The Hayne Coaching Group has been successfully organizing and facilitating peer groups since 2017. In that time, we have seen many members go through explosive (and very profitable!) growth. They’ve become far more successful financially than they ever expected when they went into business, or that they had envisioned just a few short years prior to joining a peer group. They are crushing it!
Life Always Throws A Wrench In The Plan
Many of the same owners mentioned above are now facing a new and daunting challenge that they have not been able to solve with the same “best practice sharing” and “issues processing” that previously helped them so much in their business. The new challenge? They are transitioning!
Some are transitioning out of their business into retirement and have no idea what they are going to do with themselves. Others have grown their business very effectively, aren’t ready to retire, but are now bored because they are no longer getting the kinds of challenges that they used to enjoy and grow from. Some have already retired and discovered that playing golf every day only worked for about two months and now they have no idea how to fill the gaping hole in their lives. Others are going through divorces from their business partners (or spouses), and they are in uncharted waters. Those waters seem pretty stormy and they are feeling a bit sea sick.
There are dozens of other transitional examples. We all face them at all stages in our life and, what I am discovering with my peer group members is that many of these otherwise hugely successful business people are doing a lousy job of handling them.
They need help. I have it.
Left Brain vs. Right Brain Thinking
Let's start by being clear. There are two kinds of transitions. There are those that you plan for, execute and everything goes smoothly, as you hoped. We aren’t talking about those! We are talking here about those that, planned or otherwise, are not going smoothly. They are stormy and you really don’t know how to smooth out those choppy waters. Face it: you are stuck. Those are the transitions we are talking about here. There are lots of ways "stuck” takes shape, but I think if we look a little deeper there is a way of understanding why you are struggling to get through the experience that is useful and helpful.
Most of the very successful business people I have in my peer groups are like me in that they are analytical, logical, practical, results-oriented “doers.” These are all functions of what is commonly called “left brained” thinking. Some of us are born more left brained, others are born more right brained. (The “right brain” is usually credited with being the artistic, creative, imaginative, inventive, intuitional part of the brain.)
All of these characteristics are skills that can be developed and for those of you who are like me, we have done a great job of growing the left brain skill sets. If you take a moment to think about it, however, in many cases (especially with “planned” transitions) you’ve utilized those highly developed left brained skills to build your plan and execute it. And now that it isn’t working, you are still trying to use the same skill set that got you stuck to now get you unstuck. When I put it that way, it sounds kind of, well, dumb, doesn’t it?! You cannot truly solve problems from the same level of thinking that created them!
Practice Makes Perfect
Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “Imagination is more important than intelligence.” He also said, “I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” Both of these quotes refer to Einstein's use of right brain thinking. The great news for both you and me is that we all know how to do this, we are just a bit out of practice. (Well, some of us are perhaps a bit more out of practice than others!) By stimulating our right brain, clarity and options appear. (And sometimes solutions too!) There are no magic wands, but consciously putting the other hemisphere of your brain to work is definitely a “secret weapon.”
There are lots of ways of stimulating right brain thinking. Take a walk. If you know EOS, take a Clarity Break™. Do something different; get out of routine. Read, but read something different and stay away from the topics, no matter how much you enjoy them, that might have contributed to getting you stuck! For me, journal writing has been indispensable—that, and meditation.
The challenge that is now appearing for many of you as you read this is that some (or all?) of these things seem counterintuitive, or likely to produce some discomfort. Exactly! You are starting to use those left brain skills again to evaluate (and discount) the value these things might bring! At least when it comes to stimulating right brain thinking, things that seem counterintuitive or discomforting are signals that you are headed in the right direction!
What we have already started doing in some of our peer groups is helping equip these owners with “transition tools” that expand on what I have briefly laid out here. These transition tools can begin to be utilized to help guide them through the process to produce delightfully unexpected, expansive results to really enrich their lives beyond what they ever anticipated.
Want to know more about how you can transition well? Schedule a brief meeting with me now to propel your success into what’s next!
