Wisdom.
People say it comes with age. I see it differently. I’ve found age often comes alone.
Consequently, like success, there’s not a lot of it around. One begets the other.
Most people have a dream. Not the kind you experience in sleep, the kind you experience when wide awake. It’s the big idea that keeps floating to the surface of the mind.
Trouble is, most people don’t know what to do with it. Many dismiss it as a fantasy. Others think “one day”. A much smaller minority set about making it happen, but even then they bark up the wrong tree. They think it’s about improving the business, not realising, or worst still just ignoring, the irrefutable truth that it’s all about improving the owner.
What makes a highly successful person successful isn’t the size of their business or the size of their bank account. What makes a highly successful person successful is the size of the person – who they are, not what they have.
Again, one begets the other. Life brings to you what you bring to life. It can’t give you what you want, it can only give you who you are. “By their fruits…”
If you were to ask every highly successful person I know how they’ve achieved their dreams, they’ll tell you something very similar to what my mentor John Maxwell said to me:
“I wouldn’t have achieved any of my dreams had I not been dedicated to continual self-improvement. If you want to grow and become the best person you can be, you’ve got to be intentional about it”.
What often gets in the way is life itself. It’s busy and we can make it complex. The problem is magnified because people aren’t programmed to focus on priorities. They don’t think and behave in accordance with the 80/20 principle (the premise being 80% of your results are determined by just 20% of your activities – and the more you prioritise the 20% the greater your results will be). Whether it’s truly 80/20 or 90/10 is irrelevant, it’s the ratio in terms of return that matters.
Most people operate by to do lists rather than prioritised activities. Consequently it can be a challenge to get to the bottom line in just about any area of life, especially in a world of increasing distraction. More information has been produced in the last twenty years than in the previous five-thousand and it’s all available at the push of a button on the device in the hand.
Never more than now is it so vital to structure your life around priorities. Never more than now is it important to get very clear on what activities should take precedent over others.
Never more than now is it so essential to prioritise self-improvement in your life. Your business can only reflect it’s owner. It can’t outgrow you. And no one improves by accident.
That recurring dream of yours is a prisoner, incarcerated in the self-imposed fortress of your mind. Without an improved you, it’ll never be given the freedom to materialise in your life.
And every time it rattles the bars of its psychological cell, screaming to be heard above the never ending “noise” of the day-to-day “busyness” in your mind, it seeks to remind you of who you could be and what you could achieve if you’d just get your priorities right and give it oxygen to breath.
The world is full of dreamers. It’s rich in people who want to improve their results but never think of improving themselves – the very cause of their effects. As the Victorian author James Allen accurately observed:
“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound”.
Why subject yourself to a life of under achievement simply because your priorities are not in harmony with the success you dream of?
Where’s the wisdom in that?
Your dream keeps resurfacing for a reason. You wouldn’t receive it in the first place if you weren’t capable of making it happen. It’s the part of you that’s seeking growth and fuller expression.
Why deny yourself?
Why live a life of self-denial?
Nothing of significance has ever been achieved through self-denial. There’s greatness locked up within you. All it’s asking for is recognition and the oxygen to breath.
Christian Simpson is the UK’s leading coach and mentor to business owners and entrepreneurs. For COMPLIMENTARY ACCESS to tried, tested and proven entrepreneurial success strategies, click here
