DE-STRESS
YOUR
SUCCESS
Get
more of what you want
with less time, stress and effort
SACHA CROUCH
Smashwords
Edition
Copyright 2010 by Sacha Crouch
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
For
bulk purchases or corporate premium sales,
call the office at
+612 9938 3905
or email contact@de-stressyoursuccess.com
For my
clients,
who enable me to do
the work I love.
“The
only difference between
a wise man and a fool is that
the wise
man knows he’s playing.”
—Fritz Pearls
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Solidify Your Priorities
Acknowledge the costs of imbalance
Make your vision irresistible to yourself
Chapter 2: Choose Freedom Over Approval
Stop trying to be what you are not
Chapter 3: Practice Letting Go
Aim for excellence, not perfection
Let go of attachment to outcomes
Allow space for things to come to you
Chapter 4: Embrace the Process
Interrupt negative thinking cycles
Chapter 5: Demand More From Yourself
Conquer the emotional decision point
Chapter 6: Work Your (Simple) Plan
Step 1: Choose three key goals
Step 2: Create your action plan
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sacha Crouch is a fully accredited Business, Executive and Life coach with an honours degree in psychology. She is the owner of Activ8 Change, which is a coaching and training company that specialises in helping people improve their effectiveness at work, reduce their feelings of pressure and stress, and gain greater balance with their personal lives. As well as working one-to-one with individuals, Activ8 Change provides coaching, workshops and seminars for teams. Sacha frequently appears as a guest speaker at conferences and networking events, and plays an active role in the media, such as her current spot as resident blogger for Yahoo!7 Lifestyle. She lives with her partner Matt in the glorious northern beaches in Sydney, Australia.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many wonderful people have contributed to this book both directly and indirectly. Firstly, I would like to thank my clients who have allowed me into their lives at such a personal level. A big thanks to my partner Matt for being there to support me through the good days and the more challenging one’s, Justin for sharing ideas and providing feedback on an early draft, Deb for her support and inspiration, Robert Gerrish for feedback on readability, and all my other friends and family who have helped me stay on track until I could see a published book sitting on my bookshelf.
I never valued outsourcing as much as when I found my developmental editor, Teresa Castle, who helped me clarify my thoughts and focus my message, making authorship feel a lot easier than it had previously. A special thanks to Nick Riley for editing the first draft, Grahame Van Dixhorn of Write to Your Market for help with the title and copywriting, Adina Cucicov for cover and interior design, and Mission Mentor Publishing for helping me finally get the book published.
Disclaimer
This book is sold with the understanding that the author is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional services advice. Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes, both typographical and in content. Therefore, this book should be used only as a general guide and not as the ultimate source of the information contained herein. To the best of the publisher’s knowledge, the contact information is accurate as of the printing date of this book. The author and publisher shall not be responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in this book.
INTRODUCTION
When he was only 50 years old, my father passed away. In his last handful of years, he and my mother ran a successful travel business for art lovers. He loved to work; I guess you could say it was his greatest passion. But did he work too hard? Was he stressed and pressured? Would he have lived longer if he had greater balance between his work and personal life?
The answers to these questions I’ll never know.
What I do know is that losing my Dad when he was so young gave me a deep sense of purpose and passion in life. His early death instilled in me a drive to devour each precious moment of life and to find a way to inspire others to live not for the future when they reach some milestone or achievement but for today, this moment, now.
To be honest, I love success and I love business, but I also value my life. So my father’s death was the first trigger that propelled me toward a journey to discover the secrets to creating immense success at work without robbing yourself of life.
Of course, there were a few hiccups along the way before I could authentically say I’d unravelled any secrets.
My studies in psychology at university provided the theory, research, and tools I needed to help people manage stress and build resilience. I studied everything I could find on the power of the mind, success principles, time management, motivation, and leadership. While completing my honours thesis, I worked in an anxiety clinic and learned all about minimising anxiety and conquering our own fears. I became the eternal self-development student, attending seminar after seminar in order to expand my resources and clear my own obstacles to success.
After a brief stint managing a team of health-care professionals and some quality time in the family business, I set up my coaching, speaking, and training company, Activ8 Change.
