Don’t Break Old Habits, Start New Ones

Professionally, we spend our time helping people to enroll in new ways of doing things. We show up with our product or service, show them a new or different approach from the old way, and we all move forward.

In The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey talks a lot about building and resetting tennis habits from the inside out. The lessons are, of course, more broadly applicable. In the same way a tennis player might have to break a bad serving habit in order to improve, Gallwey reminds us a child doesn’t have to think about how to break the habit of crawling.

So yeah, things are hard. But instead of fighting old habits, we have the opportunity to start new ones. The role of the coach, the role of any professional, is feedback and direction. If the person on the receiving end is ready to be coached, our job isn’t to break old habits, it’s to start new ones.

Helping others to progress is powerful. It’s also good business. Yesterday, crawl. Today, walk. Tomorrow, run. All together.