Today’s Tip: Keep A Success Diary

If your business isn’t going as well as you would like how are you feeling right now?

Worried? – I just can’t see things getting any better…. everyone seems to be having a hard time
Full of self doubt? – I wish I hadn’t started this business in the first place, I knew it wouldn’t work
Overwhelmed? – I’m trying everything and I’m just not getting anywhere
Panicky? – I just can’t see where my work is going to come from and I need to pay my bills

It’s perfectly normal to feel like this, we all have the ability to beat ourselves up when we have tough times.

But it’s not particularly helpful to feel like this for any length of time.

When you start to fill your mind with negative thoughts and listen to that little voice in your head that tells you ‘You can’t’ self-doubt starts to creep in. You feel less confident about yourself and your ability to succeed. Your motivation and energy drains away. You feel less able to take any positive action to get yourself and your business moving again so you end up doing nothing.

So, I don’t want you to go down this road.

Far more helpful to concentrate on feeling positive about yourself, your business and what you are both capable of achieving. Positive thoughts create positive energy.

A really useful exercise to do is to keep a Success Diary. At the end of each day or week make a list of all the things you have achieved, all your successes, no matter how small. So, this might be anything from ‘Phoned one of my contacts and booked lunch for next Friday’ to ‘Gave a talk on Networking to local CIPD branch’.

Keeping a record of all your achievements is useful for 3 reasons:

1. It’s objective evidence of all the good things that you’ve done. It counteracts the feeling that you haven’t done much or you’re not getting anywhere.
2. It keeps you focused on the positive rather than negative
3. It makes you feel good and motivates you to keep going the next day or week

I challenge you to keep a Success Diary for a week and see what a positive difference it makes to your way of thinking.

Good Luck!