You Can’t Have Both #55
If you want a different answer, you must ask a different question. When you’re “stuck” anywhere in life – your business or career, a relationship, your health, your finances, your free time or your family – if you want to see something different, you need to ask new questions. Bigger questions, bolder, challenging questions.
These questions often lead to answers that are uncomfortable, unfamiliar, even painful. After all, you already have the answers that result in your current situation. Having the answers is only the beginning. Most smart people can get to the right answer logically. Knowing is the booby prize if you think that produces lasting change.
The key to having your desired outcome is the behavior change that follows the right answers. Without that, you’ll find yourself doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results, and we know that’s the definition of insanity.
It’s difficult to instill new practices. As they say, old habits die hard.
If you want a certain result, ask people who have that result. Not one person, many people. You will discover the practices they have to attain the result you’re seeking are different than what you’re doing. It’s rarely convenient or easy. Like all things that equate to growth, there is some associated pain. Whether in your interpretation, your comfort, your resignation or moving you away from convenience.
If you want the change to sustain, you must develop the thinking, language, practices and consistent behaviors to have those intentional results. Consistent and incremental improvements are the most sustainable, and require the most discipline. It’s not easy, it is very simple.
You decide. You can have your story, or you can have the results, but you can’t have both.