Why did you start your small business? I love asking this question and then hearing the stories. Business owners faces light up or take on this earnestness that displays their passion and expertise. Even when I have an incomplete understanding of what their business really does, I find I get carried away and want to learn more!

All of our businesses started with some story about living your dreams-you wanted to share a cool technology, a different way of doing things, a successful career, loving relationships, or even financial freedom. Then comes the moment when you think, “Gee, maybe I should write a business plan.” Now, assuming you haven’t become overwhelmed with boatloads of advice of how to write a good business plan, you realize that you need to set goals.

Well-targeted goal setting starts with an idea, a vision and a focused vision enables you to design a clear and measurable action plan to achieve your goal.  It also reminds you of what you value most. 

There’s not one way to write a “good” business plan. I often recommend to small business owners that they use a living business plan. This document could be the best business tool you ever use! (Seriously!   But that’s another post for another day). It is an informal document that outlines the Why, the What, and the How of your business. The purpose of your business matters deeply. Think about a job you had where you had the message you were expendable or simply didn’t matter. I’d bet that you’d didn’t go to work singing, “Heigh ho, heigh ho, off to work I go” with great zeal. Now you get to set the tone and work style of your small business. So why did you start your business?

Getting to The Why

It’s worth your time clarifying the Why. I’ve  had clients discover what scares them most and what their business really means to them. One client told me that money wasn’t his motivator and he undercharged for his services. Sometimes he even gave his expertise away for free. When he was asked what he really desired most, he explained he just wanted to help nonprofits fulfill their missions with more effective and fun fundraising. He also described how he wanted to become a philanthropist. Charging little to no fee wouldn’t meet those goals.

What’s in your heart and soul and how is your business going to fulfill this?

Brainstorm the details of your vision without editing or choosing what is most realistic.  Imagining your ideal business  requires dreaming big with no limits.  Use your creativity.  Actually, think of the craziest, most ridiculous ideas (the rest will follow, really).  Choosing the best action steps will come later.  Take a piece of paper and pen/pencil, draw, scribble, or list your ideas.  To aid your brainstorming, answer these questions:

• What do I really want most for my small business?
• What are my top 3 values?
• What am I tolerating?
• What does success mean to me? 
• What fears am I noticing as I add details to my vision?  

 Clarifying your values or what is important to you allows you to build a solid foundation under your vision.  Having this clarity makes success easier by providing a deeper meaning to your choices.  Laura Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-House, and Phil Sandahl write that “when we are not living out our values, there is dissonance.  The discord can get so out of tune, that it can literally become unhealthy.”  These values are personal and choosing to pay attention to them may reduce some of the dissatisfaction in your life. Pay attention to your values and not what someone else believes you ought to be, not what you wish you were like or ignore a value such as recognition or financial success if it is actually something you consider important. Keep in mind that this is going to become part of your organizational culture as your small business grows and matures.

Daring to dream big nurtures creativity and motivation.  It also requires that you identify what feels scary or impossible. Developing a vision in accordance to your value system supports your desire to follow through and invest the necessary time, energy, and money.  As George Bernard Shaw once said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself, Life is about creating yourself.”  My client discovered a way to stay aligned with what’s most important to him and develop a business he’s proud of.

What small business are you creating?

Could your religious or spiritual beliefs limit your business growth? This past week, this came up in a session with a client. Recently I’ve written about how ethnicity, nationality or family beliefs affect how we lead and grow our businesses here and here. It’s a common theme in my coaching  with small business owners, particularly when they are about to transform their businesses. Fear makes us tell ourselves some crazy stories that somehow don’t sound crazy in our heads.

That’s really the trigger though, isn’t it? It’s the same for me too. Writing this post feels risky because I’m bringing up one of the “no-no’s” of conversation. I’ve got a story wandering around my head about how you’re not supposed to talk about religion or spirituality if you want to be taken seriously in business.

We all have stories in our heads about what we think is appropriate. We cloak our self-limiting beliefs in a lot of guises. Some of us have gender stories like “nice girls do…” or “a real man does…” Some of us have stories that have class distinctions about what “real” work is and what it means to be rich, poor, or middle class. These get activated when we set a goal that brings us closer to our heart’s desire.

