I was on a ski instructor course last year with a bunch of 20-year-olds. I came late to skiing, so the fact I was struggling was no surprise. However, the 20-year-olds struggled too.
Why? They’d all been skiing since they were four years old.
They struggled because they were asked to change the way they skied to fit the course’s way of doing things. It was tough.
The only way we were able to progress (and stay sane) was by focusing on very small wins; incremental improvement.
What has this got to do with your financial planning business?
When you’re already competent at a skill, you know intuitively that you’re not going to have the massive early jumps in improvement you get as a beginner. However, it can still be very frustrating. It’s this frustration that can see us doing silly things, looking for the massive breakthrough, when in fact all we need to do is get comfortable with incremental improvement. It still gets the job done.
Tom Venuto, a fitness expert and personal trainer, applies this thinking to getting stronger and fitter. He says that if all we do is one more lift, jump, meter (insert your training exercise here) each day, in two years’ time we’d be amazing. Yet most of us quit when it gets tough, and miss out on the spectacular progress we can make from small incremental improvements.
Are you quitting on your business by getting frustrated and not seeing the power of the small win?
If you are, I hope this article changes your point of view.