In today’s Thursday HotSeat, we assisted the Member in focus as he ironed out a few wrinkles in his business with the help of myself and the Brains Trust.
One of the elements he touched on was the recent challenges he has faced in getting stock for one of his product lines which currently has up to a 12 month lead time.
On closer inspection, he realised that there was actually no need to continue with that struggle, as he could pivot away from that line for the time being and towards one that he was actually more passionate about. This would also give him more bandwidth and resources, making all of his efforts more potent.
This may seem like an obvious solution from the outside, as it often can be when it’s someone else’s challenge. Following the inspiration of today’s session, my questions to you are these:
Is there an area of challenge in your life or business that you are persisting with, where you ‘fight the good fight’ and consistently go the extra mile to make the situation workable?
Could there be a benefit in pivoting in a different direction and letting that situation go entirely?
As successful business leaders, we’re not strangers to the concept of hard work, and perhaps even pride ourselves on our ability to problem solve and ‘bring it’ when the chips are down. I believe this leads us to another valid question:
Is consistently investing a high level of effort, energy and focus in overcoming challenge and adversity a necessary experience to have in life or business?’
An interesting question right?
Because now we’re pondering our own expectations of winning in life and business and just how challenging or easy we expect that ride to be.
Being that we are all influenced by the echoes of experience from our parents, grandparents, well-meaning teachers and so on, it’s quite likely that we are carrying outdated or unwanted acceptance of a high degree of struggle that would have been more relevant in times gone by.
For example, we now live in a world where we can be highly leveraged by technology, far more than previous generations, yet the want to engage with and overcome tough situations is still ingrained within us as if we were contending with the challenges of our forbears like a World War or Great Depression.
What if the presence of excess challenge or adversity in our lives or business was no longer a necessity, and instead just an invitation to choose a better route, or reassess the destination, leading to way more fun, ease, enjoyment and purposeful achievement?