I quickly realised that just because you have a powerful wakeup call, like I did, doesn’t mean it is easy and it doesn’t mean everything will click into place automatically. Despite everything I believed was important in life and the trigger of my father’s death, I struggled to stick to my priorities because I was trying to keep up with what I thought successful business people had to do. And to be truthful, I have the typical Type A personality: obsessive, driven, the perfect candidate for workaholism. That is, until my second big wake-up call—I saw a common pattern begin to emerge among my clients. They wanted me to help them stop working and start living again!
The most impressionable of all was a client who came to me by way of a referral from her doctor with the goal of reducing the stress in her life and, in turn, her blood pressure. Although Bethany had a wonderful, successful career, her health and happiness had been seriously compromised in the process. Along with serious stress-related health issues, Bethany hadn’t been in a relationship for fifteen years because, in her own words, she “never had the time to invest in finding the right one.”
The reason this was such a poignant moment for me was that I didn’t want this story to become my own, but I realized that I was making similar choices to Bethany in the name of success. So I made a decision that, once and for all, I would bring my true passion to my work and focus on helping people succeed while maintaining balance in their lives. I drew on all the skills I had learned and started to live this model in my own life so I could walk my talk and empower my clients.
My obsessive nature finally had a healthy place to play—mastering the art of balanced success.
During the past seven years, I have been fortunate to be allowed into the most secret parts of people’s lives—people from all sorts of industries, ages, and walks of life. This has given me the unique experience necessary to understand the common habits that emerge and allow our work to take over our lives. Being lucky enough to share this journey at such a personal level has revealed the common reasons why we make success harder and more stressful than it needs to be and the practical strategies we can use to turn this around. My suggestions come not just from theory, not just from research, but from working with real people making real changes to achieve greater freedom with their time and less stress in their lives.
How about you?
Are you stressed, busy, and neglecting your personal life?
Are you fed up with pushing so hard but afraid to stop out of fear that it will all fall apart?
Is your whole life consumed by your work?
Do you feel constantly overworked and unable to get ahead on your bigger priorities?
Do you push yourself so hard at work that you have no energy left for your personal life?
Do you find it hard to switch off from thinking about work?
Do you have trouble setting goals on anything other than your work priorities?
Do you take your frustrations out on your family, lie asleep worrying at night, neglect your health, lack time for the things you love, or feel like you’re in a constant state of discontentment?
If you said yes to even one of these questions, De-stress Your Success is for you!
What if I said to you that by applying the principles in this book to your life and work you will finally be able to let go of doing so much, live life more fully, relax, have fun, worry less, and still maintain your career success—would you believe me?
Where you are in your work life right now is a direct reflection of your habits and beliefs. The reason you feel overworked and pressured is because you have set up your work and life to be that way. The only way to change your current situation is to change those habits and patterns.
Chances are, if you’ve picked up this book, you’re ready to discover a new way of living. You’ve realised your priorities are out of alignment, and you want to do something about it. Perhaps you’ve even tried to make some adjustments, but you need that teacher who has mastered it to show you a better way. The good news is you don’t have to let go of your drive for success in order to master more balanced living. De-stress Your Success is about keeping your passion for success but learning new ways of living that free up your time and refocus your energy so you can succeed in all of your life, not just your work.
There are three main things you need to make this transition:
Firstly, you need to understand what you are doing to make your life harder and throw it out of balance. There are always factors outside your control tempting you to work too hard, worry too much, and put off your priorities. However, if you want things to change, you have to commit yourself to improving those things that are within your control: the choices you make, the easy paths you take, and the stress you create. De-stress Your Success will help you pinpoint the choices you are making now that keep you stuck.
Secondly, the reason you’ve been working so hard and robbing yourself of freedom is not because success requires you to do so, it’s because your current habits and disciplines are not working for you. Greater freedom requires better habits. De-stress Your Success will help you stay disciplined so you can create better habits.
Thirdly, you cannot learn to operate at a whole new level without knowing how. De-stress Your Success will show you how other successful business owners and professionals have achieved the freedom and balance you desire and the specific steps they have taken to do so.