But what about our spiritual or religious beliefs? What role do they play? This is powerful stuff! There is something primal about the struggle between good and evil and the search for transcendence. If you couple these beliefs with messages that you are not good enough, a fraud, or undeserving, it’s hard to differentiate the intersection between your limiting beliefs and your spiritual beliefs. A lot of the clients I work with have a Christian background so I hear themes that center on being poor is closer to God or that one must atone for mistakes forever. My clients who practice Buddhism often describe a separation between their spiritual practice and the day-to-day operations of their small businesses. It almost sounds like their awareness shuts off in the business arena.

So, where is the “Truth”? It’s not in marrying your anxious thoughts and feelings with your spiritual beliefs. It’s not even  in compartmentalizing when and where you act on your spiritual beliefs. Many spiritual practices encourage compassion. This is also found in Humanism, New Age and pagan traditions. Some, including Christianity and Buddhism, teach one to be detached from egotistical wants and desires. What keeps us from extending these gifts to ourselves? Bottom line, we’re afraid of what we truly are.

We waste a lot of energy and time worrying. It’s human to feel scared when you decide to up your revenues to six figures or (gasp) seven or higher. It’s human to feel scared about offering your customer new products or services that will change your business model. And it’s human to feel scared about taking on the mantle of industry leader. It’s no big surprise that it’s also human to find excuses and reasons why we can’t fulfill our mission that thrilled us so when we wrote our executive summary.

Do we have to go public with our beliefs? That’s the ego again, right? It’s less about the public expression and more about the inner process that advises how we lead our businesses. See, religious or spiritual practices don’t limit business growth unless you’re thinking of doing something unethical. The answer is pretty clear there. Most people aren’t going to turn into players. We think we will but we won’t. That’s the fear telling a story again so we don’t take action. Most of us are decent, hardworking people seeking to make the world a better place. We just need to stop and rethink our theology or spiritual paradigm. The Universe, Source, God, or however you name that Energy that is so profound is there to sustain, encourage and challenge us to be the best people we can be. That’s it.

Imagine what would happen if we let go of our fear…

Success…why does this word intimidate so many people? I’ve been reading Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker. This book was recommended to me by so many people, I figured I’d take a look at it. Other than Eker’s repeated reminders to attend his intensive seminar, his material reminds me a lot of Barbara Stanny’s work. Both of them start at the same place.

Your head and your heart.

Success is a remarkable experience and yet also very personal. There are so many beliefs about success.  How much is appropriate? What is acceptable to say about one’s level of success? In my work with E.G.G.’s (entrepreneurial small business owners and freelancers) there is usually a discussion about specific revenue goals. Inevitably, we run into some interesting ideas about what would happen if they became successful. Maybe some of these sound familiar to you?

• Money is not important
• I’ll become like Gordon Gekko
• It’s too much work
• My family and friends will stop loving me

In a nutshell, are you saying you are going to become some kind of ugly, greedy monster? That is usually the implication. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I’m not a big fan of the Law of Atraction. You’re not going to become some kind of negative magnet if you feel doubt or anxiety about choosing to become successful. However, there is some value in the Law of Attraction mindset that is worth considering.

Success is a choice. So is ditching your value system. When we recognize that we want something other than what our parents, our friends, our teachers or even our national culture tells us is appropriate, we feel the trepidation that comes with rejecting the status quo. We tell ourselves stories and some of these stories are sad and scary because they reflect our fears. When we believe these stories, we act as if  they are true and so we make them real.

A good E.G.G. knows it’s just a story. These negative stories simply give us a way to act so we can keep ourselves down and unsuccessful. This doesn’t mean you are necessarily a failure. For example, you might have a business where making $100,000 is your comfort zone. There are very few who would think that’s failure. But you could be telling youself a story that it’s not safe to make $250,000 or $1,000,000.

