Do your best work then let it roll!

I want to share a simple, yet extremely valuable idea with you today. It’s all about how to improve your mindset, regarding your business.

As you know, one of the ways we protect ourselves from feeling disappointed, is to set our sights lower that we should.

For example, we start work on a project, where we know we really need X, Y and Z to happen, for the project to be a total success. However, to buffer ourselves from the pain of failure, we tell ourselves ‘it’s ‘okay’ if we just get X and Y‘. So, armed with these lower expectations we start the project.

The thing is, by insulating ourselves from the pain of disappointment in that way, we significantly limit our potential. We start off aiming for second best or third best.

Why do we do it?

Tackling a project with low expectations feels less of a risk, because we make it easier for ourselves to reach the lower objective. If we started that same project with high expectations, we would have stood a good chance of being disappointed. Most people regard that type of disappointment as failure and none of us like to fail.

Failure is painful and we are programmed to do whatever is required to avoid feeling pain, so we aim lower.

An alternative approach: Let it roll

Here’s another way to approach our business development. When I set my marketing business up in 1995, I was talking about my expectations for the initial year, with an experienced business owner. He gave me some wonderful advice, which I have lived by ever since. He explained that he never expected the best or the worst when he started anything – he simply ‘did the work’ as well as he could, then allowed the work to roll.

By eliminating the fear of failing to meet our expectations AND eliminating the damage caused by deliberately setting our sights too low, we give ourselves the freedom to put everything we have into our work. We also make it impossible to fail, so long as we do our best work and then, let it roll.

This was a massively valuable lesson for me and I hope you find it useful too. If you do, please remember to share it with your friends.