Want to know what makes the difference between successful contractors and unsuccessful ones?

It’s not easy to say.

But I can say that I talk to a lot of contractors from around the country during my free half-hour consulting calls. What I’ve found is a lot of smart but unsuccessful contractors.

Frankly, even some of the contractors I work with one-to-one don’t achieve all the success they want and deserve. Yet others I work with go on to be wonderfully successful and actually surpass their own big goals they set when we first start.

So what makes the difference?

Today, I have a better idea, if not the whole answer, as to why a lot of contractors struggle more than they should at business. An answer came to me after watching a PBS special (there probably was no sports on and I was just channel surfing) featuring a lecture by Dr. Wayne Dyer called “Being In Balance.”

In between the million-and-one pledge drive interruptions, I learned a lot about what holds all of us back from getting what we want out of life and business. Dyer said many of us have a mentality that keeps us in “scarcity.” He went on to list the “Unmagnificent Seven” - thinking that keeps us locked in place:
1. It’s not God’s will.
2. There is a limited supply.
3. I don’t deserve it.
4. I have limited abilities and talents.
5. I’ve never been lucky.
6. It’s always been this way.
7. I don’t know how to think “abundance.”

I will confess that I’ve been guilty of thinking and acting under the belief of all seven of these at one time or another during my life. And that’s a bad thing. It’s even worse because I blamed everyone and everything other than myself for the scarcity in my life despite what I said I wanted.

The question is, “How did we ever come to think this way in the first place?”

Battle Scars

Fact is, none of us go through life without the bumps and bruises and the associated battle scars. That’s normal. But carrying the scars around like a badge of honor and looking to accumulate more is not. When we drag along the stuff from yesterday, we get stuck remembering what didn’t work. As a result, nothing better ever happens.

It’s long been known by brilliant thinkers like Dale Carnegie and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, to name a few, that we create our own reality with every thought we think, both good and bad.

This powerful idea has been polished up and repackaged lately and is enjoying a resurgence of sorts. I’m pleased that it is, but it’s far from new. The reality is we refuse to see the power in this statement and reprogram ourselves to think and act this way. So the negative thoughts win out, and they begin to reinforce our lack of whatever it is we say we will never get or deserve.

To me, that’s the epitome of a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why do I care what you think? Because as long as you continue to think in this limited way, you’ll be kicking away the success you deserve and inviting unneeded stress into your life. And I have dedicated myself to helping contractors have less stress and more success.

Hey, here’s what I know. If all it took to be a successful contractor were being smart, I wouldn’t have a job!

You know what? Begin to think about what I will call the “Magnificent Seven” of abundance:
1. It’s God’s will.
2. There is an unlimited supply.
3. I do deserve it.

4. I have limitless abilities and talents.
5. I’ve always been lucky.
6. It doesn’t have to always be this way.
7. I know how to think “abundance.”

The world of possibilities only begins to appear when we first begin to think, feel and act this way.

Is it easy to rethink the way we think? Absolutely not!

What is easy? To keep thinking and acting the same negative way is a lovely way to practice the well-known definition of insanity: “Keep doing the same exact thing and expecting a different result.”

The good news is when you have an experienced coach on your side, the task of seeing a positive outcome and knowing the right steps to take and when to take them become much easier. The bad news is only you can take the right steps and follow a path that’s different from the one you’ve grown accustomed to traveling down. But it all starts with changing how you see the world.

Start accepting responsibility for everything that is going wrong in your life and your business today. You will instantly be able to see that if you have the power to be responsible for what’s going wrong, you have as much power to be responsible to do what it takes to make things right in your life and your business.