Entrepreneurs Habits: They can have tremendous success when entrepreneurs set their professional goals and meet them. It does cost them their family and personal lives, however. They may even get confused sometimes about what’s important to them in life. They often switch between diet plans, join courses for personal development, and try to figure out the key to meaningful living. They are unhappy, unproductive, and lack peace. Sometimes their goals turn into delusions, and they start thinking about whether what they are doing will make any long-term difference.
Stephen Covey did something similar, almost after 25 years of professional life. He was involved in a leadership development work with different clients across the states at the time. As a motivational speaker and trainer he had a great career ahead of him when he began to question his ideas.
He began to question how perceptions are formed and how they behave in our daily lives. He started to question his training, and how they approached their personal and professional lives wrongly. They realized that in order to have a fulfilling life, they would first need to change themselves and adapt to some laws, or basic principles of human effectiveness. These principles are true to entrepreneurs, and any other professional and personal situation involving career, health, and happiness.
1. Proactivity for Entrepreneurs – Entrepreneurs Habits
Active entrepreneurs know they are responsible for their choices and behaviors. They blame neither circumstances nor conditions. Each decision is conscious, based on values rather than conditions, which often are based on feelings.
Reactive entrepreneurs are directly affected by the environment around them. If things go well they’re feeling right. If not, its performance is directly affected by the conditions. Proactive entrepreneurs understand the way they always carry their absolute terms with them. They ‘re value-driven. They hold the ability to subordinate an impulse in favor of values, uninfluenced by the conscious or unconscious external stimuli.
It’s not what ‘s happening to you but it defines you as an entrepreneur how you respond. Every entrepreneur faces different challenges which, if proactively confronted, often leads to paradigm shifts.
2. Circle of Influence and Concern
Entrepreneurs must be self-conscious of where they focus on time and energy. What you should aim for is balance in social and professional life, which you can achieve by creating your Circle of Influence and Concerns.
Looking inward, you can realize there are things you don’t have control over, and other things you can do something about. By understanding these two circles and defining them, we can focus our energies productively, and discover proactivity. Proactive entrepreneurs focus their energies on the sphere of influence which helps them maintain positive, magnifying, and expanding their influence on the nature of their power.
Many times when they start as an entrepreneur, they tend to focus on their worrying circle. They focus on the weakness of their resources, environmental issues, circumstances, and things they don’t have control over.
They accuse, blame, and use reactive language. You plan to fail when you approach a situation with this, because as focus shifts, their circle of influence shrinks, and they slowly lose control over conditions, circumstances, and problems.
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3. The three types of control problems – Entrepreneurs Habits
You as an entrepreneur will have either direct, indirect, or no control over a situation. Direct problems are related to your behavior and your approach to situations; indirect control problems compare with the behavior of other people; no control issues are situations that you currently have control over.
Problems with direct control are mere habits. Approach issues with the right type of practice, and you’ll solve the problem quickly enough. Change the patterns that work against you, pull you out of control, and create the proper habits that work for you.
Indirect control issues are about individuals, and how you influence them. There are more than 30 separate ways of influencing man, from empathy to persuasion. Most people operate in just three or four ways and when they feel out of control choose flight or fight behavior. You can only influence people’s actions by learning new methods, bringing indirect control issues under your circle of influence.
There are no control issues to be addressed with a smile and by genuinely accepting those problems. You have to learn to live with them, even if they don’t like you. That way, you are not empowering these issues to control your reactions.
4. Growing your circle of influence
As long as values drive you, your influence will grow. As an entrepreneur you will not be bound by the influences of your competitors, markets, or negative customer growth if you can interpret, anticipate, and empathize with a situation.
Do more than your customers expect; anticipate their needs and empathize with the concerns and grievances that underlie them. When presenting your product or service, make sure that you’re offering a very focused version of the product that can benefit your customer.
Likewise, try hiring employees with your staff and employees who complement your expertise. Ask them what they can bring to the table, instead of telling them what to do and how to do it. Instead of feeling threatened by their expertise, find a way to work with them, and appreciate them for their concern as well.
The entrepreneurial activity doesn’t mean pushy, aggressive, or insensitive. It means you ‘re smartly value-driven, focused on reality, and understanding what needs to be done.
5. Influencing Consequences for Decisions
Stephen Covey rightly says “While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions.” Consequences are natural law situations. They are not under your control, and therefore out of your influential circle.
As an entrepreneur, after you come to the receiving end of the consequences, you will realize that the choices are wrong, and next time you will do that differently. They ‘re mistakes you don’t have control over. The most proactive thing you can do when you’re filled with regrets for errors is to acknowledge it, correct it, and learn from it.
6. Testing your entrepreneurial spirit with proactivity- Entrepreneurs Habits
Proactive practice should not mean going to a death camp. What you can do is recognize the ordinary events in your day-to-day life, and learn to develop proactive capacity in life and work under extraordinary pressures. Try that 30 days.
Being proactive as an entrepreneur will mean focusing on your customers, your resources, and operating from your influential circle. It means making and keeping small commitments towards yourself and your teams. In the face of problems, it means looking for creative solutions. Understand that you can be reactive.