If you carry on doing what you’ve always done…

I love reading quotes on people’s walls. They tell me something about the person who lives or works there – his or her values or outlook on life.

A business counsellor had this piece of common sense framed on her wall:

If you carry on doing what you’ve always done, chances are 100 percent that you will get what you’ve always got.

“You will be amazed how often I use this quote,” she told me. People keep justifying their old bad habits, while they know that it harms their relationships and their businesses, she said.

Doing the same things in the same ways while expecting a different outcome, is not only unintelligent, but it can harm and even destroy your business. It stops growth and keeps you in a rut.

Years ago, I enjoyed watching Dr Phil’s marriage counselling sessions on lunch hour television. He used to give each party a chance to state the problem from his or her perspective. Both parties normally blamed the other while justifying their own behaviour. And then came Dr Phil’s short but very sharp question to both of them: “And how does that work for you?”

The response was normally a silent and dumbfounded stare from both. Because it was obvious – whatever they were doing, was not working for them or for their relationship.

What is there in your daily life that you are doing in the same way, expecting a different result? There is only one thing you can be sure of: Chances are a hundred percent that you will get what you’ve always got.

There is the lame joke of the drunkard who lost a precious fifty rand note in a dark street at night. He decided to look for it in the well-lit adjacent street, well knowing that that was not where he had lost it. When his slightly more sober friend confronted him with the stupidity of his actions, his reply was: “I’m looking here, because there’s light in this street. Where I was just now, it is too dark to see…”

Source: www.lynettebeer.co.za