Too many accidents or just the wrong type of accident occurring once can derail you from your intended accomplishments or bring things permanently to a halt. To have consistent small business growth and the success you desire you must minimize the accidents.

The truth is that most accidents can be prevented. How do you do that? You develop new disciplines. Before I get to how to go about doing this let's look at a couple of other aspects of what I call an Accidental Self-Employment.

In working with hundreds of self-employed business owners over the years and even in my own businesses I have observed and experienced the negative effect of accidents. Quite simply, accidents are those things that we say, think, do or fail to do that take us off course and either delay or completely derail our progress.

As you know, if you are honest with yourself, most of the accidents we have can be avoided. These accidents just don't happen. They happen because you have created or allowed an environment to be created.

It is an environment that encourages the repetition of mistakes. Very often, it is an environment where the reason these negative things keep happening is because there is no leadership to embrace change and to make change. Successful small business is about embracing change and making it happen.

That's where new disciplines come in. If you develop new disciplines then you will minimize the accidents and the resulting loss of energy and time. How do you go about developing new disciplines.

First, you must be committed to change. Secondly, you need to understand what a discipline is. A discipline is a bridge between a thought and the action you take to make that new thought a reality. If you repeat the thought and the action over a period of time you have a new discipline.

In owning your own business it is your responsibility, as the owner, to set the example for embracing change by creating new disciplines. Now this may all sound good but the next part is crucial to the success of instilling new disciplines, whether it is for yourself, or your company, or both.

Start with something small where you can see an immediate positive difference. This will encourage you and others to create new disciplines and improvements on other things. Don't rock the boat and create more accidents by starting with something that is too big.

Start with the small things and work up to the bigger ones. Life and business are going to throw you some pretty big challenges. If you haven't mastered the small ones your chances of success are not very good on the big ones.

Apply this process to your business and life. You will cut down on the number of accidents while creating pathways to upgrade your business and your life. Growing small business is always about creating better ways to do things and upgrading.

Embrace change. Develop new disciplines. Do both and you will be creating the pathway to your business and personal growth and success.