And yet,there is another story the good E.G.G. wants to tell and the plotline is spectacular! The main character, You, sees some way to contribute to making the world a better place and founds a small business. The drama unfolds as You set the goals and achieve the results you desire. Maybe it’s providing yourself and/or your family with security, financial freedom, or the adventures of travel. Maybe it’s providing your wealth management expertise so no one has to face retirement as the desperate old woman or man trying to pay for everything out of  your Social Security or old age pension checks. Maybe you’ve got the way to bring consistent trade and prosperity to Africa.

It all goes back to how you think and feel about success. What’s your E.G.G. story?

*I invite you to take a look at the How To Be an E.G.G.™ program and see if it would help you and your business design a different type of success story , greater clarity about yourself, and walk away with a basic business plan that fits your business. This is the last time I’m offering it as an 8-week teleseminar series so take advantage of the Early Bird price that expires on Thursday, September 30,2010. You can learn more about this quick, energizing booster of  a program by going to www.abilitysuccessgrowth.com/how-to-be-an-egg/ I look forward to meeting you and learning more about your business!

Could you give yourself permission to think like a CEO for your small business? Even if you are a sole proprietor, could you? This may be the single most important action you could do for your small business.

Take a moment to think about what a CEO does for an organization:

1. Sets the vision and tone of what “X Company” is all about

2. Designs and explains the strategy of how the business will develop and grow over time

3. Seeks out the talent to make the above happen

4. Keeps everyone accountable to the stated business goals

5. Makes sure that revenues (and even profits) are healthy

So, why is it so hard to think of oneself as CEO? This comes up a lot in my coaching with small business owners. Perhaps it’s got something to do with our images of CEO’s in large corporations. What comes to mind for you? What if I told you that’s a red herring? Size doesn’t matter. It’s about the mindset. It boils down to giving yourself permission to treat your business seriously. But I am serious, you say? Take a look at your vision for your business. Does it involve you becoming an industry leader, serving a national or even global market, or allowing you to move to your dream home? This can be scary stuff. It scares me sometimes too when I look at what I want to do with my business. We talk ourselves out of even attempting to realize our potential. It brings up stuff we learned as kids about thinking grander thoughts and upsetting the status quo. So, it’s safer to spend our time on the small, everyday tasks serving our current clients and the administrative to-do list. But safer is an illusion.

But really…is it okay to go for what we desire most? You can’t get there from here without giving yourself permission to be the leader.  I asked one of my clients to write down her vision for her small business as coaching homework. As I encouraged her to write down the details of what she wants, even to be ridiculously, over the top in her description, I could hear her laughing nervously. Another client gets fidgety when we talk about how important it is to be more consistent and clear with changing policies to support the new direction of his business. Sure, if you aren’t taking care of the big picture, your small business will lack focus and be less effective.  But there is more at stake here. If you aren’t giving yourself permission to think like a CEO, how will you make your dreams an everyday reality? What would you feel like if nothing changes and you never achieve your goals?

Would it be acceptable to deny yourself permission to have a CEO mindset? Can you live with that?

What do you believe about leadership? Your answers makes a difference every day that you lead your organization. Bill Taylor asked an interesting question in Where Have All the Business Heroes Gone?  . He asked if we would know a corporate hero if we saw one. Small business owners certainly have a relationship with power. Without self-awareness, this relationship with power will kill your leadership.

Five negative beliefs of leaders:

• I’m successful so I don’t need to continue learning. It’s easy to believe that you know it all if you’ve been in business for awhile and have achieved success. After all, you are getting reinforced for your behavior by your customers and experience.

Deadliness factor: The stage is set of stagnation and complacency. When you become complacent with your performance, you don’t see how the business landscape changes and or hear feedback from your customers. Social media has increased opportunities for businesses to interact with customers. Organizations are being encouraged to be more innovative and mashup ideas from other industries or ways of thinking. Your competitors are seeking to increase their market share. When you stop learning, you reduce your company”s ability to adapt and thrive.

• You have a job, you should be happy. This belief probably worked rather well in the Industrial Age or even the Great Depression. Work was treated differently. Society had different norms. The message here is that the worker is simply part of the Machine. 

