Why not just do the thing now?

I spoke with a business owner this week. She is spinning her wheels in her business and operating in perpetual crisis mode.

She wanted to understand why she is not doing what she knows she needs to do to grow her business.

This desire to know why you are not doing something is very common.

Yet this approach represents an error in thinking.

The error in thinking is the notion that if you get to the why, it will somehow solve your problem.

It can be useful and healing to get to the root of those questions. I’ve done a lot of that work personally and have found it very beneficial. The why does provide useful context.

But as one of my mentors taught me — even if you spend twenty years on the shrink’s couch getting to the root of why you don’t do it and ultimately figure it out — you still must face the fact that in order to succeed, you need to do the thing.

So why not just do the thing now?

In order to succeed, there are certain things you need to do. These things are causes.

The ultimate results are effects.

Yet you don’t do those things — the causes — that will produce the effects.

So you go on a search for why you don’t do the things you need to do:

Why don’t I ask for the business?

Why don’t I make the bold offer to the client?

Why don’t I set better boundaries with clients?

Why don’t I deal with the chronic under performance of my team?

Why don’t I deal with the toxic behavior of a key employee?

Why don’t I deal with the denial that is pervasive among my management team about the future of our business?

What’s your “why don’t I …?”

Here’s one of mine.

About ten years ago, I worked with a coach who specializes in Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA). After years of dealing with my father’s alcoholism and the impact on my family, I was angry, frustrated, resentful, and exhausted. I tried to put on a happy face but inwardly, I was pretty miserable. Simultaneously, I was starting my business and this inward misery was manifesting in my business in very unproductive ways.

The ACOA coach gave me a list of symptoms that are very common to ACOAs that impact their relationships at home and at work. You can see it here.

I could relate to every single item on the list.

AND, I now had a great list of reasons why my life and business were functioning the way they were. Actually not functioning.

I knew exactly why I was not doing the things I needed to do. And I had a great list of excuses.

Not just my excuses, but excuses validated by professionals.

When I needed to make sales in my business, I had a great list of reasons why I was not doing it. Hey, I’m an ACOA!

The turning point was a decision to do it anyway — to learn sales, to learn to master my emotions, to learn to create healthy boundaries, to create new habits.

Don’t get me wrong. There is real value in understanding why you don’t do things and healing those wounds. For me, the primary value now is the ability to recognize residual thought patterns that no longer serve me and shift those in the moment.

Yet the true healing comes from doing the thing which needs to be done. To learn to do the thing that will move me forward. To move from victim to owner.

You can change this pattern.

For example, I recently started practicing Pilates to complement my Jiu-Jitsu training. I have limited flexibility in my hips and shoulders. To improve in Jiu-Jitsu, I decided to pursue focused training to increase my flexibility.

Pilates trains infrequently used muscles like the psoas and transverse abdominis to stabilize the core — and thus create greater mobility in the joints.

The biggest challenge of Pilates is not physical. It is mental. It is learning how to coordinate breathing while activating infrequently used muscles and relaxing dominant muscles. So while I’m trying to contract my inner abs and breathe into my back, my teacher is telling me “Turn off your glutes!”

I could have spent months being angry about why I never learned how to use these muscles.

But I still would need to learn to do it anyway.

I smile at the victory of knowing that now when I recognize a problem, instead of wondering why the problem exists, I simply make a decision to address it. Life and business flows much more easily.

When it comes to issues impacting sales and profits that stem from psychic wounds, we somehow feel the need to search for the why and yet we still have to do the thing anyway.

What does this mean for your company?

If your business is not growing because you never learned sales, you can spend a bunch of time figuring out who to blame because you never learned sales. And then you will still have to learn sales.

Or you can decide right now to learn sales.

If your business is not growing because you never learned to delegate, or set boundaries, or deal with conflict, or FILL IN THE BLANK, you can spend a bunch of time figuring out who to blame because you never learned FILL IN THE BLANK.

And then you will still have to learn FILL IN THE BLANK.

Or you can decide right now to learn FILL IN THE BLANK.

So how do you learn to do FILL IN THE BLANK?

Information is not the problem.

The decision is.

The way to learn what you need to learn is by doing it.

So get a teacher and get started.

If you want to learn how to build a business and grow a company, let me know.