Let me show you the exact process of De-stress Your Success with an example. Celia first started her design business because she was passionate about bringing unique and creative ideas to her clients. She enjoyed watching their brands come alive as a result of their work together. In recent years, though, her passion had begun to wane because she was exhausted and felt trapped. The business consumed Celia’s life—she worked fourteen hours a day six or seven days a week, took work away with her on holidays, felt a permanent undercurrent of stress and worry, and was unable to switch off at the end of the day even when she did get home—but she had no idea where to start to turn this around, other than to walk away from the business altogether.
As with most business owners, Celia had jumped in head first with no prior experience as a business owner, so most of the time she learned things the hard way, through trial and error. There were many things she had done smashingly, like providing excellent customer service that built client loyalty and creating systems to ensure the smooth running of the enterprise. She was a savvy businesswoman with great ideas and the enthusiasm needed to get things off the ground.
However, there were several key things causing Celia to work much harder than she needed to and habits that created unnecessary stress and pressure. Because she had so much to do on her “mental action lists,” a sense of being overwhelmed was her constant companion, and it made her feel scattered and ineffective. She wasted so much time thinking about everything she should be doing that she often became stuck in indecision and worry.
Instead of supporting her staff members so they could grow in the job and flourish, she constantly took over their work and failed to support their efforts to realise their full capabilities. Even though she had more than enough on her plate already, Celia felt a constant need to do the hands-on work herself. She knew this was sabotaging her business growth (and her sanity), but couldn’t get herself to stop.
There was no doubt about it, Celia was ready to improve her effectiveness and reduce the pressure. Equipped with her readiness to change, we focused on six key elements to turn her life around so she could move beyond her current level of operation and create more freedom in her business and her life. Each of these six elements relates to one of the six chapters of this book.
Let me show you specifically how Celia mastered each element to discover the way to a new, more effective and balanced approach to success.
Six Elements of De-stress Your Success:
Chapter 1: Solidify Your Priorities
Although all Celia ever thought about was work, when she first came to coaching she had never clarified what she really wanted her role to be within her business. She had never thought about how she wanted the business to support her lifestyle rather than dictate it. In fact, she spent very little time thinking about what she wanted from life and found it difficult to pinpoint her top priorities. As a result, we spent some time clarifying, at a deep level, what made her happy, satisfied, challenged, and balanced. Then we created a new long-term vision for her life that revolved around this core essence.
You must read this chapter because …
In order to free your time and balance your work with your life, you need to have a clear picture of what you want your life to look like. You need to connect with what is in your heart and what makes you truly happy—no other people’s definitions of success and happiness but yours—and align with this.
Chapter 2: Choose Freedom Over Approval
Celia was a pretty confident woman, a go-getter who loved to get out and sell her business with pizzazz. However, she lacked the confidence to assert her own boundaries, say no to staff members and clients, and be clear with potential clients about what services her business could and could not provide. Also, she agonised over what people thought of things she said and did, and she adapted her behaviour to avoid being disliked. To address this, we focused on developing Celia’s confidence to do what was right for her, even if this meant possible disapproval or criticism from those around her.
You must read this chapter because …
When you care too much about wanting people to like and approve of you, you block your own freedom to be yourself and do what is right for you; instead, you choose what will please or impress other people and meet their definition of success. Freedom requires choosing what is important and valuable to you over what will please others.
Chapter 3: Practice Letting Go
Celia was obsessed with the results of her business and got stuck trying to control everything to ensure perfection. This meant constant worry, taking over work from her staff, and failing to step back and allow things to take care of themselves. When anything went wrong, she had trouble letting it go and moving on. Through learning to let go, Celia has created a newfound freedom, giving her more time and more peace of mind.
You must read this chapter because …
Being attached to the idea that things must turn out a certain way or be done your way makes life so much harder than it needs to be. By letting go, you create the opportunity to be at peace no matter what is going on around you, and you free up huge amounts of time to focus on the actions that are of greatest value for you.
Chapter 4: Embrace the Process
Celia’s mind was hardly ever in the present moment, just enjoying things as they are. She was often stuck worrying about something she had to do in the future or ruminating over something that had happened yesterday or last week. Always striving to get something done, she had lost a sense of connection and enjoyment in her life. She had very little down time, so she was constantly frazzled and stressed, and this was limiting her effectiveness as well as the energy she needed for her personal life. By practicing a few new disciplines, such as daily meditation and making a clear end point to her workday, Celia turned this around and became more present, engaged, and connected in each moment, enjoying her life again, performing at her best, and perhaps even more importantly, getting her health back on track.
