Leadership, Small Business Fundamentals

What does it look like to live life with purpose and intention?

Depending on your worldview, that question can elicit different thoughts and even emotions. 

In my experience, the average person relinquishes control of their life to chance. 

I think a person tends to do this because they don’t want to make hard choices. They would rather someone or something else determine the outcome of things. 

When we do this, we don’t have to take ownership if and when things don’t turn out the way we want.

How to live life with purpose and intention? 

  1. Be willing to take control of your life. 

  2. Be clear about what you want or feel called to do.

  3. Be willing to make hard decisions.

  4. Be willing to Confront the brutal current reality while maintaining an unwavering faith you will prevail in the end (The Stockdale Paradox).

  5. Be willing to find comfort in times of stillness. 

Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled begins, “Life is difficult.” 

Regardless of whether you live life with purpose and intention or not, life will be difficult.

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins complains with regret that he ever began the journey he was on. Gandalf, the wizard, responds by saying, “So do we all in difficult times.” Gandalf continues..”The test is not the challenges we are given, it is how we handle them. It is not about fairness or our efforts, but how we deal with the hand we have been dealt.”

Comment below what this looks like for you. How do you respond to difficulties? Do you plan your life with intention or do you leave the outcome to fate?

Want to create your own Life Plan? Let’s work on it together HERE.

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Leadership, Small Business Fundamentals, Strategic Planning

Do you handle business decisions like chess or poker?

A downfall for many business owners is falling into the trap of trying to predict the outcome of their business decisions. 

Not sure you do this?

Ok, answer this question,

“What was your best and worst business decision you made last year?”

I am guessing that you answered that question based on the results you got. If you got a good or great result then you said it was a good decision.

And if you got a terrible result, well, was that your worst decision?.

What does this have to do with chess and poker?

Most business owners make business decisions as if it is like a game of chess. 

You might wonder what is wrong with that. Chess involves critical thinking, strategy, etc.

All true. However, chess is played where every move is seen by both players with predictable outcomes. 

About the only way to lose a chess match is by making a mistake or playing someone who understands the strategy better.

However when we make business decisions, or any decision in life for that matter, we don’t get to see every move played out before us nor can we predict the outcome. 

That is how the game of poker is. We can be the expert in the room with years of experience. We can have a great strategy. Yet many unknowns still exist in poker. 

We can make the best decisions possible and still lose.

That is how running a business is like.

However, far too often business owners will allow the outcome of a decision affect how they make future decisions.

That is called resulting. 

We also fall into the trap of hindsight bias and say things like, “I should have known better, or, I should have made a better decision.”

Here is what I want you to take away from this…

    • Be careful about aligning the results of your decisions closely to your decision process. 

    • Focus on having a good process for making decisions.

    • Learn from the results without allowing the results to influence your decision process.

Want to read more about this? Get the book, Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.

Feeling stuck in your business and want to talk about it? Schedule a free one-time call with me HERE.

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