Is Your Growth Being Slowed?

If you are an entrepreneur, or a small business owner seeking faster growth, you are going to want to ensure that your mindset is working for you, not against you.

Skill, talent, and work ethic will only carry you so far.

The thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes that you hold about your life, your business, and how much success you can create are incredibly influential in whether your business succeeds or fails.

I have come to see that without a doubt, your results are the product of your thoughts, and your thoughts drive your action or, in some cases, your inaction.

So, let’s take a look at 5 common entrepreneurial mindset traps that can slow the growth of your business.

Trap #1 – Fear of Making Decisions

There are only two options to any decision: yes or no. Unfortunately many entrepreneurs let fear get the better of them when it is time to pull the trigger.

“Maybe” or “I’ll think about it” leaves you mired in indecision that weighs you down and prevents forward progress.

It’s like tying an anchor around your waist, or in terminology that I prefer, it’s like trying to get your boat up on plane while dragging your anchor.

Highly successful entrepreneurs have an uncanny ability to see opportunity, assess a situation, quickly and deliberately consider the pros and cons, and then DECIDE and move on.

They make a decision and act – one way or the other, and they build greater momentum moving their businesses forward.

The ability to DECIDE in large part comes from confidence, and confidence comes from success and being in action.

Remember, if time and evidence later prove you made an incorrect decision (and it will happen), you can always take corrective action and keep moving forward.

Forward progress is the goal.

Trap #2 – Imposter Syndrome

For some entrepreneurs, especially those who have come from a corporate background – with all of the benefits and perks of a “real” office and support system – bootstrapping in a spare bedroom or similar locale can lead to something called Impostor Syndrome.

This is a psychological phenomenon, also known as the Fraud Syndrome, in which people are unable to internalize, accept, and feel good about their accomplishments.

No matter what you call it, it is only going to hamper your progress and slow your growth.

Here are some signs that you struggle with Impostor Syndrome:

• Do you worry that people will find out you are secretly not who you say you are?
• If you achieve some success, do you dismiss it as luck or good timing?
• Do you feel like you’ve tricked others into thinking you are more successful than you actually are?

Impostor Syndrome is real, I went through it myself.

What helped me the most was finally DECIDING that enough was enough and that I was going to do everything I could to turn the “confidence” corner.

The funny thing about confidence is that is becomes easier to achieve and easier to deal with (from an impostor position) when you are in massive action and making things happen in your business.

At some point, I realized that it no longer mattered where my “corporate office” was.

What was much more important was the value I was providing and being rewarded for.

Trap #3 – Fear of Success

Closely related to the Impostor Syndrome is the fear of success.

Do you ever feel that you don’t deserve your success?  Well, you’re not alone.

But this is another case of us getting in our own way and letting negative thought patterns slow our growth.

Don’t get trapped in this mindset.

You deserve all of the success you can create for yourself.  Period.  Amen.

If you solve problems and provide incredible value to your customers, backed up with great service, and your customers, clients, or patients appreciate how you make their lives better, and they reward you for doing so, then congratulations… that is the very essence of business.

There is no luck involved when building a successful business.

There are great ideas, good value, massive action, and good marketing.

Again, you deserve all the success you work hard to achieve, and remember, you are the only person who can define what it means for you to be successful.

Trap #4 – If I Just Work Harder

Most people on this planet are working ten times harder than they have to, because they have a belief that you have to work hard to create more success.

I’m not saying success doesn’t require hard work, but after we buy into that, we never stop doing it.

The danger is when we don’t ever explore how we could create more success without continuing to have our foot pressing the accelerator to the hundred-mile-an-hour speed.

One of the best ways to expose yourself to alternative avenues to success, is to work with other like-minded entrepreneurs in a mastermind group.

I explore this powerful tool for business growth in this podcast episode, and I heartily invite you to have a listen to learn more!

So, are you working harder than you have to because of your mindset… because you believe that’s what you have to do in order to be successful?

Remember, you either have a good belief system that is supporting your growth, or you have a limiting belief system that causes you to see the world through a lens and filter that will never allow you to see what is possible.

Trap #5 – Hopelessness

There’s also a mindset of hopelessness that one can be afflicted by.  The, “I don’t know what to do, so I’m just going to give up” mentality.

What we have to realize is that there is a direct correlation between our thoughts, the actions we take, and the results we have.

Let’s say you’re somebody who says, “I can’t do it.  This is too hard for me.  There are too many steps.  There are too many things going on.  I don’t want to figure it out.  I don’t want to do that.”

If that’s your mantra (“life’s too hard” or “things are too hard” or “I don’t want to have to learn things”), you’ll find you’ll resist taking action.

That lack of action will result in your failure to achieve a particular outcome.

On the flip side, perhaps the person next to you has the attitude, “Well, if I don’t know how to do it, I’m going to figure it out.”

That’s his mindset.

In this mindset, he’s being shown a path where there are a lot of new things he has to learn, and he decides to figure it out or hire someone to figure it out.  Now he’s on track generate results.

Instead of saying “I can’t” or “I don’t know how” or “I don’t have it” or “I’m broke” or any of those limiting belief statements, I would ask, “What would have to happen for me to make this investment? What would have to happen, so I could have that? What would have to happen, so I could create this thing that I don’t know how to create?”

Now my brain goes into a discovery process.

Now I’m in a creative-solution-oriented mode where I’m searching.  My brain’s trying to solve the problem of “Okay, we need money” or “Okay, we need a new helper” or “Okay, I don’t know how to do this; I need to learn it.”

So you open up and you expand your possibilities rather than limit them.

Conclusion

Understanding mindset and the power, both positive and negative, it can have over your business and your life is important.

However, mindset can be tricky, and we’re often limited by our own perspectives.

You can only see through your own eyes.

Because of that, it’s beneficial to work with a coach – someone who has a broader perspective and who will keep you accountable.

They will be able to help you identify if you are mired in any of these mindset traps and steer you back on the path towards positive growth and personal success.