You must read this chapter because …
When you learn to switch off the mental noise and be present in each moment, you open yourself up to a completely new experience of life. You are engaged, connected, and focused, and at the same time you are in flow, calm, and relaxed.
Chapter 5: Demand More From Yourself
Celia was a successful businesswoman; nonetheless, in certain areas in her business and life, she avoided doing what was important for her long-term goals and allowed herself to make excuses for not following through. Once Celia achieved clarity about what she really wanted in her life, we took a good, hard look at where she needed to step up her game in order to live her dream. Celia realised that she had been very good at being too busy to tackle the “uncomfortable” stuff like managing staff members who were not performing well, dealing with any conflict that arose, stepping back from doing everything herself, and making time for personal activities that were essential for her well-being. Not any more!
You must read this chapter because …
You can’t break out of your current life unless you are willing to face the things you put off, procrastinate over, and avoid. You need to recognize how this behaviour is holding you back from achieving more in less time and you must demand a new response from yourself.
Chapter 6: Work Your (Simple) Plan
Before coming to coaching, Celia had tried to manage her time more effectively and had even put some steps in place to manage her stress. Yet she had little success in making any lasting change because she never had a plan! Sure, she had business plans, weekly task plans, even diet plans, but she never created a plan to incorporate new lifestyle choices into her business and life. To take her to a whole new level, we created a clear, simple, workable plan.
You must read this chapter because …
Without a plan you will not create lasting change.
I’m sure you’ll agree, the term work-life balance has become a phrase that many people talk about but few achieve. Don’t join in!
Take the journey of those who live it.
De-stress Your Success shares with you the practical wisdom of those like Celia who do live it. Much of the book stems from research and theory in psychology and business, and it also draws upon coaching methodology to help integrate ideas into action. But most importantly, this book shares stories of inspiration from clients who have succeeded in incorporating the principles into their everyday lives.
There is nothing holding you back from mastering this art, as long as you are willing to put into practice daily what you learn in the pages of this book. Learning the fine art of balanced success is just like learning to master a new dance routine. Reading about the steps required and murmuring “ah, yes” is not enough. You must practice the dance steps or you will never improve. Through repetition, you learn the art of the dance so beautifully that it looks natural. In fact, you get to the point where you no longer have to think about the steps any longer, you just dance.
This is the aim of De-stress Your Success, for you to master the steps of balanced success and practice them daily until they become a natural part of the way you move. This is what makes the difference between the few who achieve work-life balance alongside a successful career and the many who don’t—the application of simple principles into their everyday lives.
By mastering the art of De-stress Your Success, you will open the door to true freedom . . . The freedom to do what you love and love the process of doing it, freedom from stress and worry, freedom to put your head on the pillow at night and fall into a restful state of sleep, freedom to do what truly matters to you rather than what others want of you, freedom to enjoy life, and perhaps most importantly of all, freedom to be you!
The question is, are you ready to change your life?
Chapter 1
SOLIDIFY
YOUR PRIORITIES
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
—Peter Drucker
If you want to free up your time and balance your career with your life, you need a clear picture of what you want your life to look like. You need to connect with what is in your heart and what makes you truly happy, rather than with other people’s definitions of success and happiness, and then align your life with this vision.
Reconnecting with his priorities was exactly what Bill needed when he came to coaching in order to get his life back on track. Even though he had what would appear to be a “successful” life, Bill was exhausted, couldn’t sleep at night, felt more disconnected from his wife every day, and had a feeling of irritation from the moment he woke to the moment he fell asleep. He was burnt out and struggled to get out of bed in the mornings.
In our first session, I asked Bill to remember a time when he was at his happiest. He recalled the early days of his relationship with his wife when they spent the evenings relaxing on the edge of the harbour with a picnic of fresh fruit, smelly cheese, spicy salami, a loaf of fresh bread still warm from the bakery, and a glass of wine, then falling asleep in each other’s arms before heading home to a sound night’s sleep.
