Thrills, chills and spills! The Olympics delivers it all and keeps us on the edge of our seats in the process. We yell, scream and cheer for our favourites. Crowds jump up to applaud fantastic feats carried out on snow and ice. We rejoice over the incredible accomplishments for others. Wouldn’t it be amazing to feel the same way about our own lives?
What’s that you say? There’s nothing happening in your day-to-day existence that warrants such accolades? I know what you mean. Sometimes it can feel like we’re just going through the motions. But what if there was a way to get fired up about our accomplishments and start to see greater levels of success in life? What if there were Seven Success Accelerators? Oh, wait a moment! There are!
Andrew Barber-Starkey, a Master Certified Coach and president and creator of the ProCoach Success System, shared the magnificent seven with an enthusiastic group at the Geomatic Attic in Lethbridge on Saturday.
Andrew is a fascinating guy who practices what he preaches. When he shares about his life, you know he’s speaking about personal success from experience. A former hang-gliding dude, Andrew was once among the top gliders in the world. He’s taken a glider up to 19,000 feet and was the first person to fly across the Rockies from B.C. to Lake Louise, Alberta. Now he’s an extremely successful business coach, having started in the field in the early 1990s.
On Saturday, Andrew captivated and inspired us with The Seven Success Accelerators™.
1. Prioritize Your Actions: Identify the priorities that will advance you towards your goals. Focus on the 20% of things that will give you 80% of your results. Do them first!
Andrew notes that all work is not created equal. Remember the 80-20 rule – 20% of your efforts will yield 80% of your results. You don’t need to work harder, you need to focus more strongly and get more results from the time you invest.
Success hint: Before bed each night, identify the three most important things you need to accomplish the next day. Write them down. Focus on completing them and check them off as you go. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get them all done. Refocus for the following day.
2. Focus on the Next Step: You do not need to know exactly where you are going. Simply choose one next step that will move you forward and take action on it. All goals – no matter how large – are accomplished one small step at a time.
Having goals is obviously important, but you don’t need to know exactly where you’re going in order to get there. Andrew used the example of a mountain climber who arrives a base camp to discover the peak is fogged in. What does he do? He can’t see the ultimate goal, but he knows he want to go up, so he starts the climb and adjusts along the way.
Without taking action, we can risk basking in the golden dream. “I can’t wait until I’m financially free.” That’s great. But if it’s what you want, what are the steps you need to take? Identify them, even if they’re small, and start moving forward.
Success hint: List 10 things that are part of what you want to achieve and where you want to be, and then start moving towards them.
3. Cleanups, Completions and Deletions: The fastest way to energize yourself is to clean up the clutter, messes and incompletions that surround you. They sap your energy, keep you stuck and limit your freedom.
I can really relate to this one. How many times have you started something and then didn’t finish it? Andrew drew a number of circles or loops, open at the top, to represent those things in our lives that need to be cleaned up, completed or deleted. Left open, they drain our energy. Close the loop and you’ll feel energized. When it comes to clutter, what are you holding onto and why? Clutter is like a ball and chain holding you back.
Success hint: Realize there is no right and wrong when it comes to clutter. Different people are affected differently. Explore your own energy level. For some people, it’s OK to have what for others would be clutter. That’s why in marriages you’ll see fighting over things like clutter. If you’re the one bothered by it, realize it’s not right or wrong, it just impacts people differently and maybe you need to eliminate the clutter if you feel drained by it. It can help if you remember what Mom always told you; put your stuff away when you are done with it!
4. Expand Your Comfort Zone: Successful people move forward in the face of fear; unsuccessful people procrastinate and avoid things they fear. When you feel fear or resistance, find your courage and step towards it instead of holding back.
Picture a simple box drawn on a sheet of paper. Fill it with circles of different sizes. Andrew used this to demonstrate the Comfort Zone. We need to realize that everything we have exists within our Comfort Zone. Surround the box with X’s of different sizes. These are the things we want but don’t have. They all exist outside our Comfort Zone. If you really want them, you need to expand the size of Comfort Zone. Becoming familiar with getting outside the CZ will lead you forward. The further outside your CZ you go, the greater success you will experience.
