What makes more sense than waiting for outright failure is to learn to pay attention to those subtle wake-up calls that speak to you each day. Let’s consider some of these warning signs:
Boredom
One such wake-up call is boredom. A common way to deal with boredom is to come up with distractions to keep yourself entertained. However, the answers to boredom cannot be found outside yourself, through a new hobby or some other diversion. What you need to do is search within yourself to discover just what the boredom means. Only then can you make a real, meaningful change to bring a spark back to your life.
Related to boredom is confusion. Confusion is another subtle sign that can be easily dismissed by focusing on something that’s less confusing. When we’re confused, we feel uncomfortable, even incompetent, especially if we’re perfectionistic entrepreneurs. But confusion is a valuable sign that a stable pattern has been interrupted. Stepping back, examining your motives and role in a given situation, and understanding your partner’s motives and role are important to clearing confusion and moving forward.
A potent warning sign that change is needed is when we engage in habitual behavior, even though it doesn’t work anymore. It’s a strange fact of life that once we get something working, it doesn’t work forever. In fact, just at the point that you get something working really well, it usually starts to decline. Such is the nature of change.
Therefore, it’s very important to assess your habits. You’ve developed habits because they’re convenient mechanisms for getting things done without having to give them much thought. However, when the habit really doesn’t serve the purpose anymore, stop doing it! It’s better to do nothing than to continue pursuing a habit that may have even become counterproductive.
Turning Points
Life’s major turning points are another time for important changes. The natural turning points in life, which we’ve come to expect and accept anyway, are also a time to reevaluate our goals and values. Graduating from high school or college, getting married, giving birth to your first child, receiving a job promotion, turning fifty, and losing a parent, are all such turning points. Because of acquiring wealth and the leisure time that goes along with it, entrepreneurs are often able to take advantage of turning points to enhance their lives personally and professionally.
Since these turning points are bound to happen anyway, it seems foolish to deny them. Why not plan ahead? Change is inevitable with each step along the developing progressions of life. Even though you can’t know for certain what each turning point will bring you, you can at least recognize that change is happening and be alert to the phenomenon.
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