Being out in nature was also one of Bill’s favourite things; it made him feel calm, centred, and at peace. When his life was filled with moments in nature, such as bushwalks and beach escapades, he reconnected with himself and felt alive. Until recently, Bill had enjoyed an active life, engaging in fun sports with his friends and swimming and snorkeling with his wife.
However, for the last few years his life had been empty of these things. Instead, he had filled every spare moment, including his sleeping hours, thinking about work and nothing else. There was no room left to think about simple pleasures like what made him feel good or to investigate where he was wasting his time and what was missing in his life.
After this session, Bill went away with a list of questions to contemplate about what he wanted from his life. That evening, he surprised his wife by picking her up from work with a packed picnic and heading down to their favourite spot by the harbour. Together they went through the list of questions, sharing each other’s thoughts.
Bill came back to our next session with a renewed sense of energy. This process helped him see that it wasn’t the passion for his work that was the problem, it was the stress and worry, the failure to ensure that he also filled his life with simple pleasures, and his tendency to neglect every area of his life other than his work. He realised he was pushing hard all the time, trying to prove his success to others, and wasn’t allowing himself to step back and enjoy those same successes.
Over the last few years, Bill was demonstrating by his actions that his top priorities were:
1. Making more
money
2. Gaining greater recognition
3. Mastering his area of
expertise
When he gave himself the time to make a conscious decision about his true priorities, he realised that these were not at the top of the list. His top three priorities in life were:
1. Feeling good:
active, stress-free, and full of energy
2. Quality time with his
wife (and soon-to-be family)
3. Fulfilling and financially
rewarding work
Because Bill was not consciously choosing his priorities in life, his real priorities were not coming into the equation when he chose how to spend his time. His entire focus was on money, recognition, and expertise, so he hadn’t focused his attention on how to free up more time, manage his stress and make time for an active lifestyle, and work on his relationship with his wife.
It was not that Bill had no idea that these things were important to him. He knew he wanted them in his life, but they were just a wish, a hope, something he would get around to one day, when all the pressure eased. He wanted to feel good and have quality time with his wife, but he was not making either a priority. Wanting something to happen and making it a priority are two very different things. Without turning his wishes into priorities, Bill had little impetus to do anything to make sure he lived by his true desires.
It might sound like a cliché to say that “you have to put yourself first” or “it’s all about priorities” but there’s a lot of truth in these statements. Balance, effectiveness, and feeling good require knowing your priorities and having the discipline to live by those priorities.
In each moment of the day, you have to make choices of what to say yes to and what to say no to, and without a clear understanding of your priorities, it is nearly impossible to make effective choices. Without this understanding, you are more likely to spend your time on things that grab your immediate attention or give you an instant result rather than on things that create your dream lifestyle over time. You are also likely to stick to habits and patterns that have gotten you where you are today rather than developing habits and patterns that will get you to the life you really want to create.
One of the reasons Bill never had enough time was that he had the habit of taking over work from staff members rather than supporting them so they could master the work themselves. He wanted his staff to take greater responsibility for the hands-on work, but he continued to give in to the option that felt easier in the moment—taking over at the first sign of a challenge rather than building the skills to trust, delegate, and let go. Once Bill identified that his top priorities were to feel good, live an active lifestyle, and nurture his relationship with his wife, he had a renewed drive to do what it took to free up his time and a renewed commitment to break this habit in order to create the lifestyle he wanted in the long term.
The interesting thing about priorities is that living by them often requires the discipline to say no to competing, yet tempting, demands. Living by our priorities requires putting our long-term desires ahead of an immediate result. Unfortunately, all too often we choose the immediate result because we tell ourselves that we will sort out our priorities once something else is completed—“Once this project is finished, I’ll start my new exercise routine” or “Once I meet this sales target, I’ll cut back my hours.” But that day never comes, and we continue to put our top priorities off for some fine day in the future that never appears.
Most people think about their goals and priorities once or twice a year and then tuck them away in the drawer, never to be seen again until the next six months or year. It’s the typical New Year’s resolution syndrome! After a break away from work, typically over the Christmas holidays, most people feel refreshed, rejuvenated, and clear about what is important in life. The motivation to do things differently is enormous. Once they’re back in the grind of daily life, however, those priorities slip out of mind as other demands on time and energy expand. Motivation starts to slip away with the sense of being overwhelmed with responsibilities.
