Business Insights
CHANGE IS UNCOMFORTABLE BUT COMPLETELY NECESSARY FOR GROWTH
Your personal and professional goals are often held up because you’re stuck in a rut. I heard a good example of this from the show Billions where Giamatti said something along the lines of “our practices leave grooves and over time those grooves become walls” and thought that was a great way to describe complacency and living with blinders on as we rinse and repeat daily life.
You take the same way to work every day, talk to the same people and do the same things. When you should take a different way to work every day, meet some new people and learn some new things. You may be in the right job, at the right company, and in the right city but you may be surrounded by the wrong people.
The old saying of “you’re the sum of the 5 people you hang out with” is kind of true. The habits, conversations, and influences of those around you, shape you. When I landed my first tech gig, I literally left everything and everyone I knew behind. To stay in “that life” would have only led me directly to failure.
A flaw I see many professionals make, is that they don’t actively prune their networks. As they grow, some of those around them don’t, and it ultimately ends up hurting them, Your personal and professional relationships will be key to your growth. Changing and adding new people that are on your level and above will lead you down a different path.
I just stumbled upon an app called Shapr to help expand my networks in Detroit, Chicago, and New York for example. If I can find people with something interesting to say or they are just simply interesting, I am down to grab a drink and meet someone new. Maybe once a year, review your relationships and figure out if you need to do some pruning as you can add, by subtracting. But always build new relationships and meet new people, you never know what you may learn from the next person you meet.
I added a video below that has a speech from the end of a song I heard. It’s Joel Osteen speaking, and keep an open mind about the message even if you’re not overly religious (I am not, but I try to keep an open mind and consume knowledge with open eyes as sometimes I don’t care about the source if the message is something of value.)
