Yes friends, this is the big one…ego, where emotion hangs out, fear, anger, self importance, desire to be liked, concern about what others will think about you, and on it goes. The list of emotional baggage is long and varies from one person to the next, but be certain we all carry this burden and as business decision makers we must all learn to leave this baggage outside of the business arena and make decisions based on strategy, facts, and yes intuition, but hopefully as little emotion or ego as possible.
These emotions, all part of every day life, must be controlled in the business environment or danger lurks, as emotional decisions will in all likelihood fail to materialize as desired and are the base cause for making incorrect decisions and thus are self defeating.
The interesting part of this is we all know when we are doing this, we all have our little voice in our head, the feeling in the pit of our stomach warning us that this is an emotional decision and not necessarily the right business decision, but we all let ego win from time to time, as it is a very strong force…and when the mistake occurs we ask ourselves, “Why did I do this”? The answer is clear, we made an emotional decision that satisfied an ego driven need not a business decision that satisfied business requirements.
Hiring, firing, purchasing, paying, buying, growing, contracting all can either be decided based on merit, budgets, analysis. Not to diminish the power and need for intuition, which is different then ego driven emotion.
The biggest claim on our saner business mind is the need to have others think well of us, or said differently our concern for what others will think of us, thus we make decisions around protecting this area of sensitivity.
Emotional self sufficiency is the objective here, being strong enough to be satisfied with our own self evaluation of who we are and what we are doing so we are not driven by what others think of us, but what is the best or right business decision for the situation. That is a real challenge but if we take this battle on, identifying ego driven decisions as the demon we must all face, we have a better chance defeating it when it pops its ugly head up and insists you do the wrong thing for a variety of bad reasons….excuses I will call them, excuses from doing the right thing even when we know the right answer or response or strategy.
This does not mean we must rid ourselves of passion, definitely not, passion is a wonderful driving force, which plays a large roll in fueling an entrepreneurs spirit to reach his goals and aspirations.
Nor does it mean you cannot have a vision, of course you may in fact you must or how do we get to where we want. Unbridled passion unchecked by logic can lead one to excess and bad judgment, but passion has a distinct roll in the plan as long as it is not controlled by ego or other less helpful emotions.
Think back at some bad decisions you may have made and review why you made them, and if you knew they were bad decisions but you chose to ignore the warnings you generated internally. We all have done this.
We can however rid ourselves of this as a controlling factor and check ourselves if we begin to allow ego to prevail. It can be done, it simply requires diligence and perseverance and yes emotional self sufficiency. We do not require others opinions to support our best decision making. We do require sound business analysis.
You can do this, you must, if you intend to succeed. call me for help 413-549-2966
