“Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it.”
— Bruce Lee
Do you believe in the best that’s within you? A healthy self-confidence provides that “can-do” attitude inherent in so many highly successful people. I see five healthy practices in high achievers; I believe you can see them in yourself to some degree.
1. Carpe Diem
Carpe Diem is often used to “seize the day” and can also be used to “enjoy the moment.”
Time is always of the essence when seizing the opportunities that are before us. We can only guess the time frame we have to take advantage of that opportunity we’re seeing.
John Maxwell says, “Opportunities do not multiply because they are seen. They multiply because they are seized.”
Remembering that all opportunities have an expiration date will serve us well. Our response to difficulties without motivation is the difference between achievement and the status quo.
2. Exceed Expectations
Highly successful people are proactive and exhibit a high degree integrity, they tend to provide an exchange of abundance in their dealings.
There are four exchanges which can be expressed in time, service, effort, or money. Every organization functions consistently in at least one of these exchanges.
These are the four types of exchanges you can have with your customers/clients:
Criminal Exchange – Where your customers leave feeling they’ve been robbed.
Neutral Exchange – Where your customers leave feeling they’ve gained nothing from the transaction.
Fair exchange - Where your customers leave feeling they received their money’s worth.
Exchange of Abundance – Where your customers leave feeling like they got more than they paid for.
3. Being Proactive
“I choose to focus on being proactive in creating opportunities for myself and others…”
— Kim Fields
The Proactive strategize then plays to win
The Reactive agonize then plays the blame game
The Proactive anticipate failures and learn from them
The Reactive fear failures and tend to repeat them
The Proactive weighs risk/reward and calculates probabilities
The Reactive avoids risk and takes the path of least resistance
The Proactive face obstacles, practicing resilience and persevering
The Reactive are discouraged by obstacles and quit
We cannot afford to be reactive, bypassing the challenges of going the extra mile. We will either thrive on solving the problems before us or lament “our unfortunate circumstances” while others who are proactive celebrate the wins.
4. Practice Realistic Thinking
Good thinkers tend to be realistic, having a better understanding of an issue. They usually solve more problems and are often more creative than those who do not practice sustained, realistic thinking.
Realistic thinking is deep thinking rooted in fact. You can only solve problems with facts. Examining our ideas and breaking them down into their core components enables us to sort them out; the best ideas contain the solutions that adequately address our problems.
Realistic thinking often leads to strategic thinking, which leads to successful strategies; this is why we’re told to “Look before we leap.”
5. Manage Your Emotions
As a leader, you’re more invested in your people and your business than others in your organization, and you’ll tend to experience emotional highs and lows more strongly than others. How you manage your emotions directly influences your environment. You cannot switch your emotions on and off at will, but you can learn to manage them. Having a disciplined thought life enables you to process them correctly.
Your emotions in and of themselves are neither positive nor negative. Your brain categorizes thoughts and events as positive or negative. The subconscious mind continuously monitors for normalcy and categorizes good, bad, positive, negative, and so on.
Learning to face and address our emotions aided by realistic thinking allows us to sort them out, discarding those we deem counterproductive.
In Closing, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale said, “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.”
*** This article was authored by John Picarello, Chief Leadership Officer at Lions Pride Leadership Co. ***