Deadliness factor: Your employees want work that has purpose and meaning. Small businesses are well-suited to share a value-based mission . My accountant’s mission is to ease the pain of math and money for small business owners.  If someone can’t buy into you organizational mission, they aren’t going to go along and help you weather storms your busines is likely to experience.

• Managers are the ONLY ones who should have information. Leaders who are the only ones with information risk isolation, inadequate data, and encouraging others to hoard information as well.

Deadliness factor: Doling out information in bits and pieces becomes political and petty. Do you want your  people clutching information to their chests as if it’s the Ring in Lord of the Rings? It does make sense to use your judgement when sharing information. However, if you’re not sure how to share important and/or very negative information, get advice from a trusted peer or mentor. If you are in the US, try SCORE. If you are outside the US, look up small business services in your country. (For example, in Ireland, you can find advice at the Dublin City Enterprise  Board)

• Systems are more important than people. Keeping things in order (paperwork, job responsibilities, and procedures) are very important for smooth operations. Policies are written out for all to know expectations and consequences for noncompliance.

Deadliness factor: Systems are designed to serve you and your people. Simply emphasizing compliance to the systems creates the impression that you are rigid and merciless. This adversely affects morale and productivity. I worked for a human service agency that had very strict policies about completing documentation and billing. If anything, no matter how minor, wasn’t filled out properly, it was returned to the clinician and he/she wouldn’t be paid for his/her work. This created feelings of resentment, hardship, helplessness and being ill-used. Keep track of when policies actually interfere and/or create a heartless, robotic environment.

• Tyrants are the best bosses. I have to admit this one gets me on my soapbox pretty quick. I worked for a tyrant early in my career and the organization was extremely dysfunctional. While I agree with some of George Cloutier’s points, there are ways to let people know that you’re in charge without being  so heavy-handed.

Deadliness factor: A tyrannical boss sets the stage for high levels of conflict and politics. Set expectations so accountability is like breathing. Make goals public with a whiteboard or an e-bulletin board. As one small business owner described to me, allow your staff to have leeway to make “below the water” decisions but leave “above the water” decisions for you. You can be decisive and still allow for recommendations and information to be shared with you. You don’t have to walk around like a general saying, “I’m in charge here.”

Your beliefs about leadership are reflected in the culture and efficacy of your business. Develop an awareness of how you view leadership to prevent negative consequences for your company. None of us start out with the intention of building a dysfunctional organization. It starts with you and it is certainly in your hands to make your business a place everyone wants to work.

What negative beliefs do you observe in leaders?

How do you catch yourself when you forget to treat your position of authority with respect?

When was the last time you stopped to ask yourself why somedays you are telling yourself stories that you’re not good enough or a geek or a thought leader?  Do you wait until it all completely hits the fan before you begin to wonder?

There isn’t really a reason to think much usually. We drive pretty much the same routes, prepare and eat the same foods, and a host of other activities throughout the day at home and at our small businesses. Even our brains are designed to favor neural pathways that already exist and have been used before.

My brain made me do it? Here’s a quick neuroscience review. Our decision-making process uses more than the front parts of our brains. It also uses our emotional center and our memories. When we’ve done something the same way many times, we’ve learned that behavior. Our brains are constantly processing an amazing amount of data so we develop habits to keep things efficient and we pay attention to what’s in front of us. For example, I have been typing up to this point without thinking about how to type since I do it so often. I’ve spent my time concentrating on figuring out the theme and message of this post. Typing is a habit.

Habits are our auto-pilots. They simplify our actions and, like I said, our brains favor neural pathways that exist. The stories we tell ourselves are habits too. For example, one common fear that people express is that they will be discovered as frauds. This story usually includes that they will be discovered as incompetent technicians and foolish business owners. If you tell yourself a story like this, you are strengthening a pathway in your brain so you can develop the habit of believing you are a fraud.

One of my clients has a recurrent story that she will lose all of her clients if she makes a mistake. This is a habitual story (not based on any facts, by the way) that runs her decision-making and actions when she feels stressed. This is a great example of what Breanne Potter wrote about in The Danger of Mental Auto-Pilot. High emotions cloud our ability to gut-check and fact-check ourselves. Since we’re prone to going with our habits, it makes sense that we activate the auto-pilot of our stories.