Success hint: Always ask yourself, “How can I consistently step outside my Comfort Zone?” This is what changes you.
5. Do What’s Hard: When you do what’s hard, life become easy; when you do what’s easy your life very quickly becomes hard. Every time you have a choice to make ask yourself, “What serves my greater vision?”
Have you ever heard the expression, ‘fake it until you make it’? Andrew warns that can be counterproductive. In your mind you know you’re faking it and that can undermine your confidence. There is a real method you can practice to increase your self-confidence. Andrew shared an idea he heard expressed by Dr. Laura! Yes, that one. I guess you never know where wisdom will be found. Dr. Laura had the usual caller whining and complaining about how rotten her life was. Dr. Laura told her she needed to build her self-confidence. The caller then asked the all-important question, how can I build my self-confidence? The answer from Dr. Laura consisted of two words. How do you build self-confidence? Impress yourself! If you can impress yourself, you will find more about you that instills confidence.
Success hint: Whenever you are faced with a decision, ask yourself, “How could I handle this in a way that would impress myself?” Here’s an affirmation to repeat each day: “I make a habit of doing what’s hard.”
6. Celebrate Progress: Celebrating your successes adds fuel to your fire. Each time you acknowledge your progress your momentum increases and over time you become unstoppable. Find the win in everything that happens.
Sometimes we can set a goal, not achieve it, and then beat ourselves up over our perceived failure. As an example, Andrew imagined a self-employed individual who earns $40,000 a year. They set an ambitious goal to double that in the coming year and earn $80,000. Their actual result sees them earn $68,000. They get down on themselves because they are measuring the shortfall from the goal and not the progress from where they started. Focus on the progress, not the shortfall, and you’ll boost your confidence. By celebrating the small successes, we feed the fire and build to larger successes.
Success hint: To feed the fire, identify the successes you experience each day. For me, I’m going to start noting three successes each day when journaling.
7. Become a Learner: Seek out new lessons and skills. The more knowledgeable and capable you are, the more successful you will become. All highly successful people are experts in their chose field.
There are two areas to focus on when building your own business or career. These are increasing your technology knowledge and working on your own mind. Achieving success in these areas can be accomplished in three areas of study:
• Become a master of your own profession. When you know what you’re talking about, you have greater confidence and your clients or those you work with will have greater confidence in you.
• Skills and Knowledge. Things you should focus on in business include sales skills, communications, public speaking, information technology and negotiating skills. Strong negotiation skills can be the fastest way to put more money in your pocket. My own plug: If you want to increase you skills in all of these areas, check out a local Toastmasters club. There are six in this area operating at different times of the day. Of course, I’m partial to the Eyeopener Club, which meets Wednesdays, 7 a.m. at Legacy Tae Kwon Do, 1236 3 Avenue South, Lethbridge. The coffee is always on and muffins are available.
• Success Principles. This involves focusing on who you are, not what you do.
Success hint: Hiring a life coach or business coach can help you stay focused on learning and growing. Consider it a smart investment in your business. Talk to people who have employed a coach and see what a difference it can make. You can also look for a mentor, someone with success who likes to help others win. Mentors supply advice for free, but you need to do your part. If you’re not committed to taking advice and implementing it, then following up with your mentor, don’t even bother the potential mentor. Another option is to create a mastermind group.
The idea of the mastermind has been around for a long time, but may have actually been formally described by Napoleon Hill in his great book, "Think And Grow Rich," In that book he described a mastermind group as:
"The coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony."
The result: "No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind [the master mind]."
It was a terrific seminar and I’m hoping Andrew will return to Lethbridge with more teachings in the future. But you don’t have to wait until then to benefit from his insights. Andrew will be in Calgary on Thursday, March 18, presenting a three-hour learning opportunity, Success Blueprint. It is designed to show you how to get from where you are to where you want to be. To learn about this special evening, check out Success Blueprint.
Photo: Andrew Barber-Starkey
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