There are two common reasons why we get stuck in this pattern again and again, despite grand intentions to change. Firstly, we don’t take enough time to regularly step back and evaluate our priorities. At times when we most need to let go of the details and step back to strategise, we push ourselves to do more, hoping that working harder will solve the issue more quickly. But all this does is create stress, pull us further into the details, and cloud our judgement of the most effective way forward.
Secondly, we don’t set ourselves up to make sure our priorities actually happen. The pull of daily life is overpowering, and staying true to our priorities usually requires breaking old habits, as Bill did when he changed his poor delegation skills. Yet we fail to put structures in place to keep our priorities at the forefront of our decision making and to maintain our motivation in the face of these pressures.
If you truly desire freedom in your life, you must have the discipline to maintain your priorities. This requires a sound understanding of what those priorities are and set structures to ensure that you follow through. Working through this book will provide those structures. In later chapters, we will help you break old habits that make it difficult to stay true to your priorities. However, in this chapter we will take the first step—solidifying what your true priorities are and moving them from a wish to a commitment for a new way of life.
What defines a successful yet balanced life will be different for every person on this planet. You must know what a “beautiful life” looks like for you, what makes your heart sing, what makes you feel alive, where you want to invest your energy and time. Working through this chapter will enable you to gain clarity about what needs to change in order to live a less stressful, more enjoyable and successful life. So brace yourself, it’s time to create your vision …
DEVELOP YOUR VISION
Change requires focusing on where it is we want to get to and having a clear picture of what it looks like so that our mind opens up to the possibilities of how to get there. The challenge is that we become used to life the way it is now; we’re in our comfort zone, we’re sure that if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we will at least continue to get the same result. It’s safe and secure, and the results are guaranteed. Sure, it’s not the result we truly want, but it’s a result we trust. The scenario of where we want to get to, on the other hand, is out of our comfort zone and unfamiliar. We don’t trust it yet.
When you’re used to working hard and being under immense stress, it might be difficult to believe that there is an easier road to success. Since you haven’t taken the journey to your new destination yet, it’s not possible to know how you will make it happen. Because of this sense of uncertainty, you may feel tempted to pull back from what you truly want and try instead to aim for something that feels like it’s in your reach with the skills you have now. Unfortunately, this strategy robs you of the chance to discover new ways of doing things that will enable you to create different results in the future.
The initial stage of improvement in any area of your life requires the willingness to dream and believe without seeing proof of the results yet. In fact, this willingness to open up to unknown possibilities is the key to discovering better ways of doing anything.
Every great thing you achieve in your life starts out in the same way: dream, believe, take action, and then achieve. Throughout this chapter, do not give in to the temptation to limit your dream to what feels possible right now. Clarify what you truly want your life to look like. Dare to be bold. You don’t need to know how you will achieve it; what you do need is clarity, commitment, the courage to take the few first steps, and a dose of persistence. Once you have articulated your vision, new ideas, people, and opportunities will arise in your life and help guide your path. Little by little, the answers to “how” will reveal themselves.
Exercise: Begin your visioning process
Grab a notebook or journal and progress step-by-step through the following questions. Sit in a quiet, distraction-free space and write whatever answers come into your mind without filtering or editing them. At times, your first thought to some of the questions may be “I don’t know”; when this happens, take a few deep breaths and allow some space for any ideas to arise. Write down anything that comes to mind, even if you’re not really sure it’s “right”. When you try to articulate the right answers, it can block you from flowing with the process and getting to the heart of what truly matters to you.
Later in the chapter, you will narrow these thoughts down to a succinct vision. For now, open your mind and let your thoughts run free.
A. What do you want in all areas of your life?
Go forward in your mind to a year from now when you have reduced your stress and created harmony in your work and life, when everything has fallen into place …
What is going on that shows you have achieved it? How do you spend your time, how do you feel, who is in your life? Start with your work and then move through all areas of your life: relationships, leisure, finances, business, career, personal growth, health, purpose, your home and work environment, spirituality, and fun.
B. What is success for you?
Success means different things to different people. It’s crucial to create your own definition. Otherwise, you’ll end up living by someone else’s vision and chasing goals and priorities that aren’t of true significance for you.