It isn’t always a negative. Think about something in your small business that went really well. You might have a story that you rock the world or that you are making your dreams a reality. You may feel a high emotion such as joy, elation, or pride. We can automatically motivate ourselves and follow through on tasks.

It isn’t that habits are good or bad. It’s not even about the story. The key here is to check your stories every now and then.  It’s about the habit of telling yourself the story over and over as if it is completely, 100% true all of the time. You aren’t a fraud anymore than you rock the world. It’s all hyperbole. We make up stories in which we are archetypes and these help our story telling. The truth is really more on a spectrum so give your stories a check. Write them out or tell them to a trusted person so you can hear the story with new ears. You might want to keep them or simply change parts of the story.

Here’s an example of what that process could look like-Let’s say that you have been asked to speak to a group of small business owners like yourself on your area of expertise. You tell yourself that it’s going to go badly because they will all find out you know nothing and have been faking it all along. They will stand up and point at you while yelling, “Fraud, fraud.” Now, perhaps as you write all of this out, you discover that you are really nervous about speaking in front of people and it’s not about knowing your area expertise. You can stop the auto-pilot of your story and say, “Hold on here! I’m nervous about speaking. I know my stuff.” Now you can decide how to handle your anxiety about public speaking or go with your habitual story.

When do you have the auto-pilot storyteller on?

How would your story change if you were to tell it aloud to another person?

What stories do you want to keep telling yourself?

Taking action seems to intimidate a lot of people in business. Sure, we all know someone who seems to never procrastinate or doubt a decision. But for the rest of us…

There are loads of reasons why we avoid making  choices. In some cases, it is simply the phenomenon known as “choice overload.” Research is pointing to people faced with many choices and becoming unable to make a decision. Remind you of the menu at The Cheesecake Factory? If you haven’t been to that particular restaurant, they have a book for a menu.  A book?!

However, this could be very bad for your small business.It’s hard to take action when you have so much information to process but taking action is really about productivity. We tend to think productivity is great. We can enhance it with efficiency. We can measure it. And yet, if you change the word from productivity to action, some of us do the deer-in-the-headlights freeze.

Are there dangers in taking action? Of course there are! You could end up changing the world as you know it. It doesn’t even have to be on the end-world-hunger scale. Our individual worlds have value as well. There are people in our lives who depend on us. We may be in an enviromnent where rocking the boat is strongly discouraged.

It works something like this. You start off with a predictable circle of comfort. No risk. Vanilla.  And then, you come across a very good reason to expand this circle of comfort. Its not nice and tidy. Change can be awkward and uncertain. Do you want to to rethink who you are and what you can do? This is dangerous!

Then again, maybe there are very distinct advantages to taking action. Your small busines grows into what you meant it to be. You discover you are powerful and talented. People acclaim your actions. Your ability to cope with change is strengthened. The possibilities are endless since our actions bear all kinds of fruit. Our perception that something would be too painful to manage turns out to be a complete nonevent.

This is where you sing the chorus to REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”

                                                                    “It’s the end of the world as we know it

                                                                     And I feel fine.”

The thing with taking action is it triggers our fears, our hopes, and our beliefs about our efficacy and our self-worth. There may be inertia because we’ve tolerated some kind of discomfort for a long time. There may be very good reasons to choose inaction. If you avoid decisions, do you avoid life as proposed by Jeff Stibel?

In this week’s #kaizenblog chat, we’ll be exploring “The Dangers and Advantages of Taking Action” so join us on Friday, August 20, 2010 at 12 pm ET/9am PT/5pm BST. Come join in on this conversation!

What does taking action mean to you?

What dangers or advantage do you see in taking action?

What keeps you from acting on what you desire most?

 iStockphoto BookMama

We tell ourselves all kinds of stories. The story of where you’ve been, where you’re going, who is going with you. Think of the cave drawings, the fairy tales, and the tales we embed in our daily conversations. So it’s not a huge stretch that we create stories about our businesses.

