The Surest Way To Fall Short Of Your Goals

Well, we’ve turned the corner into the home stretch of the year and I know you can see the light at the end of the tunnel right through the Holidays and the busyness of the year-end.

But, hold your horses.  It’s not over and it’s important to make every day count by not losing your focus on where you are right now and the goals you have set for the next two months.

I want to address some common obstacles that often come up, that are not completely avoided throughout the year, but often seemingly tougher to manage and work through in this end of year dynamic.

Inside of this and the upcoming Huddles, you will find important daily commitments, for both attitude and behavior, that lead to and define a Team’s ability to succeed and make the rest the year the best of the year by finishing strong.

To kick it off let’s talk about the biggest thing that gets in everyone’s way.

There is nothing that sabotages a person’s success with anything in life more so than one simple word (which it can be the decision of every excuse or the excuse for every decision)… DELAY.

This is more than just procrastination.  This is a state of mind that lets someone justify their choice to postpone with all type of excuses to somehow rationalize it and make it okay.

Delay, generally speaking, is never acceptable if what is being delayed is something valuable and positive for your life.  

I challenge you to use this to empower yourself and to benefit your patients.  

Here’s the core point of this lase-focused Monday Huddle…

If you let people use excuses they will and the result will always be delay.  If it’s not made important enough to do NOW, then people will wait.

And while this is prevalent all throughout the year and in everyone’s life, there is no time of year where people use the calendar as their reason for delaying everything they can than right now.

Everyone wants to “wait until next year” and they might make the excuse of the Holidays, being busy, money, insurance, or a long list of other more creative excuses to wait until later do say yes, commit, invest, and move forward with their pathway to health.

Don’t let this be the case.

  
Get out ahead of it and implement this magic switch in your mind first and then in the minds of everyone else.

Instead of “delay because” let’s make it “deadline because” with the exact same reason.

There is no better excuse than the end of the year to delay until next year, there is no better deadline than the end of the year to take action, make a decision, implement a change, and get started now.

The more important matter at hand other than case acceptance, moving patients forward, hitting record collections, and eclipsing your daily goals is the overall principle behind this discipline.  And that is exactly what it is, a discipline.  

It takes discipline to make a decision.  

It takes discipline to challenge a patient not to delay.

It takes discipline to stop being an excuse maker.

Far too often we rob ourselves of experiences, progress, goals, and most of all time because we make excuses instead of keeping the integrity around our known beliefs and ideals.

Where in your life could you be more decisive?

Where in your life could you make fewer excuses?

Where in your life are you holding yourself back with delay?

The exact same thing goes for your patients.  And when it comes to their complete health, you get to be their guide to make smart decisions.  You get to be their leader to climb over their excuses.  You get to draw a line in the sand to encourage them to move from delay to decision using a built-in deadline of the calendar.

The bottom line is: either you make excuses or you make progress.  Don’t let your patients make excuses with you about their goals and don’t you use your patients as excuses for yours.

Here’s my challenge to you right now… decide which action, priority, or goal you will choose NOT to delay and instead commit to achieving by the year-end deadline.

As they say, “Without a deadline nothing gets done!”