An owner sat with me last week and started listing his problems. Cash. Staff. Sales. The market. A competitor. His wife’s worry. His own broken sleep.

I asked him one question: how many of those are happening today?

He went quiet. Two, maybe. The rest were predictions, memories, and rehearsals in his own head.

Twenty years in rooms like that have taught me one thing clearly: most owners do not have many problems. They have one problem, and a habit of looking at it from many angles.

That is why I call it a bad habit, being too in love with your problems. Not because we enjoy difficulty, but because the mind is built to filter. It distorts, it deletes, it generalises. Without that, we could not carry the noise of being alive. The trouble is the filter never announces itself. We experience it as the truth.

Two things I hold in front of me when I notice I am doing it.

The first is a hadith qudsi: “Ana ‘inda zanni ‘abdi bi”, I am as My servant thinks of Me. If I expect hardship everywhere, I will find it everywhere, and I will lead as though it is everywhere. If I expect provision and a way through, I keep looking for the door until it opens.

The second is the first hadith most of us ever learn: “Innamal a’malu bin niyyat”, actions are but by intention. Intention is not a formality before the work. Intention decides what you notice, what you tolerate, and what you refuse.

Two owners can sit in the same bad month with the same numbers. One carries an expectation that the world is against him. The other carries an intention that this month is a test preparing him. Same month. Different decisions. Different outcomes.

So when my list of problems gets long, I do three things. I write them all down and mark which ones are happening today. I ask what I am expecting, and whether that expectation is worth keeping. And I correct the intention before the action, not after.

You are not experiencing your business. You are experiencing the business you pay attention to.

One question for tonight, not tomorrow: which problem are you actually facing today?

Datuk Wira

Many entrepreneurs want to grow their business, sales and profit to the next level, RM10 million and above, but they cannot see what is holding them back or how to reach the next stage… RCG has helped many entrepreneurs grow their business to RM10 million, RM25 million, RM50 million and RM100 million…

We start with a free Business Diagnosis at rcg.my.