Have you fallen prey to the trap of The Traditional Business Success Model?
Mainstream media is reporting on something a Harvard trained psychologist calls “arrival fallacy”, which essentially is… “the illusion that once we make it, we will reach lasting happiness.”
Now this thing I call “The Traditional Business Success Model” is all about the shortcomings that arrival fallacy illustrates but specifically for business owners. So what is it? It’s something you’ve likely been told all your life until it became the message your inner voice now repeats all the time.
It goes something like this…
The Traditional Business Success Model
Work Harder, Work Longer – That is the path to success.
Make business the centre of your world and it will lead to the financial success you seek
Once you have financial success… then you can slow down, take a vacation, spend more time with your family, exercise. Then you can be happy and have a life!
But it’s a flawed model.
You may have bootstrapped the launch of your company and felt it necessary to wear all the hats early on. You may have told yourself, once I earn a certain income or get to a certain level of growth, then I can not work as much and begin to take care of my health, reconnect with family… have a life. That’s the trap right there because working longer starts out innocently enough, then becomes habit, then unconscious habit, then deep seated belief of just the way it is and has to be. You now feel powerless to change.
On the other hand perhaps you’re well into living the trap of the traditional business success model where it’s a deeply embedded limiting belief and you are faced with the daily barrage of demands surrounding the operations and growth of your business. By struggling to keep up and always tempted by the next step the tendency is that the carrot always dangles just beyond your reach and you never achieve the happiness and the true success you really want!
In both instances you end up overwhelmed, overworked, stressed, fatigued and on the path of burnout.
That’s the trap of the traditional business success model and it has to change!
Often we need a wake up call in order to realize the need for change and to actually begin the process. Unfortunately for some, tragedy of some degree prevents it from ever being realized. I’ve experienced and seen this outcome far too often.
Don’t let it happen to you. If this can be a wake up call of sorts for you, please see the pattern you’ve been living, begin to tell yourself that it doesn’t have to be this way, and make the change you need happen.
Life it too short to remain victim to the trap of the traditional business success model!
Beginning with a degree in exercise science and kinesiology, Brent Haydey has evolved over thirty years as an entrepreneur; building four businesses, and as a health, executive, and life coach.