I’ve stopped reading the news and watching news broadcasts during the week. Most of it is negative and depressing. Letting it invade my mind runs the risk of negative, rather than positive, thinking.

Anything done repeatedly – good or bad – becomes a habit that is hard to break. Constantly reading or hearing bad news leads to an expectation of negative outcomes. I don’t want that in my life.

An equally debilitating feature of news broadcasts is the blame culture that abounds in today’s news. It is never anyone’s fault. There is a saying amongst successful business owners that if things don’t go according to plan then ‘It’s all my fault’. Not so elsewhere.

Listen to any news broadcast and – excluding natural disasters – it’s the fault of the economy, the internet, austerity, Brexit or the bogeyman (ok, I made that one up!). No-one takes responsibility.

Take last year. It was the weather’s fault. The winter was to cold (the beast from the east) and the summer was too hot. Who’d have thought!

And it’s endemic. Retailers are failing because of the internet and high business rates, car manufacturers are cutting jobs because of falling sales in China and waning demand for diesel. Journalists write it without questioning and most consumers of news believe it. And become another victim of negative thinking.

And business owners are not immune from this. Dan Kennedy once said: ‘Business owners chase the money. They put the cart before the horse. They don’t appreciate that getting the mindset right is the precursor to financial success.’

By ‘getting the mindset right’ he meant educating their minds and thinking for themselves. It’s why observers like George Bernard Shaw noted: ‘2% of people think, 3% think they think, and 95% would rather die than think’.

Thinking ….and that includes questioning conventional wisdom (and most so-called news)….is the most important activity business owners can undertake to dramatically accelerate their success.

Most, however, will be in the office or out doing their job oblivious of this fundamental truth hoping this year will be better than the last. Good luck with that.

If you’d like to take time out of your busy schedule to learn how to think differently and more deeply then I invite you to join a few of us who’ll be getting together online to do just that next month.

More details soon…

To your success.

Noel Guilford