9. Set rewarding excellence goals and become the best in your business
There have been many steps until here, but all your efforts will be rewarded entirely. Definitely, you can only become the best in your job, organization, niche, or business if you have managed to confront the typical problems swifter and more effectively if you have delivered on the goals you have trained with until now and have acquired top skills that put you in front of the game of others.
I’m referring to vision and strategy: working smart for the right reasons can help you identify the 20% that brings the 80%. Now, your goals must be daring and bold to make you control the autonomy and true independence that will make a dent and leave your name in history. Only after you have tested and followed the whole system inside out can you replicate it for profit at a larger scale. Take into account all the lessons and motivations, take a calculated risk, and “shoot for the moon”! Do it repeatedly, be the best, and work smart to stay there! You truly deserve to celebrate, especially when you bring this achievement to reality after pragmatically testing options for success. Failing to do this earlier might sidetrack your efforts, take longer or get stepbacks you can’t face alone. Coaching is a must at this level. Modeling and mentoring also definitely work. Also, niche-specific and skills-related training can benefit you for what you need/want here.
At this level of excellence, you also have to improve the skill of seeking, connecting, and networking within groups of professionals sharing similar preoccupations, abilities, and personality preferences to continue to grow, learn and excel through the power of communities (see more further).
10. Find people who share your vision and values
Very likely, until this point of excellence, you’ve worked within teams, in proximity, or in collaboration with others in your life experience. Then, at a certain point, you decide to let go of unfulfilled expectations, go with the flow, and get social, not only for business networking but also for deeper human connection.
Of course, it’s not about connecting with people put there by someone else or by random design (like in school or a company where you were hired). It’s about connecting with people you can test and recognize as having similar values, visions, and experiences.
After each of you has had your successful experiences, you can get together to share your wisdom, learn one from the other and create a win-win-win community. Trying to do so earlier implies the risks of having your good intentions work for somebody else’s individual limited benefit, mistaking your illusions/expectations for reality, or mistaking a functioning system for a community.
You can prepare for this step by joining and working with/for people with a track record of creating individual successes based on strategy and team success based on collaboration. Volunteering for a cause you cherish can also help open up new horizons of harmony in the human experience. Just find some people who are already doing or thinking about what you like and give them a hand! Other ideas: personal development thematic groups, periodical skills-based training within a community.
To fully enjoy this level of development, it is necessary to develop close personal and professional relationships with others. In these instances, sharing warmth, caring, attention, empathy, protection (strength, guidance, direction), disclosure, and listening must be OK. Why? To create a harmonic team that works for everyone, which can bring consensual guidance for each interest in the long term. This is what deep social interaction can mean when people live and act for the causes they share.
11. Learn more outside your area of expertise
Hopefully, there will come a time when, after years and years, you can not only be the best in your niche, but you can do it quite effortlessly, even in your sleep. This is the moment to continue developing your other talents. Learn something new. Get a more profound knowledge of your field. Get a new hobby. Enjoy a healthy life. If you feel bored or it’s time for a significant change, consider developing skills for a different field in which you might be talented.
This time, integrate all the resources (time, money, people you know, all you studied) to make the most out of the new learning. In the beginning, it may be a little hard to get used to making more effort to succeed at something (because everything is so easy when you’re an expert). Still, the more you learn, the easier it is to know more because of the many synapses already there and in function.
This step should allow you to find more peace within yourself without control over the group or resources. As a result, you may reinvent yourself and succeed in ways you wouldn’t have dreamed of being possible. This can be a significant period if associated with having children and becoming a parent or a grandparent. However, you can only truly live at this level if you have made a profit from your strategy, developed functioning networks of authentic communication with peers, and can see the bigger picture.
The few experts who can work at this level cany with large chunks of information to find patterns, may they be in whether professional, personal, or recreational areas.
If you decide to succeed in a second or third field later in life, it will be faster for you after having success in just one or two professional areas. The learning must be tailored to your needs. Please feel free to use consulting, coaching, mentoring, modeling, and training. If you have reached this level, you already know how important that is and how to use such services.
12. Redefine the purpose of your life as having a higher meaning
At some moment, each of us searches for and sometimes finds the meaning of life. There are plenty of answers, but usually, people find a religious meaning connected with having an impact beyond the material world.
Of course, at several points in your existence, the meaning of life can be defined as chasing or living your dreams, seeking happiness, discovering and bettering oneself, and becoming the best achievable self. Seeking wisdom, you will probably redefine how you can contribute personally and professionally. But, at an extraordinary moment, before you die, you may allow yourself to truly let go of roles, duties, and social expectations.
This is how you can tend to touch perfection through living, only to become aware of how little you know. That’s why your contribution has to stay with the others after you die. A life worth living is a life you would find hard to live or give up. The actual inner benefit of others, making a difference through what you do, say, and inspire, is what starts guiding your intentions.
You know you can do better and are grateful for the chance to act justly and wisely, love, and give unconditionally. Reaching this, you have found the beauty and the sorrow in your life: you have now started to get the hugeness of the human spirit, the bearing on your deeds, and the shortness of life. It’s worth talking about this with a priest. I have personally found the meaning of life in Orthodox Christianity. I have the rest of my life to live by rediscovering my existence by applying what I have found.
Some final thoughts
I haven’t done all of these steps in this order, but at least now I found the tools that can connect them logically, structurally, and scientifically. There is a moment in some lives when everything comes to a circle. You get the final piece of the puzzle, although I’m afraid most people don’t really live this sensation.
Now I am ready to reboot my journey faster and with those who want to experience what I’ve written about here. So often, when confronted with a problem, we don’t quite know the map of that problem, its roots, and especially, what might be the solutions. Although I don’t have solutions in consulting, theories in learning, and questions in coaching for all the possible problems, I likely know where you are and how to support you to get where you want to go and where you need to go. So blow away your inner obstacles and become who you were meant to be!
I am doing this because I am here to serve you, not to please you. Now you know the truth. Act on it! Change your life directly! Follow the steps I have set for you in this article and become part of my life journey! Let’s put some wind in your sails!
PS: Thanks to Corina Andreea Popa for the practical suggestions and feedback on this article before publishing.
Copyright © Marcus Victor Grant, 2016-present
Analytic Vision 