Crossroads and inflection points
Getting over the hump.
In both my personal life and professional life I’ve hit crossroads or inflection points. You know in your gut that you can’t continue on the path you’re traveling on. Change needs to happen for you or your business to advance. Maybe your thought isn’t to advance, but to stop going backwards or just sitting in stagnation. Sitting in stagnation waiting for the next thing to happen (reacting) can leave you feeling powerless. It’s a terrible place to be. You feel like a sandcastle trying to fight against the rising tide.
How do you get over the hump? How do you solve the stagnation problem? In one word - Action.
In my experience the following process has been effective.
Assess the situation.
Determine the critical problems
Develop options
Choose the solution(s)
Take action
Assess the situation
For personal or business situations, feelings can be a critical component. Maybe it’s counterintuitive for a numbers person like myself to be talking feelings. Results are often determined by our thoughts and feelings. Assess your feelings around the issue. Don’t hesitate, just let your thoughts and feelings come out. Powerless, stagnation, helplessness, frustration, anger, fear, panic or all of the above. Put down your answers on paper. Now let’s flip all of those answers and write how you want to feel. Decisive, in control, advancing, progressing, secure, etc This is the state that you are seeking. When you’re in a state of panic, frustration, fear, helplessness, etc it’s very hard to create solutions and forge change.
Determine the critical problems
Setting your feelings aside for a moment, let’s look at the situation. What is the issue that driving the negative feelings? Perhaps the issue is having enough cash to get through winter. What information do you need to make decisions? Develop numbers for what your cash flow needs will be during the winter including any estimate of the potential incoming cash. For business decisions and personal finance decisions the numbers will be important. Once you know the size and scope of the problem, you can develop the solution and the steps needed to implement the solution.
Develop options
Brainstorm options. Write down everything you can think of including options that you consider far fetched. Put everything on the table. Using the example of winter cashflow, you can save the money by setting aside money from spring, summer, and fall. You can trim payroll expenses in the winter. Get a line of credit from a bank if you are able. Offer to push snow for extra money. These are just examples. Think outside the box.
Choose the solutions
You may find solutions in places you weren’t thinking. The answer is often a combination of the items on your solutions list. Estimate the benefit of each solution to determine if the solutions you’ve outlined are sufficient.
Take action
Sometimes the hardest part of this whole process is taking action. When you’re working with the numbers and solutions in the previous steps it’s possible to get caught up in your feelings around the problem and solutions. To me and many people the numbers can bring out so many emotions. You might be working with the numbers and not see a way out of your problem, potentially feeling trapped. This is totally normal, but being in a state of panic or helplessness will not bring out the solutions you want. I have words of encouragement for you. You got this!
Looking at the solutions you’ve come up with, find places you can take steps, even small steps. If you need to establish a line of credit with a bank, contact the bank you currently work with and talk to a commercial lender. Just this one action has moved the ball forward. It’s not the whole solution but it is definitely progress. Action, any action to change your situation, should be celebrated. Look around and give yourself credit for taking action and making progress even if it’s small. Small doesn’t matter, it’s still progress.
If you feel like you need help to navigate this process, to identify the problems sufficiently or to find/implement solutions, please contact me. We can help you through this process.