Beata Leyland
Business Owner & Author of this article
Pressure of results and comparing ourselves to others is a part of human nature but obsessing about results it’s our choice.
Intrigued ?
Why we plan how we plan?
If you want to achieve something, you need to study hard, work hard and be patient.
That’s a slogan which many of us heard as children/teenagers and there’s a lot of truth in that, but I wouldn’t put this as a golden formula.
Achieving your goals is indeed connected with amount of effort over time, but a huge additional value contains life-experience and changes in us while pursuing our plan.
Life lessons many times change our end goal as we discover that we often chose our field of study and career path based on our surrounding family and peers wanting us to succeed than our own passion and ambitions.
To have a healthy attitude towards a task , ambition must be greater than ego as ambition pushed by ego is a disaster.
Let me describe you how I understand both terms.
Ambition I would define as a driver to push us to do more. An internal creator which lives in all of us as creativity.
Ego is a part of us and if well-balanced will allow us to be calm and confident but if not balanced it can easily destroy us.
Ego for me is like vagus nerve in our body, a very complex nerve which can help us to make it every day.
How to spot problems?
Let’s imagine having a goal to convert your leads into clients.
Your aim is to have 10% ratio as your current ratio is 2%.
After careful research you hire a company which generates you 10%, but all potential clients are not what you are looking for.
Have you achieved the target?
Have you properly defined the target at the beginning of the project?
Are you not satisfied with your goal or the service of a 3rd party company?
Or maybe your goal changed during the time of running a project?
What if your competitors clearly do better and you can’t get how to outbid them?
Or maybe due to hard work for a long time, you are so stressed and tired that making any decision is a draining and impossible task?
Sounds familiar, right?
Let me break down the problem one by one.
Where the pressure comes from?
Do you not have enough clients?
Or you just hired few a people and they are not busy enough?
How is your budget?
If you struggle with these it means that you need to get to the point of clarity in your head to redefine goals or rather confront goals with reality, talk honestly with people who work for you and ask yourself what drives you nuts.
Which problem should be solved first?
Does the pressure come from the fact that last year income was higher than this year?
Recession is coming and you don’t have risk mitigation implemented as a part of your business plan.
Maybe you had a bad review or peer pressure?
Are you so overworked that the only thing which you see are marketing figures and your main goal is to bid one day after another?
Analysing situation is healthy but obsessing about figures is truly optional.
Here I would also suggest to take a break until the clarity of your brain will be back and see how much figures and how much ego drives you crazy.
You already should know that progress is not linear day after day.
It’s linear but has ups and downs and these are checkpoints, moments where you can ask yourself what happened.
What can you change?
What is in your hand and what not?
Recession is rather external than internal so maybe it is time to change something in the model which always worked?
Maybe consultant, books, podcasts, self-studying of any sort which can help you to understand what to do if… ?
Maybe less comparing with others in an unhealthy way and more on self-esteem and rest.
Less is more, especially while dealing with reaction of the crowd.
There’s a difference between reacting ASAP to a client’s inquiry and reacting ASAP to someone’s like, invitation or comment.
You can do it once or twice per day or hire someone who can do it on your behalf.
What if your biggest struggle is the fact that your main competitors outdo you?
You just copied almost everything from his method, yet he is better?
What if you are obsessed by own KPI to the point that your metrics are the first thing to think about in the morning, and last thing before going to bed or even in bed?
How much here ego calls you and how much is your ambition?
Maybe you spent way too much time scrolling results and your decision-making process and clarity are way long in a deep sleep?
Mhh, what about … yes , taking a break for as long as needed and understand that you are not your results.
Why to outdo your competitors if you are you not them?
What you should change is your product launch, client outreach, methodology, risk mitigation and your way to work to drive yourself crazy about outbidding someone.
What needs to be healed in you?
Pressure of results and comparing ourselves to others is a part of human nature but obsessing about results it’s our choice.
If you think that I don’t have periods of doing it, you are deeply wrong.
Simply I’ve noticed the correlation between these periods.
I always do it when my brain tells me to run as 2 weeks ago I had better earnings and instead of using this calmer time to take a rest before another sprint I am obsessed to outbid me from 2 weeks ago ignoring all external factors and ignoring myself.
Once I’ve learned that, now during a lighter 2 week period I can create systems which can help me organise the company better, or self-study or write articles in advance ( like now ) then I know that during high-stress times I have tools, tangible mechanisms which I can use to don’t overwork myself and keep clarity in my head.
Comparison to others will always steal our happiness and make us unhappy because we can’t be everywhere.
We are not the ones to whom we compare ourselves too.
The only person who you can realistically outbid is you from yesterday.
You can get inspired by others, see what they do and how but copying someone’s strategy is road to failure.
The most stressful moment for me is making decisions when I am overworked and I know that I must decide something. How much easier would it be, if I would be able to easily delegate part of my agenda with a better system?
Do I have a go-to person to help me? (maybe us 😊) or simply have some of the time-consuming tasks already done.
Traps of results are relevant for all of us.
Progress is to make sure every day your head is open to learn new things, to don’t close yourself and understand that sometimes it requires few steps back or rerouting.
All plans must be adjusted and modified in order to run in the long term.
Give yourself space to learn and adjust in a smart way!
And if you need a helping hand we are here for you!
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