New year, fresh choices
Happy New Year everyone! In case you are wondering why I am so late with the wishes, today is the third day of our fresh new financial year, so it is indeed a new year. It also happens to be my third anniversary in Nash Squared.
Going in to a new year always makes me think deeply about what may be ahead; the twists and turns in the road that are great and welcome surprises, and those that cause a headache for a while until we find the way through. I am sure that this year will bring some of each of these for us.
As many of you know I have a 2 year old golden retriever called Enzo. He and I were taking a dawn walk yesterday morning through an ancient local wood. As always I found myself deep in thought and enjoying the early morning birdsong. I found myself on a well worn path and glancing to the right noticed a path I had never taken. It reminded me of two things instantaneously.
The first, a famous and much loved poem which I share below and the second thought I had was that in business, as in life, there are often choices we can take to take a different direction which could lead to a much better outcome, that taking the same well-trodden path may be the safe and known one but what if? What if instead we took a different route, tried another way? Would we get to where we wanted sooner, find happiness and success in a new way?
For me, every day there are many opportunities to start afresh, or try something new. It is part of life’s great joy for me that every morning is new and exciting. As we start a new year together, all of us have these choices. Tread the familiar path or try something new.
One fantastic sales person I worked with decided one day to make 10 calls to clients and prospects before 10am every day for a week as an experiment. This led her to new opportunities and fantastic conversations with clients. She kept this up as part of her daily work routine and smashed her yearly targets. She only did this until she took another path and tried something new. Never stuck on the overly worn path.
I wish you much success over the coming year.
Keep safe and well
Bev
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost - 1874-1963
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.