What are you waiting for right now?
Patience is indeed a virtue and a valuable business asset. The thing is, we need to draw a distinction, between waiting for our plans to come together and waiting for things to “just get better.” One of the great lessons in business is that things never, just get better. Things only get better, when we take wiser actions. Our results today reflect our past actions, so if we want a better future, we need to take the initiative and take better actions today.
Initiative is in short supply
The world is full of people who complain, but stay the same. They want things to improve, but they are unwilling to take the initiative. Instead, they wait and hope. The reason so few people show initiative, is that it’s something we have to do for ourselves. We take the initiative, we are not given the initiative. In other words, if you are currently waiting for something amazing to happen, you will almost certainly do better if you make it happen instead.
For example:
- You can wait until that person asks you for a date or you can ask them yourself, today.
- You can wait until a disgruntled or ecstatic client sends you their opinion of your service or you can survey your entire customer base and find out what everyone is thinking, today.
- You can wait until “some day” before you relocate to a house in the country or you can get things moving, today.
- You can wait until the New Year to make your resolutions or you can make them, today.
- You can blame the economy for your lack of sales inquiries or you can do something to increase them, today.
- You can wait until your business is going broke before you get expert help you need or you can get that help, today.
The bottom line: We can either shape our future or we can hang around and hope things just get better. Hope is not an effective business strategy.