For me, success at work encompasses waking up excited about the day ahead, knowing the work I do makes a difference to people’s lives, doing what I love for my work, doing it with great mastery, and getting paid well for it. For a long time, my measure of success was placed on the highest bar possible in my business because I wanted to prove to others how successful I was. I looked to others in my industry whom I deemed successful and wanted what they had. This meant pursuing paths that weren’t driven by a true internal desire to create success but just to show I could do it, too.
Adopting this perspective was exhausting, and it created an ongoing feeling of dissatisfaction because there was always someone further ahead whom I was trying to catch in order to feel successful. Now that I am clear about what I really want and how I want to live my life, it is easier to say yes or no to the right things and to filter out what is driven by the desire to impress others.
Go forward in your mind to the end of your life. How would you know if your life had been successful? If it encompassed everything you define as successful, what would have happened, who would have been involved, and how would you have felt? What experiences would you have had? If you didn’t care about proving your success to others, what would you consider a successful life?
C. How do you want to feel?
When you feel good, everything feels easier and things fall into place more smoothly. When your emotions are positive, the world around you looks more positive. On the other hand, everything feels harder when you feel negative, bored, depressed, or stressed.
There are many things you can do to feel good on a daily basis, irrespective of what is going on around you. You don’t have to be at the whim of your feelings and emotions. You can make a conscious effort to build your energy, feel good, and adopt a positive outlook on life. You are going to explore these ideas further in later chapters, but for now get clear about the end picture of how you want to feel in your life.
If you could choose how to feel on a regular basis, what would that be? Would you have greater energy, feel more relaxed and calm, and see the glass half full instead of half empty? Would you feel more open and receptive, less defensive, more confident, or more curious? Paint a picture of how you would feel if you were living in a balanced, aligned way while still following your ambitions.
D. How do you want your relationships to be?
Connection with others is at the cornerstone of life. Both at work and at play, everything is affected by our interactions with others. What we can achieve in life is infinitely larger with great teams and relationships around us. Relationships can help us refuel and recuperate or they can be a powerful drain on our personal and emotional resources.
When we’re under stress and constantly busy, relationships are often the first things to suffer. Commitments are broken because we have too much on our plate to handle. We become more emotionally reactive and fail to put time into nurturing relationships with the ones we love. At work, poor leadership skills can hold us back, making work harder than it needs to be.
Imagine your future with healthier relationships. How would you like your relationships to improve in order to enhance your balance, happiness, and success? How would your leadership, communication, or influencing skills improve? Who would you spend more time with? How would you like to see your personal relationships change or grow?
E. What do you want to do more of?
There are two sides to this coin. Firstly, there are those things you are good at, passionate about, and enjoy that you would love to have more abundantly in your life. Or maybe they’ve just fallen by the wayside because you’ve been too busy. For Bill this included going for picnics with his wife, being active and out in nature. Secondly, there are those things you know would improve your results and make life easier if only you did them. You know you make life harder by putting these things off or ignoring them altogether. For Bill this included letting go and delegating more effectively.
What tasks, activities, or projects would greatly improve your results or balance if you did them more often? What strengths do you have that you are underutilising? What dreams do you wish you could chase that you have been putting off? What simple joys are missing from your life?
F. What do you want to do less of?
Lastly, there are probably many things in your life right now that are draining your energy or robbing you of the time for more important things. Saying no and eliminating them from your life is just as important as doing what matters.
What do you waste time on that either doesn’t need to be done at all or doesn’t need to be done by you personally? What drains your energy? What is unnecessary in your life that you want to eliminate? What no longer serves a purpose in your life?
CLARIFY YOUR VISION
Now that you have done some exploration of how you would like your life to look, it’s time to bring those ideas together to form a clear picture in your mind of the life you want to create. The stronger the picture in your mind of where you are heading, the more likely it is that you will draw upon it in each moment to make decisions about how to spend your precious time and energy. And the more likely you are to realise your dream.
Athletes and sporting greats have used these principles for years. They visualise their end results as if they have already achieved them. In her mind, an athlete runs through her race from beginning to end as if she had already won. She sees herself at the front of the pack through the entire race. Crossing the finishing line, she feels her legs hit the ribbon and hears the crowd roar. She sees herself standing on the podium, gold medal around her neck, her country’s anthem blaring across the auditorium as the tears roll down her face. She tastes the victory as if it’s already real.