Some of our stories are fantasies-working with the uber-ideal client or having people get so excited about our ideas that they take on a life of their own.

Some of our stories are myths. Not that they are blatantly untrue but more like Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth where we try to get our heads around something profound and mysterious. Myths contain archetypes which are symbols of  or examples of types . We need the archetypes to make sense of our lives. Archetypes like villains, beasts, and heroes capture truth and illuminate how we can understand ourselves on a deeper level.

When it comes to running a small business, there is no shortage of archetypes. Here are a few:

• The ”I’m busy” small business owner This archetype is the one where the business owner works mega-hours and is busy all the time doing stuff. Some of the stuff makes money, some of it doesn’t. All of it is stressful and out of focus
• The Henny Penny small business owner You know this person. He or she can sound very much like the children’s story in which an acorn falls on the chicken’s head and she is sure the sky is falling. Without much thought or planning, this small business owner is running around in a panic. Everything is a drama and all of it a crisis.
• The Nerd Technically proficient, even awe-inspiring about how much he or she knows about his or her product, services, and the intricacies of the technology. However, this small business owner can struggle with the business side with the administrative, financial, and personnel tasks.
• The Entrepreneur Creative, larger than life and exotic with all of their ideas and high energy. This archetype is a mixed bag though. On one hand, the passion and creativity are essential to keep one’s business fresh, interesting, and responsive to the market. On the other hand, this person can become too enamored with continuously developing new ideas and lead the company in too many directions at once.
• The Wise Elder This can have less to do with age. It’s more about experience. This business owner makes  it look smooth and sophisticated. They can be generous with mentoring newer business owners. They develop new initiatives with their business while also maintaining a stable foundation for their business. They may also qualify as a Guru and be sought after by trade organizations or media to speak about their expertise.

Most of us have taken on any of the archetypes at one time or another. They are simply part of the experience of being a business owner and they help us understand our story. Leading a business is an expression of ourselves. The ways we interact with others, our philosophy of life, and how we use self-awareness are incorporated into our story. With such big themes, it makes sense for us to inhabit an archetype.

What archetype are you inhabiting right now?

Which one would you add to the list and why?

The economic bad news seems to be piling on lately. Ben Bernanke says we have a long way to go and there is still anecdotal evidence that people are losing jobs. And yet…there is growth and the US economy is not in recession.

But it doesn’t feel that way as Dawn Rivers Baker explained in her analysis in Small Biz Trends. If you’re the owner of a small business who is looking for financing and can’t get it, your perception is that things are very hard indeed. If you are a business owner who had one big client who has either cut back or ceased to do business with you, your perception is that people are slow to spend their money. If you are in an industry less affected by the economic turmoil, your perception of the current business climate will be on the other end of the spectrum.

I asked on LinkedIn,

Would you describe the current small business climate as sluggish but positive, chaotic, or anxious?

There seem to be contradictory news reports, indicators, and advice as to how to lead and manage your small business through the recovery. How does this affect the business vision and how you plan to go forth in the last quarters of the year? Have you changed any goals? And…how do you maintain your morale so you don’t burn out?

 The answers were positive in nature, even enthusiastic. Ed Moloney responded:

To me it is simple. If the small business owner is looking at his or her business often from the outside in and asking for others to give their opinions to the best way to change things then I think the climate is good and opportunities are endless. I think people get caught up in the media or the negative of the government or the economy. They also focus to much on getting the work done and not enough on working on the buisness. The fact is most business owners are great at what they do IE accounting, car cleaning, cooking etc but may not be great business people. Fact is most business owners spend way way to little time prospecting for new business

Both Mike Welch and Gwen McCauley echoed the theme that small businesss owners have to work on their businesses. I’ve written about this in the past in many posts. Without taking time to keep track of the big picture of your business, how do see opportunities or keep your strategic plan fresh and timely?

 That’s what’s interesting about perception. Perception is created by our biases in our thinking. Our culture, gender, experience, and temperament contribute to how we see the world. Our perceptions feed our perspectives so we start seeing nuances in just how full or empty the proverbial glass is.

