Someone recently told me he had had a brilliant first 3 months of the year, but the second quarter had been “mixed”.
Discussing it further, and looking for what changed three months ago, we discovered…
…We discovered: Hotel Days! Those monthly / quarterly days away from the office, in a hotel, with notepad, thinking time, and strategic focus. Or rather, we discovered the lack of Hotel Days.
You see, one of his planned quarterly hotel days had slipped from the schedule. Primarily because that was at a point when things were going well. The result was that, although he was a regular Hotel Day’er, he hadn’t had one for quite some time.
An old lesson re-learned. When things are going well, if we aren’t careful, we tend to stop doing the things that have got us there!
Hotel days: Yes, you need them when you don’t think you need them!!!
Because life has a quirky way of testing whether you want just to improve a little to get you over a short term rut, or whether you really are serious about success in the true sense.
Danger! When things start to go well, we tend to stop doing the things that are working for us!!
So what stops us doing these right things?
a) “interference”
We have a sort of success inhibitor, and our subconscious says “that’s high enough for you, my lad!” and starts to limit us. It gives us our old enemy “interference”, that self doubt, that niggle that says “are you sure this is right? Can’t be. No let’s just hold on here, and go back to what we’ve always done”.
b) Complacency
We think we’ve cracked it! There, it worked. We are now successful. Good, let’s stop.
With Hotel Days, the reason they get dropped too easily is that the system hasn’t been established properly. When things need to be sorted at the outset, and goals need to be set, the need for Hotel Days is obvious, as is the agenda for the day.
But when things start to go well, the need is less obvious, less immediate. And the agenda becomes a little hazy. The result is that even if we see it in the diary, we start to question the merits of it… after all there are fires to fight elsewhere. So we default back to what we used to do.
The solution:
Create an unswerving, unquestionable system. If it’s in the diary, it happens.
Know success, enjoy it, and know you can do more, be more, have more.
Continuing to grow is success.
When you stop growing, you stop being successful.
Success is the journey, not the destination.
Having Hotel days is part of the success. Doing your Visualis-ACTION techniques is part of the success. Having Vision, setting goals, living the journey… all these things are the success.