Success used to feel very different to me in my previous life. I was a senior leader in the corporate world, and in order to be successful I had to fit myself into a particular shape of performance box. Success looked like endless push, drive and hustle. It was exhausting and a huge factor in my breakdown and burnout. When I walked away from my career to take a break and rethink my life and livelihood, I had to completely relearn how to be me. I was determined to find another way. A way that felt easier, where I didn’t have to sacrifice my values, my time or my health and I got to live the life that made my heart sing. I travelled the world learning from the best coaches and mentors on the planet in the fields of personal and professional development and have since gone on to set up my own coaching and mentoring business. Throughout that journey to redefine success and create my wildly authentic life and through working with hundreds of clients to help them do the same, this is what I’ve learned.
Principle 1: Your self worth is an inside job. It’s absolutely crucial that you really do understand your confidence levels, your worthiness, how it feels to be you and your levels of self-worth, and that you don’t seek that from outside. And if you do, then your self esteem coat is on a shoogly peg! It’s your responsibility to constantly feed and reinforce your self-worth. No-one elses. If you’re relying on what other people think about you, if you’re relying on other people’s opinions, if you’re relying on other people’s feedback, then you are in a very, very high risk position when it comes to your confidence in yourself.
The more you understand and take ownership for the fact your self-worth is your responsibility, then the easier you’re going to find becoming more successful with more ease.
Principle 2: It’s your number one priority to protect and reinforce your confidence every single day. Don’t look to anybody else to do that. I work with a lot of female senior leaders and business owners and you absolutely have to focus on your confidence as your number one priority. If you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t believe in your business, why should anybody else? So you have to create practices, habits, routines that support you to feel more confident. Seek out evidence to support your success. You also need to understand where things could have gone better and learn the lessons available. So I encourage you to think about how you do that.
What practices do you have to measure your progress and understand opportunities to improve? Even a very simple daily review is going to help you with that.
Principle 3: Being You. One of my clients has recently had a mind blowing year filled with success beyond what she thought possible. Throughout the pandemic, she’s gone from 3 businesses, overwhelm and constant ‘busy work’ to having one business that is highly profitable. Financially, she’s shifted from charging £40 an hour to averaging and over a £1k per hour. She has had phenomenal growth, phenomenal results, all in the backdrop of extreme challenges. During a recent coaching session I asked her in relation to her success, ‘What surprised you most about the last year?’ And she said..
“The thing that surprised me most is the more me I am, the easier it is to be successful.“
Mic drop moment…. The more you are you, not trying to be anyone or anything else, the easier you’re going to find it to succeed and the easier you’re going to find it to succeed with ease. You are a completely unique and miraculous specimen. And the world needs you to be exactly who you are at your core, not who you think everybody expects you to be, nor who you think everybody else wants you to be.
Who are you here to be? Be that person. More and more every day and your success is inevitable…Celebrate your uniqueness, and use it as your number one competitive advantage. No one else can ever be you.
Principle 4: Failure is a necessary part of success. And, in fact, the higher you aim, the more you’re going to fail. So learn to use it to your advantage, get over failure quickly. A part of you knows you’re destined for more. That’s the part of you that I’m talking to right now. Failure is a necessary part of succeeding, and the higher you aim, the more likely you are to fail along the way so normalise it and roll with it.
Principle 5: Your fears are the gatekeeper to your greatest gifts. So learn not to be afraid of your fear by changing your inner narrative. And get willing to take action before you feel totally ready. You can describe it as ‘taking imperfect action’. The secret is to change the way you talk to yourself and amplify your opportunities over your anxieties. It doesn’t have to be the perfect conditions to get going and you don’t need to feel totally ready. Taking your first step, even when scared will create momentum and the next step will become clearer more quickly. And if you’re a business owner, that means more clients, more cash flow and more success.