Ready to Reach Your Peak Business Potential

Have you reached the point where you know you have more to offer your clients? You have reached a certain level of competence and want more for yourself? Are you are ready to do whatever it takes to make that happen?

Well, then you are in a great place to jumpstart your practice. There comes a point when you have mastered your current skill set and are ready to take it to the next level. There is a strong desire to continue growing, developing your skills and enhancing the quality of service you provide to your clients. When you stretch yourself, you will also be helping your clients to stretch themselves as well. This is a win-win situation.

Because professional growth typically requires personal growth as well, make sure you are motivated to take this on for the right reasons. If you are doing this without understanding the underlying motivation, you might hesitate as you begin to step out of your comfort zone.

Several years back there came a point in my practice where I knew I needed to challenge myself. I was ready to learn more in order to improve my skills, enhance the level of service I provided and to grow my practice. I also set an intention to improve my income and was ready to make significant changes in order to meet my goal.

The desire to make this change was not due to any external factors. No one was requiring me to do this for my practice. I had a full practice and would continue to do so without making any changes.

In fact, external pressure is the worst reason to grow your practice. People make change all the time due to influences outside of themselves. Doing something new because you are trying to please someone else, or want to take pressure off of yourself, is a weak motivator for long lasting change to occur. It has the potential to create resentment. Also once the person who encouraged you to change is not a part of your life anymore the motivation to continue with this process will diminish.

Take inventory and decide whether you want to make change because of someone else or for yourself. Having an internal desire for change affects the outcome. The desire to do something different, to really stretch yourself, is significant. When you do something because you know it is the right thing to do for yourself, you are saying "yes" to you. Your heart is in the work and there is a compelling desire to progress even when you are faced with doing things outside of your comfort zone.

Having heart is necessary when you are stretching yourself and taking a risk. Your head needs to be in the right place as well. With making a big change, reflect on what you truly care about to determine if there is congruency.

Conflicting values have the ability to make any change an uphill battle. You might feel internal resistance and not even be aware of why it is occurring. It is likely you have two opposing values and each is a strong value. When this occurs progress might be very difficult or could even come to a standstill.

Even though you are making changes for professional reasons, personal growth happens when you step out of your comfort zone. You will have beliefs which create resistance. This is an opportunity to expand your awareness. Personal growth will occur as you examine your underlying belief and process.

In fact, you will find that the belief which is contributing to the resistance is a very old belief. You have had it for a long time. As you begin to work through the old belief, you will be able to create a new one which is more applicable to your current circumstances and maturity. When you reframe your belief system, you are making a correction. The work might be challenging. The reward will be in direct correlation to the amount of work you need to do around this.

The initial desire to change was based upon an idea. The momentum to make this happen will come from the heart. This creates congruence. Your thoughts, feelings and actions need to line up for you to reach your goals.

Congruency is what will take you past the uncomfortable tasks where you are stretching yourself. As you play bigger than you have before, there will come a point when you are up against a wall. Having your heart in the work will help you to make that leap of faith to move past the obstacle.

Activity: Have you been thinking about growing a practice or already begun to take those steps?

Write a list of all the reasons you want to grow. Write it all down, no matter how petty it seems.

Review the list. Any reason you have due to someone else, highlight it. Do you have more reasons that are your own, or because someone else thinks this is a good idea for you? If 75% of the reasons on your list are due to an internal desire for change, then you are in a strong position for reaching your goal. If it is any less than 75%, then consider whether you believe the internal motivation is going to happen as you progress. This will help to save time, effort and avoid sabotage.