And these nuances in our perception are what makes it possible to weather bad and good times. Basically, we tell ourselves stories about our experiences. For example, if you perceive that your prospects are too reluctant to buy from you, you will change your behavior towards them. Maybe you’ll keep approaching them until you  become a spammer. Maybe you go through the motions but stop listening for when the person is leaning towards your product or service. Maybe you don’t even follow up with your prospects. The opposite perception could be that there are customers everywhere and they want to work with you. Your behavior will correspond to that perspective. When I asked a similar question on Facebook, Deb Carducci and Kate Hannisian both answered that they look at their customers to get information that will inform their perceptions.

Who should you believe? Your perceptions are important. It seems if you add an open attitude to gain additional information such as analyzing your action plan to see what can be improved or connecting with successful business owners, you are more likely to perceive what is possible.

How do you perceive the current small business climate?

Does keeping track of the big picture of your business keep you focused on how to maintain and/grow your business?

What strategies do you use to keep a positive perspective when facing adversity?

Join us for the Twitter chat #kaizenblog too discuss “Could Your Perception Keep You From Economic Recovery?” on Friday, August 6, 2010 at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT

Do you ever feel this way? You know what you ought to be doing but you just don’t want to. It’s pretty commonplace and a prime trigger for procrastination. Psychologists call it “task aversion.” Basically we take a task like reminding a customer that the latest invoice hasn’t been paid or completing an administrative task and we just avoid doing it. If we stopped to look at it rationally, we’d know that we’re acting  like a pouting child. But…we don’t look at it rationally. We perceive that it will be just too painful to deal with.

Perception is an amazing thing! Sometimes it is spot on and we get a good read on the dynamics of a situation. However, other times, it just messes with our heads.

It’s about perceived pain. It doesn’t matter if you are a new small business owner or a well-established one, there’s something you’re avoiding. The actual task is probably unpleasant in some way. It could have some sort of conflict like speaking to the customer who hasn’t paid. Maybe it’s just boring such as filing. Or you feel inadequate in your copywriting skills so you put off updating your website. There are things in our small businesses that aren’t pleasant and we do have to do them.

Do you take the bull by the horns and just do the task you’re avoiding? Self discipline is a necessity for the successful small business owner. It would be nice to just say to yourself, “All right, enough dilly dallying, get to work!” and be done with the task. Many of my clients have noted that whatever they had been putting off turned out to be no big deal (I’m guilty of this too.) But what if you just can’t muster up the gumption to do the strategic planning or the bill paying or whatever it is that is so “horrible”?

Here are five ideas:

• Set a date and time to work on the task. Put it in your calendar and treat it like you would any other appointment. Maybe you’ll drag yourself kicking and screaming to the task but now you’re committed to action.
• Use an alarm. It’s easier to accomplish something if you reduce it to stages. Set 20-30 minutes to work on the task. When the alarm goes off, your time is up and you are free to go do something more pleasant.
• Write down why this task is so terrible and painful. Understanding what you’re thinking and feeling is remarkable. Maybe the task reminds you of something negative from your childhood or another personal relationship. Maybe you’re overcommitted and this task is the proverbial straw that will break the camel’s back. Maybe it’s just some kind of story that you’ve made up about how you’re completely inadequate and will surely fail. The important piece here is to get the story so you know why you’re avoiding the task.
• Get an accountability partner. Find someone who is willing to check in with you to see if you completed the task. This person can be a colleague, mentor, or a coach. You can even do this with a mastermind group. Sometimes you have to arrange an external reason to complete a task. Generally people don’t want to lose face with anyone they respect. Use this to your advantage.
• Choose to not do the task. Seriously! This may seem counterintuitive in some way. Stop nagging yourself (it’s not working anyway) and let go of the pressure. If you can live with the consequences, then consciously choose to let the task go undone.

Procrastination makes us feel negatively about ourselves. Trying to make yourself do something you don’t wanna do is a no win situation. There’s not much point in acting like a child having a big sulk. We’ve got enough responsibilities as we run our small businesses.

Try a different way.

What task are you avoiding?

What is your perception about this task?

How do you get yourself into action when you’d rather do anything else?