What Can You Stop Doing?

I once worked with a natur­o­path­ic doc­tor who solved an issue for me by ask­ing me to stop doing some­thing. My face had been react­ing to some­thing by break­ing out and, after tests, the solu­tion was to stop eat­ing eggs and almonds.

It’s a great exam­ple of how, some­times, solv­ing prob­lems is not what you think it needs to be.

Some­times, to fix a prob­lem you just need to stop the input that’s mess­ing it up.

In the great book Nec­es­sary End­ings: The Employ­ees, Busi­ness and Rela­tion­ships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move For­ward, Dr. Hen­ry Cloud talks about the ben­e­fit of proac­tive­ly end­ing things in order to make our pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al lives better.

After all, we only have so much time and so much ener­gy. And when you look through this win­dow, you think about what you are doing and why – and then con­tem­plate what to stop doing to free up the sys­tem and move for­ward faster and better.

For exam­ple, from a per­son­al per­spec­tive, some peo­ple stopped drink­ing alco­hol because they did­n’t like how it made them feel — and some peo­ple start­ed because they liked how it made them feel.

From a work per­spec­tive, some peo­ple decid­ed to stop pro­duc­ing reports that cre­ate no val­ue or to elim­i­nate key parts of a process that are only done out of habit.

The Chal­lenge

• What one or two things might you stop, in each area of Work, Self and Life — no mat­ter how risky or uncom­fort­able for you or some­one else – that caus­es you stress or drag?
• How can you remove that fric­tion so that you can feel better?

More about this on this episode of The Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast where we also talk about the Stop Doing List.

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

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