Ever wondered why some people are significantly more successful than others?
I was asked this question many moons ago as an assignment for a coaching qualification. My research took me to analysing the autobiographies of successful business men and women. One of the key qualities that underpinned success was their capacity to learn, particularly as things were going wrong.
Try these techniques to sharpen your capacity to learn
1. Be clear about what you want to achieve
You need to be clear about what success means to you otherwise you’re like a ship in the middle of ocean with no sat nav.
What does success mean to you?
- Success will mean different things to different people. It could be all about getting rich, having a work-life balance, being of service to others, overcoming a massive challenge or feeling secure or something different.
- Identify the smaller goals which will contribute to your success. For example, improving the conversion rate of sales calls or reducing the number of hours you work to less than 48hrs per week.
What do you need to do to achieve success?
- Set goals for today, this week or this month – whichever feels right for you. Be specific about exactly what you need to be doing to achieve success. For example, talk to 2 people each week who have good conversion rates and experiment with techniques they use. Or leave work at 6pm every day
2. Make the time to reflect
Reflection is about taking ‘time out’ to consciously think about your experiences.
Find 5 minutes a day, every day, to reflect. It may be while going to buy a coffee or sandwich at lunchtime. Or it may be on the commute to/from work. Some people benefit by keeping a record of their reflections in a private journal.
3. Ask yourself these coaching questions to assist your reflective thinking
- What have you done to progress your goals?
- What went well?
- What could you have done differently?
- What will you do differently today/tomorrow?
4. When things go wrong take more time to reflect
Failure is painful and can hurt and it can be very tempting to stick your head in the sand. But failure also provides the richest learning experiences. Ignore failure at your peril!
‘when you make a mistake, you have to face up to the fact and take immediate steps to change course’ Anita Roddick, Business as unusual
Successful people make mistakes along their journey to success. What makes them different to others is their attitude to mistakes: they aren’t afraid of them. They accept that things can occasionally go wrong and they are able quickly identify and analyse in detail what went wrong then pick themselves up, think it through and adapt their approach.
So when things are starting to go wrong make sure you take a little longer to reflect and work out what’s going well and what you could do differently. Use this learning to set more goals and continue with making time to each day to reflect.
5. Use others’ advice as ideas in your reflections
By all means take others’ advice but you need to reflect on it prior to taking action. Identify which elements of their advice will work for you in your situation and which elements need to be done differently.
6. Read an autobiography
It could be a sports or business autobiography. As you read it identify the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that underpinned their journey to success. Reflect on what you could apply to your life to facilitate your successes.
The faster you can identify what is and isn’t working the faster you’ll succeed in achieving your goals.
‘Deep, reflective thinking is as essential to the effectiveness of our conscious brain as REM sleep is to our unconsciousness’ David Clutterbuck, 2001, Everyone Needs a mentor
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