This morning, I had about 2 hours set aside to get some time sensitive things done. That was the plan at least.
In the event, one of those two hours was spent running around the house looking for clean underwear.
On such things are empire built and lost.
You see, our family contains three humans (the cats and dog don’t wear clothes), myself, my wife, and my daughter. My clothing makes up about 9% of the total throughput of our laundry.
It may be no surprise at all to learn that I’m not the sort of person who takes clothes straight from the dryer and puts them into drawers.
Between those two facts, it sometimes happens that I go to get dressed in the morning and some critical component is not readily at hand. Usually that critial component is underwear. Then I have to run around searching this pile and that pile and the dryer for said underwear.
That’s what happened today, which means that some items from the action item list that should have been done today don’t get done today, and that will likely turn out to have a cost of a hundred or two bucks.
Thinking it through, I realize this is really dumb.
Because the solution is really easy.
Buy more underwear.
Why have I not already done this?
Because it costs money, and I need to be careful with my money. I don’t have that much…
…or didn’t have that much when I last actually thought about this.
Just this morning, I got an email telling me that I was being paid 10,500 Danish Krones in royalties (that’s a whole different interesting story). That’s enough to buy a lot of underwear.
My business is now at a level that the loss of the time I spend running around probably cost me enough to fill my trunk with underwear.
What we have here is a mix of an unexamined situation (simply being too busy to stop and think about it) and residual limiting beliefs (thinking I’m still broke when I’m no longer broke).
This kind of thing happens all the time to all of us. If you are an employee, it can be a problem but it’s not so big a deal as when you’re an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, your world is constantly changing and evolving. The problem is that our brains don’t have an autoupdate feature. You may shift one belief or habit, but the others that are related don’t shift on their own until you consiously think about them.
This is why the same Michael who just set up automated recurring contributions into an investment account because he has capital to deploy has not bought new underwear because he’s not sure if he has the money.
Every individual thought, belief, and habit needs to be examined separately.
Inconvenient, but true.
This is why coaches, accountability groups, and masterminds can be so powerful. In all three cases, there is someone to ask powerful questions like “why do you do it that way?” or “why do you still do it that way?”
Speaking of Mastermind groups, you may be interested in the new one I’m launching. It’s called The Superpowers Mastermind.
Our members get powerful insights from the other members which can change the course of their business.
Even if that insight is as simple as “buy more underwear,” it can have a profound impact.