simply looking for open windows.  That is, they aren’t sure about the change or changes they want to make and they take steps towards an open window to see if there is anything there that will help make them clearer.  They are in the discovery phase and they want to run their ideas by someone who can understand where they are and hear themselves talk about it. 

It’s a healthy approach to consider your options with an expert who knows how to listen and feedback what they hear from you, so you can hear it with a fresh ear.  However, you may be someone who does too much window shopping, dragging out decisions or never even going in the store, letting time pass and waiting till frustration or forced circumstances cause you to act.

Someone once said to me when I was being indecisive about signing up for a program I wanted to do, ”you can certainly wait, but what will happen is more time will pass and the cost of this program will go up.”  That didn’t seem horrible, but it also put the delaying my goals in perspective for me.  I’d already been waiting to get started and make some changes.  I didn’t want to keep waiting – and I didn’t want to have to pay more.

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Every woman knows that getting rid of junk always feels good after the fact–that is, after the work has been done. It’s not always easy to set the time aside to clear out unnecessary items from your home or office, but these 5 reasons might give you career-development incentives to take the time to declutter, especially if you have been procrastinating in doing it:

1. Increases energy.  Any new change or improvement requires your energy, time and focus while launching new ideas or projects require your creative input to plan without forgetting any missing pieces.  Whenever you walk past that pile of unattended papers or sort through clothes in your wardrobe that don’t fit or are too tired looking, your brain tires. You can’t afford that drain when you’re looking to progress. Set aside a weekend morning or two evenings to plow through and discard as needed. It’s true it takes an initial output of energy, but your accomplished feeling will increase your energy when it’s done much like exercising initally is somewhat tiring, but then gives you an added boost of energy. 

2. Boosts confidence.  Piles of unfinished work are constant reminders of your stopping and starting, yet not finishing. When you’re trying to make a change, you need all the confidence votes you can muster to remind you of your ability to follow through and complete your objective.  The Fly Lady has a 15-minute at a time, step-by-step method to help you get started.  The Unclutterer also offers you a method to purge stuff.  If it’s clothing or other personal items you’ve not used in more than a year, think of those less fortunate who can use them more and donate them. 

3. Lightens your workload, minimizes distractions.  Don’t fool yourself by straightening and organizing piles, creating new email folders in your inbox to dump emails you think you’ll read later, or spreading out reading materials in different rooms so they don’t feel so overwhelming.  This creates twice the work because you haven’t distinguished de-cluttering from organizing and you’re revisiting information more often than you should.  Give books or magazines to your library.  Make one rule never to add a possession to your wardrobe or even your abode without discarding one item in it’s place.  Make a second rule to go through mail, newspapers and magazines a maximum of twice.  You will save time and alleviate distraction from your bigger goals.

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When we don’t build our field of dreams, it’s often because we don’t want to invest time and energy in naming and detailing our most cherished goals unless we can be sure they’ll happen.  Yet it’s odd that we’re willing to waste so much time walking around and surveying the wrong fields and putting our energy into less rewarding projects.    

It’s as if our goal is to create the perfect field itself. We keep planting fresh sod and raccoons come and turn it over looking for grubs, and the sod doesn’t take root.  But at this point most of you give up.  In fact, and I speak from my own grass-growing and goal setting experiences, you will win this competition if you keep on replanting.  Here’s your step-by-step guide for laying out that perfect field of dreams: 

1. Write Goals Down —  To make your ideas concrete, write them down.  A popular 1979 Harvard study of students and other similar studies have demonstrated that those who write down goals far more often achieve them, than those who don’t write them down.  So this should strengthen the importance of this step for you.   There has been some research done on the kinesthetic relation between your ideas being handwritten to your brain’s receptivity of the writing, plus you can’t always carry your computer around to input fresh ideas.  Even so, typing your ideas is faster and you may be less concerned with neatness.  But however you get your ideas down, brain dump all your ideas first, then write down the eventual details of your chosen goal.  

2.  Choose Your  Goal — You can’t have what you want until you know what it is. Imagine, Choose, Create in this order.  You may want several goals that all seem beneficial, but to get started, choose one.  You will manifest it more quickly and be on to the next, rather than continuing to rethink or reconstruct your one idea over and over if you give this phase a fixed time incubation period.  Yes, knock it down and criticize it, question it with varying perspectives, but then move on to implementation.  Let “simplicity and speed” be your motto so you don’t drag out getting the result you want and you accomplish it with less effort.  You’re now putting out your clear intention to the universe, rather than just imagining it, and the universe will listen and begin to reflect results back to you. 

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Reflect on where you were at this time last year in your business, in your confidence, in your financial well-being, and in how you were able to serve others and provide the gift of your business to them.  You’ll no doubt see some remarkable offerings you put forth. 

To continue to move ahead in 2010 you’ll want to apply these tips as you prepare your new year’s resolutions.  Many of these were inspired by a discussion among Women Entrepreneurs on Linkedin, as they looked over their learnings from the trenches and re-chose what’s important to focus on.

Tip 1.  Commit to better acknowledge your skills, talents and your contributions to others even more than you focus on areas of improvement and new learning.

Tip 2.  Let go of everything having to be perfect – including you – and learn to prioritize.  Do your best prep work and then get on with taking actions.  Don’t let your desire for getting it right hold you back from accomplishing the bigger picture.  In this way, you can aim the growth of your company to be even higher!

 3.  Remember that listening is twice as important as talking and it’s the best way to learn about your customer’s needs and how to serve them, rather than putting forth your great ideas and hoping your customers want that.  After all, business is all about meeting a need in the marketplace and their ideas could be your bigger moneymaker!   Call them, email them, mail them regularly.  Establish a true relationship model of service in your business and be determined not to lose touch with your customers.

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