YOUR BUSINESS AND YOUR MIND

Every business was once a thought before it became a thing. Business is a game; a game of the mind. The process of running a thriving business is more of a mental process than a physical one. Great business achievers think differently from majority of people. You can’t achieve much more on the outside than what you have achieved and become on the inside.

Much of what we see today in businesses is observable representation of what were going on in the minds of their owners. The depth of treasures deposited in any mind would always translate visibly in their businesses.

According to a man called Claude M. Bristol, ‘The successful people in industry have succeeded through their thinking. Their hands were helper to their brains’. I quite agree with him. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Your business, however it looks, is what your thinking has made it to be. This simply shows that, to take it to new heights, you’ve got to alter your present thought process.

The limitations we have had in businesses in the past years cannot be separated from the limit we have placed on our mind. Our number one business challenge is not economical, neither is it political, environmental, technological, but mental. All the business battle is largely mental battle.

There are several business depths and ways of ‘businessing’ that could better the business landscape than what we witness presently. But it must begin in a new way of thinking to make this to happen.

Thought Re-engineering
It is a natural law that we will never change our actions until we change the thinking that generated those actions. We are who we are in our mind first, every other thing follows. Whatever you are thinking in your business now will create your business future. I have a little question for you: Is what you are thinking today in line with what you want to happen tomorrow? If not, change your thinking fast. You thought in a certain way last year and saw the result, which you probably don’t like. To move away from there, you have to think differently.

To a very large extent, our thinking pattern is being affected by the kind of environment we are in, consciously or unconsciously. I learnt this many years ago, and since then I only allow the environment (tangible or intangible) that support the reality that I want to create, in my life or in my business. You too can do the same. Don’t be limited by what you see, transcend it.

Stretch Your Imagination
Your business haven is limited by your imagination. Albert Einstein said that, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ Knowledge could be limited but imagination cannot. Imagination is so so powerful, than we can think.

The mind has a way of completing any picture we put in it. The amazing thing is that, they come out enlarged. What picture do you have for your business this year? How does it affect your thinking? It’s your alone to answer.

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it (when you diligently pursue it). I discovered one truth about imagination and summarized it thus: imagination is real; those who acknowledge this make it a reality. There is on limit to what you can do in business – only use your imagination. A great mind is what it imagines always.

Let go of certainties; they provide restraints to what you can do. Stretch your imagination. ‘Man’s mind’, Oliver Wendell Holmes, a US Supreme Court Judge Jr. taught, ‘once stretched by new idea, never regains its original dimensions’.

Move Out of the Ordinary
Be a superior business thinker; always think possibilities in what perhaps might look impossible. Don’t use what is to set your business standard. Rather use what has not been but can be. Then, go ahead and make it be. You can redefine the standard if you try a little harder. That’s the domain I love to operate in business and life in general. A lot of today’s business ideas are overdue for change; they are only waiting for that man who can dare. I think we can. Until we refuse to accept the status quo can we then change it.

Find the strangeness in the familiar and simplify whatsoever that looks complicated. In business, a permanent state of restlessness is good for your growth. Find a better way and make that way better. When we are immersed only in what we are familiar with, we fail to see creeping trends, and so miss huge business opportunities.

Train your eyes to see new business opportunities. Opportunities are in the eyes of the beholder. ‘The eye’, Henri Bergson thought, ‘see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend’. Free your mind in this new year and no door will be closed to you.

Finally, have a good mental attitude towards your business. Walter Scott once said, ‘Success and failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even, than by mental capacities’. This attitude would help you re-engineer your thinking, stretch you imagination, and move out of the ordinary. Just like Benjamin Disraeli quipped, ‘Nurture your mind with great thought for you will never go any higher than you think’.

So, think about what you are doing, and above all, do some thing about your thought. ‘There are two kinds of failures those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought’. That was from Laurence Peter, an American educator. Thinking alone doesn’t get the work done but all progressive work begins from there. It is a new business day and yours to either make or break. If you change your mind, you change your business for good. It’s up to you to make your business happen.

Tony Ajah is a Business Growth Strategist, and the Principal Strategist, TA Strategic Solutions, a Lagos-based firm that is into business development. www.ta-strategies.com tony@ta-strategies.com 08051403056