Episode 006: "Chapter 6 - Tradition"

I’m not saying that tradition is bad. Actually, tradition can be a good thing, and usually is. Your family probably has a few traditions of their own. Hank Williams Jr. even wrote a song about traditions. Just Google “Family Tradition,

”  -- it's the first thing that pops up.

But just because we have traditions, doesn’t automatically make them right. As we evolve, some traditions no longer apply, yet we try to force them to work. “That’s how we’ve always done it.” The challenge with “traditions” is that they can significantly hinder your growth. For example, you might not try something different for fear of going against tradition. And if it doesn’t work…Forget about it. You’ll never hear the end of it. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

Now, I’m not a religious person but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn something from a religious book. Pastor Rick Warren, In his book, The Purpose Driven Church,  had this to say about growing a new church. “We’ve been able to experiment with far more ideas than the average church - mostly due to the fact that we didn’t have decades of tradition to deal with.”

To me, he is saying that there can be a big advantage of not having traditions in the way of starting something new. There is no, “t

This is how we have to do it.”

Think of Major League Baseball… The stands are empty every night and the purists want to preserve the game and care too much about stats and records and the interest level continues to drop. Opposite of that is the NFL. It is constantly changing and adapting, and has never been more popular.

When you are limited in the ways you can do something, the amount of possible growth shrinks significantly. But when you aren’t bound by those limitations, you can experiment with infinite ways to grow. Your potential is increased exponentially.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes tradition can be good, especially when it comes to family. But… in business and personal development, it can interfere with our goals.

I am not saying that we abandon tradition altogether, but we need to also keep an open mind when new ideas present themselves. We must keep experimenting, and not let ourselves be limited by the chains of…

Tradition.