Today is Easter and I’m thinking about the concept of belief.
A belief is defined as “Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction.”
If you believe something is true, your behavior should reflect that belief. If you believed you were going to die next week, you would do things differently. Belief is connected to behavior.
Most businesses would say that their customers are really important. I think if you asked most small business owners they would say that customer satisfaction is a strongly held conviction. Yet when you begin looking under the hood, you find that is not the case. In other words, their expressed beliefs (customers are really important) do not correlate with their actions.
So what is going on here? It’s something I’ve seen in my own life and my own business. Often, there is a contradiction between what we say (or even think) we believe and what we do. Here’s the thing, few of us ever stop to analyze this. You need to challenge your beliefs. You need to ask yourself, “do I really believe “X” ”, then look at your behavior. It’s a pretty easy thing to examine.
Think about the impact of this dynamic on your decision making. If you’re not examining / challenging your beliefs about your business, chances are that things will not change for the better.
Let me give you an example. Do you believe that knowing the financial drivers of your business will help you grow and make better decisions? Do you know your financial drivers? You can see the contradiction.
At Astonish Results we talk about this quite a bit. We see the following contradiction: customers who will nod their heads and say, “I really believe that my customer is spending more time on social networks, Google is extremely important and I should be blogging”. Yet, when you look at their behavior (i.e. where they spend their marketing dollars) it’s the exact opposite.
The way we can ignore contradictions in our belief systems and be OK with it is astounding (don’t feel too bad, as humans we all do the same thing). It seems that those who are in tune with the discrepancy between belief and behavior accomplish the most.
Change is hard. Several months ago, I looked myself in the mirror (literally) and said, “I need to change my diet”. I knew (intellectually) that if I didn’t eat the right foods and exercise, I would never change. There was an obvious issue with what I thought I believed and my actions. It wasn’t until I confronted this contradiction that things changed. It took being honest with myself. It took getting past how I felt and just doing it.
So try a little exercise. Write down what you really believe (or know you should believe) about your business. You could call these your principles. Look at your behavior. Do they match? If not, be honest with yourself and change your behavior. You probably won’t “feel” like and it may even feel uncomfortable. The more you analyze your beliefs, the more comfortable you will feel with change and more you will grow.