“Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.” — Abraham Lincoln

We all have moments of clarity amidst spells of confusion.

Like when lighting flashes across a dark and stormy plain, you’ve got only a brief moment to take in the full picture and burn it into your mind – or you’ll soon be groping around the dark again.

If your business is growing, you need to make frequent decisions that will affect its nature and direction.

And if your business isn’t growing as you hoped, the confusion is all the more oppressive.

How to catch that lightning bolt and make it stay.

It’s amazing when you think about it: Most people don’t know what they really want out of life.  And so they go this way and that.  Their scattered and random actions don’t add up.

A smaller number do know what they want to HAVE in life.  Sometimes – not always – this tells them what to DO.  Which is a pretty good place to be.

You’ll achieve more knowing what you want to have, but it’s not enough.   It comes and goes.  And it’s often accompanied by moments of severe doubt.  You question whether this or that is really what you want.

And it’s not unusual that success comes hand-in-hand with that empty feeling of “OK, here I am. Now what?”

There’s another approach that gives you constant clarity.

The other approach begins with who you want to BE.  Who do you really, really want to BE?

If you’re unclear, confused and you don’t know what to do, look again at the kind of person you want to BE.

Do you want to be someone who feels pulled this way and that by the people in your life, or do you want to be someone who can set clear priorities and has the discipline to follow through?

Be that way today.  Do what such a person would do in the situation you are in.

How do you want to behave in the face of great uncertainty?  Do you want to be thrown off kilter, or do you want to go into your deep reserves of confidence and take it one day at a time?

Be that way today.  Do what such a person would do.

Do you want to be frantically trying to keep a table full of plates spinning, or do you want to be pursuing excellence in a focused slice of life?

Be that way today.

Do you want to be another spectator alongside the parade, or do you want to be boy who isn’t afraid to say “The emperor has no clothes!”

Be that way today.

Do you want to be worried that there won’t be enough, or do you want to be someone who feels and exudes the confidence that there’s more than enough.

Be that way today.

Do you want to be someone who moves his business this way and that to satisfy your varied interests, curiosity and talents – and to avoid decisions – or do you want to be someone who makes difficult choices and then uses his interests, curiosity and talents to place one brick upon the next until your castle is built?

When you have a clear picture of who you want to BE, you’re never at a lost for what to DO.

You can BE what you want right now, even if it takes some time to HAVE what you want.

Your Next Action Step:

Get a pen and paper, get away from distractions and and answer this one question:

Who do you want to be?

For now, write out five or six qualities you most want to own.  Get that image of how you want to BE crystal clear and you’ll never be at a loss of what to do.  The more you act like that person, the more you’ll BE him.  And it’ll just be a matter of time before you have what he has.

And that’s really what you want, isn’t it?

Many people work 10, 12 or even 14 hour days because they don’t want to work hard.  Long hours may be exhausting, but it is also the easy way out.

Real hard work is done at the bottleneck.  And the tightest bottleneck in your business is… you.  And the tightest bottleneck in you… is in your head.  It’s the stories you tell yourself, the nonsense like “I don’t have any time!” and “We don’t have a choice” and “But my business is different” and “Our market is changing too fast to have a strategy” and “You just can’t find good people out there..” and so on.

Let’s distinguish between labor and work.  Digging ditches is labor.  Allow me to suggest that fourteen hours in the office is also labor. Real work, the hard work that will change your business and your life, is the work you do on yourself.  And it’s different for each of us.

Your hard work might be something as simple as getting in and out of bed on time. It might be planning your year, quarter, month, week and day.

Hard work for you might be to talk less.  To listen to what the people around you are actually saying; to notice how they are feeling.

Your hard work might be to slow down – so you can finally speed up.  It might be to turn off your phone so you can work for 90 minutes without interruption.  It might be checking your email twice a day instead of twice a minute.  It may be to bite your tongue and take a deep breath when you-know-who is at it again. To stop complaining and start appreciating; to play a game of chess with your son or read a book to your daughter.

Your hard work may be – believe it or not – to work less.  To step back.  To listen.  To enjoy.  To let go.  To give up those delusions of control you imagine you have, or imagine you need.

If your job is knowledge work, your hard work isn’t physical labor.  It’s discipline and focus; it’s mental work.

Shut your computer and go for a walk.  Put down the newspaper and pick up a good biography. Become genuinely interested in a competing point of view and hear it out until you understand the other side.  You may not be swayed, but you will learn and grow from it.

Identify what wastes your time and figure out how to stop it or minimize it.

Perhaps you need to say “no” to other people’s best intentions. Or to exercise.  Eat a fruit instead of a chocolate bar or a cheese Danish. Get out to a park or a coffee shop with a notepad and pencil, away from phones and internet.

Give up perfectionism. It keeps you from excellence in the small number of areas where you are truly gifted.

Maybe you need to listen to that inner voice. It knows when you do what you do because you are concerned about what others will think.  It knows when you redouble your efforts in the wrong direction because you think you have no choice – at the expense of following your calling.  It knows when fear is your fuel.  And it knows that you will make a profound and lasting impact when you switch your fuel to love.

Slow down and set up systems so you can reduce your labor. Then work even harder.  On yourself.

A life of leisure isn’t what you want so stop acting as if it were. You, a body and a soul, want a life of growth, of purpose, of contribution.  Let’s stop deluding ourselves.  We need to stop striving for the mythical existence fed to us by those whose interests are not our own.

The only way to get there is by working hard on ourselves. It hurts.  Oh yes, it hurts.  But it is also a great pleasure. Exercise hurts.  It also feels great.

Indulgence is no match for the lasting pleasure of discipline and growth; of catching yourself in the act of telling a good and convincing story – to yourself – and changing direction.  It is awareness; noticing when that story you tell yourself is one you wouldn’t accept from your own children or employees.  Yet, from yourself you swallow them whole.

Real hard work – and the truly smart work – is about knowing thyself.

I will step off this soapbox now.  I am reminded that I’ve got work to do…

Over the past months I’ve seen several entrepreneurs trying to squeeze into the old, worn pants they know, but which no longer fit. However, unlike the kid who’s ashamed of his appearance, these entrepreneurs think they look dashing.

Customers don’t want to embarrass him, so they quietly go elsewhere. His employees try to tell him, but he knows better, so they shrug and go back to work.

“My employees don’t see the full picture. If they had to juggle all the competing priorities the way I have to, they would stop complaining.  They should focus on doing their jobs and let me do mine.”

And so the waist gets tighter and the cuffs further from the shoes.

He adds suspenders, elastic or even duct tape.  Anything but a change.

It’s true that your employees don’t see the full picture the way you do. And they don’t have the same pressures and responsibilities you have. But they do see you and your behavior with a clarity you may lack.

If you find that you’re always super busy, feel pulled in a million directions, fighting one crisis after another, you’re not wearing the right size pants.

I remember coaching a small business owner who continued to fall back on “the pants” he knew so well: moving sacks of cloth from here to there.  He should have never have been doing such insignificant work.

But when it came to doing what would grow his business, make it fun and give him the personal freedom he deserved and badly wanted, he was murky. My job was to help make those tasks just as clear; to help him find and wear a new pair of pants that make him look and feel good.

What are the symptoms? How do you know if it’s time?

- If you have a frequent feeling of being pulled in a thousand directions and you’re unable to invest big chunks of time in high value work.

- If you’re unable to find or keep good employees.

- If you have difficulty attracting a steady flow of customers who want your products because they see you as distinct and better in some way.

It’s a part of growing: We all need a change from time to time.