When It’s Time to Stop
Life is change, and sometimes, it’s just time you stop doing something. The reasons can be many: Maybe what you’re doing is bad for your health. Maybe it’s something that just doesn’t work out for you. Maybe it’s something that has worked for a while, but it’s not the right thing anymore. Or maybe you just need to change the way you’re doing something.
The Coca Cola Addiction
I used to be addicted to Coca Cola. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but I was still drinking it every single day for 30 years. A lot of people told me to stop. But even though I could hear their concern, I couldn’t stop because it had become such a habit for me. I couldn’t pass an afternoon sitting at my desk without grabbing a bottle of Coca Cola from the fridge at some point.
Then one day, I was putting on a skirt I had bought six months earlier and it didn’t fit. There was something about this moment that allowed me to take an instant decision. It wasn’t that I wanted to lose weight. I just wanted to take control. Since that day, I haven’t had a single sip of Coca Cola.
It wasn’t enough to hear people say it. I needed that moment – trying on the skirt that didn’t fit – to provoke a switch in my head. Because if you want to stop doing something, you need to really want it yourself.
The “sunk cost”
It’s important to reflect on this question when it comes to business as well: Is there something you need to stop doing? Maybe there’s something that just isn’t working. This could be anything, for example a software you’re using or an online course that you’re trying to sell.
I started off using a free version of Mail Chimp and tried to make it work for my business for a long time. It took 18 months until I realized that it wasn’t for me, and it ended up costing me a lot of time and ultimately money because I could have invested my time doing something else.
When something like this happens, it’s called a “sunk cost”. You have invested in a software or an online course and you already paid for it, but even though you put in all the work and effort, you realize that it’s not working out for you. Still, you will not get the money you invested back.
Understand How You Feel About your Project
But you might also need to stop something that has been working for you for a while and now it’s not working anymore, or it has just run it’s path. I did weekly webinars until I had 100 webinars together. Around my 80th webinar, I realized that I was getting tired. I wasn’t feeling the same energy and enthusiasm anymore. I didn’t see what they were doing for my business, since my business had already taken off. They had definitely done me a great service. But I realized that I had arrived at a point where it was just not the right thing to do anymore.
But on the other hand, I’m the type of person who when she has a project, she wants to see it go through to the end. I liked 100 as a number and I still needed 20 webinars to reach it. So I took it as an opportunity: My 100th webinar would be a launch webinar in which I would open cart to my program.
In my case, this worked out fine. I wasn’t that far away from the number of webinars I wanted to achieve. But imagine if you’ve planned to do 100 but are only at 30 webinars and are already tired? You need to understand how you feel about a project, and if it makes sense to continue or not.
“Everything Is the Child of It’s Time”
The same thing happened to me with my podcast. I did 100 episodes in 100 days, then went down to three episodes a week. Before reaching 300 episodes, I got tired again. So tired that I reran several episodes over Christmas time. For me, it worked out well, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this too often. My team advised me to just do one episode a week in order to have time to create a really good episode. At first I didn’t like this idea. It didn’t seem enough. But slowly, I started to agree and actually felt excited about the change. Now, I have much more time to create a high quality episode, focus on other projects and even start writing a book – something I’ve wanted to do for years!
When you decide to stop doing something, it doesn’t mean that it was wrong to do it before. We have a saying in iceland, “Everything is the child of it’s time”. You’re doing things in your business that may be right at the moment you’re doing them. But when you feel that you’re getting tired, when it feels too hard or unnatural, reflect on what you need to change or stop and be willing to take that decision.
[tweetshareinline tweet=”“You’ve got to listen to your mind, to your body about when it’s time to stop doing something or change it up radically.”” username=”sigruncom”]
My Challenge for You:
What do you want to stop doing in your business?
- Take a screenshot on your phone and type in what you want to stop doing in your business.
- Follow me on Instagram at @sigruncom.
- Create an Instagram Story sharing what it is you’re considering stopping in your business.
- Tag me in your Instagram Story.
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