Of all the things successful people do to accelerate their trip down the path to success, participating in some kind of coaching program is at the top of the list. A coach will help you clarify your vision and goals, support you through your fears, keep you focused, confront your unconscious behaviors and old patterns, expect you to do your best, help you live by your values, show you how to earn more while working less, and keep you focused on your core genius.
Why coaching works
Regardless of whether the program is designed to achieve a specific business goal or whether it is specifically designed to help you simply gain more clarity and progress in all aspects of your personal and professional life, a coach can help you
Despite some of the best information available on how to accomplish any task, most people still tend to ask their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and siblings for advice on key issues they may be facing. Too often, they ask the advice of others who have never triumphed over the specific hardship they are facing or who have never succeeded in their specific area of endeavor.
One of the main strategies of the successful is that they constantly seek out guidance and advice from experts in their field. Make a list of the people you would like to ask to mentor you. Approach them and ask for their help.
What a simple concept it is, yet you’d be surprised how frequently even the world’s top entrepreneurs, professionals, educators, and civic leaders get caught up in projects, situations, and opportunities that are merely good, while the great is left out in the cold, waiting for them to make room in their lives. In fact, concentrating on merely the good often prevents the great from showing up, simply because there’s no time left in our schedules to take advantage of any additional opportunity.
Stop majoring in the minors
Instead of dedicating yourself — and your time — to mundane, nonproductive, time-stealing activity, imaging how rapidly you would reach your goals and improve your life if you said no to those time-wasting activities and instead focused on the 20% of activity that would bring you the most benefit?
To be successful in achieving your goals and creating your desired lifestyle, you will have to get good at saying no to all of the people and distractions that would otherwise devour you. Successful people know how to say no without feeling guilty.
Don’t just delegate, eliminate!
If you are going to increase your results and your income as well as increase the amount of R & R Days in your life, you are going to have to eliminate those tasks, requests, and other time-stealers that don’t have a high payoff.
Every high achiever has a powerful team of key staff members, consultants, vendors, and helpers who do the bulk of the work while he or she is free to create new sources of income and new opportunities for success. The world’s greatest philanthropists, athletes, entertainers, professionals, and others also have people who manage projects and handle everyday tasks — enabling them to do more for others, hone their craft, practice their sport, and so on.
The total focus process
To help you clarify what you should be spending your time on and what you should be delegating to others, do the following exercise. Your goal is to find the top one, two, or three activities that best use your core genius, bring you the most money, and produce the greatest level of enjoyment.
Dan Sullivan, President of The Strategic Coach, created a great system, called The Entrepreneurial Time System. It divides all of your time into three kinds of days: Focus Days, Buffer Days, and Free Days.
Focus Days
A Focus Day is a day in which you spend at least 80% of your time operating in your core genius, or primary area of expertise — interacting with people or processes that give you the highest payoffs for the time you invest. To be successful, you must schedule more Focus Days and hold yourself accountable for producing the results.
You have inside you a core genius — some one thing that you love to do and do so well that you hardly feel like charging people for it. It’s effortless for you and a whole lot of fun. And if you could make money doing it, you’d make it your lifetime’s work.
Successful people believe this, too. That’s why they put their core genius first. They focus on it — and delegate everything else to other people on their team.
Passion is something within you that provides the continual enthusiasm focus, and energy you need to succeed. But unlike feel-good motivation derived from external sources, true passion has a more spiritual nature. It comes from within. And it can be channeled into amazing feats of success.
How to develop passion
Let’s look at your career for a moment. That’s the work that occupies the majority of your week. Ask yourself: Am I doing what I love to do?
If you aren’t, and you had the choice to do anything you wanted to do, what would that be? If you believe you can’t make money doing that, imagine that you just won the lottery. After buying your expensive mansion, a Rolls-Royce, and all the toys and travel you wanted, what would you do with your day? What you’re doing now or something different?
