Bringing your business forward and to being tough with your running by using the same mental strategies
As a passionate marathon runner and online marketer, I’m surprised at how the same type of approach can help with your running and at the same time pushing your business forward.
An article in the latest edition of Competitor’s Best opened my eyes for the similarity in both activities, running and entrepreneurship. It’s an article by Kelly O’Mara with the title “Get Tough With These 5 Mental Race Strategies” revealing these methods. Progress with your running and bringing your business forward with the same strategies.
For an even more detailed report on the same topic, read Jacky Anderson’s excellent article “35 Amazing Health Benefits of Running, According to Science (+10 Tips for Beginner)”
Both runners and entrepreneurs, building their business face the same obstacles during the race or the building-up phase. “This sucks. It’s terrible. Why I’m doing this.”
We all go through these phases, and the risk is high that you’ll give up if you don’t have the correct tools for a mental strategy.
Bringing your business forward and continuing to the finish line in a marathon race pass through the same risk zone for failures if the tools are not in place.
Try these strategies. They can be the difference between failure and success.
Visualize How To Bring Your Business Forward
In business, you often listen to the advice to have a plan B. What it’s all about is to visualize scenarios not calculated in the original plan. To prepare yourself mentally how to deal with failures and to come back on track again.
The head coach at RunnersConnect, Jeff Gaudette, talks about preparing your brain for how painful a race could be. That will help you deal better with the pain.
The same goes for entrepreneurship. Prepare yourself and visualize what could go wrong. It will help you to deal with the failure in a better way, and to come back on the right track again quickly.
From a more positive and progressive point of view, you can also use some visualization tricks. Study other entrepreneurs who successfully have built their business. Figure out some habits they have and that you believe are crucial to their success. Try to copy those patterns. Pay a lot of attention to those trends, in such way that you feel that they are pulling you when bringing your business forward.
It’s like a “free ride” based on other people’s success recipe.
Push Your Business Forward By Reframing The Bad Things
As an entrepreneur, you know that you will fail, not once but several times. It’s part of the game, so to say. You also know that every single failure will teach you something that you will use for future approaches and intents.
The famous example of Thomas Edison who tried thousands of times to find the right metal to use for his revolutionary invention of the electric bulb is proof of real entrepreneurship. Every time he failed he also learned something. This increasing knowledge in his particular area improved his skills and finally it resulted in the first electric bulb.
The strategy to pick up from this “failing process” is to reframe the failure the correct way.
The most common way is to ask “why?” “Why did this happen?” By changing the word “Why” to “what,” the whole topic will get an entirely different approach.
Questions like “What is good about this?” or “What can I learn from this? ” will force you to search for an affirmative answer. It’s all about how you can use the failure to bring your business forward.
Maybe you launched a marketing campaign, and the ROI never reached an acceptable level. After your analysis, you come to the conclusion that you’re using the wrong keywords for Google search.
By using the phrase, “What can I learn from this?”, your mind automatically will come up with a good answer.
The last little touch is to use the correct time frame of “your answer.” Do not say: “By using the right keywords my future campaign will be better.” Instead, you need to say: “From now and onwards focusing on the appropriate keywords, all my campaigns will be successful.”
Coop With Your Failures
To talk positively to yourself is powerful, according to Adrienne Taren, who is studying neurobiology at the University of Pittsburg. Her focus is very much on sports but fits perfectly well into the business environment.
The same way pain is a natural part of a runner’s life when running a marathon race; failures are following every entrepreneur on the way to bring your business forward.
The technique Adrienne Taren is suggesting is to treat pain and failures in a kind of external position.
Spending too much energy on dealing with the failure and trying to not think in a negative way, will actually induce you to perform worse. If you instead let negative thoughts come and go, there are evidence of a mindfulness providing better performance.
Try to separate yourself from the failures as much as possible. View them as a natural part of your journey. Make the necessary analysis to learn from the failures, but then let it go away.
Frustration is usually a result of not letting your failures or other negative events go away. Instead, you dive deeper and deeper into to the issue, until a mode of frustration appears.
To view pain and failures as a separate part of your project isn’t easy. It takes a lot of practice to dominate the technique. However, the effort will pay off, and it’s worth a serious try.
Focus Focus And Focus
As a passionate marathon runner, I know that focus is key. Serious training for running a marathon race takes time, and if the focus isn’t there, the probability is high that you’ll never reach your goal.
When I decided 2011 to run the Boston Marathon 2013, it was all about focus. To run the Boston Marathon, you need to qualify even to get access to apply for a starting entrance. That qualification time was 3:54:00 for my age category (60 years). The whole 2011 training program focused on one single thing. Run the qualification race in December on time on or below the qualification time.
Without the right focus, my actual qualification race time of 3:47:42 wouldn’t be possible.
You often compare entrepreneurship to a marathon race. In fact, there are so much these two activities have in common, but the long-term goal is probably one of the most important similarity.
To keep a focus on your business, then the ultimate aim is crucial. People who start a business with the only goal to earn some money will fail in most of the cases. When obstacles begin to appear, and you don’t know where to focus, it’s so easy to run out of everything.
No matter if training for a marathon race or a business of your choice, vision, and mission will help you to focus on the right things. If you are working online the huge distraction sources can destroy everything if you don’t focus, focus and focus again.
“Focus on being productive instead of busy” – Tim Ferris
Disconnecting For Better Performance
We are no machines but humans. Machines do not deal with emotions and feelings. Humans do!
As a passionate runner, it happens that you just don´t feel sufficiently motivated to do your scheduled training session for the day. (I have to admit that it happens to me quite seldom.) Don’t oblige yourself to do something when you find it difficult to mobilize sufficient focus.
To make a planned and controlled disconnection can sometimes be a necessary “mental vacation,” to come back even stronger than before.
It´s true that a serious entrepreneur sometimes has to work around the clock. You´ll do it with pleasure and enthusiasm because this is a passion for which you´re living.
But sometimes, as a human, you´ll need to disconnect.
Look after that all necessary tasks are sat on autopilot, unplug from the Internet and even try to turn off your cellphone.
Take a day or two completely off and enjoy other things in life that are important to you. When back in business again you´ll notice something very peculiar. You´ll be reloaded with energy, and your performance will be on top again.
Focus and performance go together, and when you´ll find the right balance, you will do a better work and at the same time feel much more motivated and happy with your life.
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Jan O. Nilsson – 5 Mental Strategies To Bring Your Business Forward <== Go to the top of page