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Guest post by: Loren Fogelman Become an Author

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Opportunities abound. You are only limited by your thoughts. The option to do something new and different is always present. Once you begin to envision yourself as you want to be, then the path for reaching your goal is already being created.

Look around you, or in the news, there are many miracles. Lance Armstrong beating cancer not once, but twice and then winning the Tour de France. Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile, setting a precedent for runners. Physical handicaps might prevent some people from functioning in society, but others overcome them and excel. One person remains stuck while another exceeds beyond obvious limitations.

Let's be honest. Most of us don't like change, going to great lengths to maintain the status quo. Have you ever found yourself holding onto something, whether a job or a relationship, long after it stopped working for you?

Entrepreneurs get caught in the trap of holding onto what is predictable and familiar. Change involves risk. Fears are connected to taking risks.



What if you fail?

Make mistakes?

Are disappointed?

Or succeed?

Holding onto something for too long, whether an old way of doing business or relationships which stopped being supportive a long time ago, will only hold you back from growing your business. Entrepreneurs who are inflexible, resisting change, increase the risk of losing business.

Consider one significant change you would like to make in your business. Pick one which is aligned with your talents where just the thought of doing it gets you excited. What would that one thing be? Can you see yourself doing it?

Connect with the vision, seeing yourself having achieved your goal. How do you feel about it? Is there any resistance? Doubt? Hesitation?

Any of those thoughts have the ability to prevent you from taking action, reaching your goal and experiencing long lasting results. Changing those thoughts is possible.

You are more likely to reach your goal successfully, if you know how ready you are to take action. There are five stages of change. Assessing your level of readiness helps to determine if you ought to take action now or need more time to prepare.

1. Status Quo. At this point, you don't see any need to do things differently. You are satisfied with things just the way they are now.

2. Research. Considering making a change, but not really sure yet. Researching the pros and cons, educating yourself, would be helpful to decide if you want to put any more effort into considering your goal now. You might move forward, shelve the entire idea or put it on hold for now.

3. Game Plan. Okay, now you have done the research and realize you would benefit from goal setting. This is where you develop the game plan before taking action.

4. Implementation. You did all the research, created your plan and now it is time to put it into action.

5. Systems. You have reached your goal and now developing systems to organize the process turning something new into part of your routine.

Ideally you want to work through each stage to decrease your resistance and increase your success. The right way to do something is the action you are most likely to take.

Any time you are ready to take on a new challenge, take a moment to assess what level of readiness you are at. Take one step at a time. As you work through each step, maintain focus of your goal. As you clarify your goals and release the resistance you will increase the outcome for success.

By the way, sometimes it just does not work out as planned or you are unable to maintain that level of success. This does not mean you failed. Instead recognize that you might need to make some corrections. Instead of being in the implementation or systems stage, you might need to go back to the research or game plan stage for awhile to review what happened.

Go back to the drawing board. Review what worked and which parts did not work. See how you can re-work the weak areas in your plan. What can you do differently to fill the gap? Find the solutions. Once you have it all figured out, then implement. From your previous experience, you are likely to have a stronger, more solid plan.

Remain committed to your goal, even when things don't work out as planned. Instead of putting yourself down, focus on the successes you had along the way. Remember the opportunities are there. Once you begin looking for the solutions, they will appear. They always do.

Activity: Write down your next business goal. According to the five stages of change, which stage are you at? What would you need to do to move from the stage you are at to the next level of change? List all of those steps you need to do before you can move to the next stage of change. Put a begin and end date on them. See if any of them can be delegated to your assistant.

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