Everything rises and falls on leadership
By Mark LeGrand, Certified Business Trainer, Speaker and Coach/Director
One of my goals as a business coach is to help professionals identify the challenges or obstacles that prevent them from successfully realizing their professional and personal goals and dreams.
There are 5 common reasons:
1. Discouragement from dreaming by others. We call them dream crushers or idea killers. Dream crushers don’t have any dreams of their own, but don’t want to see anyone else succeed with their dreams either.
2. Hindrance by past disappointments and hurts. Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality. Failure is the price we must pay for success.
3. Habit of settling for average. Dreams require a person to stretch, and to go beyond average. You can’t reach for a dream and remain safely mediocre at the same time.
4. Lack of confidence needed to pursue dreams. It takes confidence to talk about a dream and even more to pursue it. Confidence typically separates the people who dream and pursue their dreams, from those who don’t.
5. Lack of imagination to dream. Imagination is the soil that brings a dream to life. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born. It’s never too late to dream.
Fortunately, I believe we have 10 steps to overcome these obstacles and achieve our goals and dreams:
1. Ownership
2. Clarity
3. Reality
4. Passion
5. Pathway
6. People
7. Cost
8. Tenacity
9. Fulfillment, and
10. Significance
In this first of this ongoing series of articles, I will look at just one step, Ownership.
Ownership: Whose Dream?
Are you living your dream or the dream someone else has for you? Have you heard “you should be a ___” or thought, “I always wanted to be a ___ but my parents wanted me to be a __, and I didn’t want to disappoint them?” When the dream is right for the person and the person is right for the dream, the two cannot be separated from each other. For something to truly be your dream, you need to see the possibility it represents – and you need to own it! Ownership is the first vital step to fulfilling your dream.
Let’s discuss how to take ownership of your dream.
1. Be willing to bet on yourself. You may succeed if nobody else believes in you, but you will never succeed if you don’t believe in yourself.
2. Lead your life instead of accepting your life – making the right decisions and managing those decisions daily. The power of choice is the greatest power that a person possesses.
3. Love what you do and do . Successful people, those who see and seize their dreams, love what they do and do what they love. They allow their passion and talent to guide them. Why? Because talent, purpose and potential always come hand in hand.
4. Don’t compare yourself or your dream to others – when you compare yourself with those superior, you feel inferior. When you compare yourself with those inferior, you feel superior. When you stop comparing yourself with others, you feel empowered. Success is doing the best you can with what you have wherever you start in life.
5. Believe in your vision for the future even when others don’t understand you. You are not an accident. You are here for a reason.
If success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but doesn’t feel good in your soul, it is not success at all. The potential that exists within us is limitless and largely untapped…when you think of limits, you create them.
When you take ownership of your dream, you commit to your dream. What’s your level of commitment? On a scale of 1(it would be nice to have)-10(I lose sleep at night because I want it so bad)., If less than an 8, you need to decide if your dream is a business or a hobby. Ask yourself, “What would I do if I had no limitations? What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?” The first step in being able to answer is to take ownership of your dream and prepare to start moving forward.
Next Week:
In Part II, I will address another component of testing your dream, Cost: Paying the Price. Now I’m not talking just dollars and cents. Dreams are personal and many people avoid the question, avoid the cost, and inadvertently avoid their dream. What about you? What have you learned about sacrifice in other areas of your life?
if you have a question, suggestion, or comment about overcoming Obstacles That Prevent Them from Realizing your own goals and dreams, feel free to reach out to me at 630-549-5413, or [email protected]
Mark LeGrand is a Certified Business Trainer, Speaker and Coach/Director. He writes on end-to-end engagement of strategies to help clients tackle mission-critical problems, goal setting, and increasing revenue. He helps clients develop, design, and implement comprehensive sales strategies, identify opportunities, and maneuver through dynamic business environments to achieve measurable and successful outcomes.
LeGrand is part of the John Maxwell Team. Dr. John C. Maxwell is the internationally respected leadership expert whose philosophy is simple: Everything rises and falls on leadership.