How Examining your Past Self will Reinforce your Future Results When you understand the decisions you made for your business in the past, you'll be better prepared for future emergencies.

During a crisis, it is common for many business owners to immediately disconnect from their ideal personal, professional, and financial goals. This departure can, in itself, throw you into a state of emotional emergency. When you start to question yourself, it's important that you try to understand the decisions you've made up until now by examining your past, present, and future self.

If you like what you read below, you'll also like my e-book, The Emergency Business Response, available at www.cardoneventures.com/emergency, or follow me on Instagram @brandonmdawson.

Every granular decision you make determines your future.

Starting now, your future results depend on every granular decision and action you take, and a pragmatic (versus emotional) perspective will serve you better in both the short and long term.

Perspective is the best recipe for great decision-making. If all of your thoughts and actions up until now have been foundational to your overall success, a crisis could be the single greatest gift ever given to you. Why? Because when things are going well, it's easy to mask problems and to ignore a lack of foundational structure. If you have underlying problems and a weak foundation, a future crisis will likely trigger a major collapse. However, it could also become the biggest growth opportunity you'll ever see.

Step back. Review the decisions your past self made, reaffirm what your ideal future success looks like, and take a moment in the present to think and take action consistent with moving toward your future picture. I call this "taking action with intent." It's like throwing a stone in the middle of water; eventually, the ripple effect will make it back to shore.

How you view your current situation in a crisis will determine the actions you take.

How you view what's happening right now and how you're assessing the past decisions that led to your present situation can create the conditions that will propel you toward accomplishing your goals in the future. If you have poor foundational elements in a crisis, you will probably make the wrong choices under pressure—especially if your past actions were not sufficient to protect you in the present situation. Your decisions will be built off of the same faulty information.

Ultimately, you want to build an exceptionally healthy business that gives you the most options. When you reflect on the total sum of your current experiences, coupled with the past poor decisions that made you so vulnerable, it should be clear what decisions you need to make now to avoid the same mistakes in the future. Building a business, while preserving its value, is a learned technique. It can feel awkward to do the opposite of what you've been doing, but you're doing the opposite of what hasn't been working for you.

Define your mission, vision, and values.

The best way to secure a healthier future business is to better define your mission, vision, and values. Identify what hasn't been working. If your business has poor employee engagement, a disconnected culture, a lack of discipline, limited visibility into financial indicators, and poorly structured operating processes, you can turn those weaknesses into assets. Redefine your mission, vision, and values into actionable, healthy, long-term goals that drive intrinsic value.

Make your purpose and vision so clear that it's simple for everyone involved to understand what your intentions are. Then, once you put that stake in the ground, you have to back it up with the right actions that will enable you to achieve those results.

Shift your perspective and your words will follow. To change your business, you have to first change your mind, and then your words and results will follow, effectively rewriting your own script.

For additional help with programming your present to prepare for the future, I encourage you to check out my $47 Crushing COVID Mentor Group program. Visit www.cardoneventures.com/mentor to see a short video with more information.

To learn more about how Cardone Ventures can help your business, visit www.cardoneventures.com.

Follow Brandon Dawson on Instagram @brandonmdawson.