Visualisation both improves an athlete’s performance on event day, and also provides greater purpose to her training regime. Visualising the end result makes getting out of bed for a 5 a.m. training run not only more bearable but satisfying, hopefully even enjoyable, knowing that it is an important step to achieving her ultimate vision.
Rather than a long list of notes about yourself tucked away in a book, you must create a clear picture in your mind of what you are aiming for. Read through your notes from the exercises above, underline, circle, or highlight the main themes and create a visual image in your mind of how you want to live, act, and feel in terms of your dream life of passion, ambition, and balance. Then simplify this picture into a one- page summary you can draw upon easily and regularly. You may also like to create a visual version by cutting pictures out of magazines or downloading images from Google.
FOCUS ON WHAT YOU WANT
I’m sure you’ve heard many times before that what you think about all day influences what you create in your life. Your mindset is an integral part of your success at anything, including living a balanced life, so it’s crucial to focus your visions and goals on what you want in your life rather than what you don’t want in your life.
Let me explain.
Imagine for a moment you’re riding a push bike. Regardless of your level of expertise behind a set of handlebars, the same rules apply. If you see a huge pothole and focus your attention upon trying to miss the pothole, guess where you are going to go? Straight into the pothole! Your attention is on the pothole itself, so that’s where you’re telling your mind to take you. In order to avoid the pothole, you have to focus your thinking upon “swerving around the edge of the pothole”.
The brain likes to think in terms of images, so each time you think about something you don’t want, you are sending your brain a picture of the thing you don’t want rather than the thing you do want. In the pothole example, when you tell yourself to “miss the pothole” the image you send your brain is that of the bike going into the pothole. However, when you focus on gliding by the side of the pothole, you send this image to your brain instead—and you stay on your bike!
To understand why it is so important to focus on what you want as opposed to what you don’t want, you need to know how your brain filters information. There is so much information coming at you in each moment that your brain needs to choose which information to pay attention to and which to ignore. Your brain does this by paying attention to information in the environment consistent with your thoughts and beliefs and ignoring the rest. Hence, in order to create what you want in your life, you must focus your thoughts upon your beliefs and desires so your brain will filter information in the environment in a way that’s consistent with what you wish to create rather than with what you wish to eliminate or avoid.
Sounds like a simple task to focus on what you want, right? Wrong! If you tracked your thoughts for a day, you’d be surprised to find out how much you tend to think about what you don’t want, what you want to get rid of, and what you want to avoid rather than thinking about what you do want. This is especially the case in areas you find challenging. As a result, you have to refocus your attention to consciously think about what you do want in life and to minimise the focus on what you don’t want.
Take a look at the difference between the two visions below. The first is a part of Bill’s vision as he originally wrote it. Notice the negative language and descriptions of things he wants to avoid. His second version outlines the same vision, but this time it’s worded only in terms of what he wants.
Vision One:
My life is balanced and I’m not feeling stressed. I no longer wake up in the morning feeling exhausted, not wanting to go to work. I exercise each morning for 30 minutes before I head off to work. During my work day, I am focused and productive. I don’t do any more work than I need to and happily pass work on to others. I feel productive yet effective at the same time because I only do what I know is important. I don’t procrastinate over bringing in new business. I work less hours but am achieving much more. I feel abundant, peaceful, and energised all at the same time.
Vision Two:
My life is balanced and I feel calm, centred, and relaxed. I wake each morning feeling fantastic and excited about the day ahead. I exercise each morning for 30 minutes before I head off to work. During my work day, I am focused and productive. I stick to doing only the key things I know are important for me to do and happily pass work on to others. I feel productive yet effective at the same time because I only do what I know is important. I tackle new business activities immediately and with courage. I only work forty hours a week and am achieving more as a result. I feel abundant, peaceful, and energised all at the same time.
Can you see how reading the words in bold in the first vision conjures in your mind the exact image of the things Bill no longer wants in his life? “Not feeling stressed” creates an image in your mind of being stressed. Even though you are saying you don’t want it, the brain can only see the image of stress. Instead, you want to picture yourself as calm, centred, and relaxed. A very different image!
Exercise: Create a positive vision