Working around the head trash you have

What kinds of head trash do you bring into your work life?

Are you worried your business is too small to catch the eye of a particular prospect? Afraid you won't be able to keep up with an increase in demand? Hesitant to try out a new prospecting method because it might blow up in your face?

We all have head trash, and chances are good you have head trash that's affecting your business decisions that you aren't even aware of right now! It's all right to admit that but not to stay unaware or resist changing your behavior once you have become aware of that head trash.

But what can you do about head trash? Remember the steps of long-term behavioral change: Awareness, Knowledge, Application, Skill, then (finally) Habit. AKASH, for short.

So you can really only get around your head trash after you've recognized it for what it is.

This happened to one of my clients recently. He works in a quickly changing industry and became aware of an industry-wide change in best practices that would affect nearly all of his clients.

He would need to update the service he was providing to them so they could stay up-to-date, but he was reluctant to update the service—because he dreaded telling his clients about the industry-wide change.

Why? It's not a change he had any control over. But when my client took some time to think about the reasons he was reluctant to discuss this with his clients, he identified a couple of pieces of head trash.

He worried that they would think he was just trying to sell them something to get more money out of them. And he also was concerned that they would ask why he didn't set their service up the new way in the first place.

After recognizing the head trash for what it was, though, my client was able to move through the rest of the AKASH pattern. He informed his clients, explained the new industry best practice, and was met with a positive response from the ones who were concerned enough to comment on the change.

I wonder how long my client would have stayed stuck in hesitation and reluctance if he hadn't identified his head trash, though?

Where is head trash holding you back?

You can't work around it until you can identify it—but once you have, the way around your head trash will become clearer, and you can get on with your life.