Game Changer's Guide to Radical Success (eBook)

Tevis Rose Trower (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 1. Auflage
162 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-1746-1 (ISBN)

Infos

With overflowing shelves of 'success' books, The Game-Changer's Guide to Radical Success offers a refreshing, immersive, personal and active approach to getting clear on how you want your life to feel - and making it happen. Not in some far-away fantasy future, but right NOW. Celebrated corporate culture strategist and motivator Tevis Trower shows people who are already 'successful' how to boost their life from good to optimal. Using innovative, proven tools, targeted strategies, and your own unique input, Tevis helps you design and set a course toward a personal best you once only dreamed of, changing your own game - and reaching your own Radical Success.

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High performers share this common characteristic: a nagging sense that no matter what they have accomplished, they are capable of more. That drive to test themselves and their own capacity to contribute brings with it a host of questions, but often their focus on achieving does not allow for taking the time to reflect on how to navigate choices more powerfully. With overflowing shelves of 'success' books, The Game-Changer's Guide to Radical Success is that step back, that opportunity for reflecting, assessing, course-correcting and realigning. The Game-Changer's Guide to Radical Success offers a refreshing, immersive, personal and active approach to getting clear on how you want your life to feel - and making it happen. Not in some far-away fantasy future, but right NOW. Celebrated corporate culture strategist and motivator Tevis Trower shows people who are already 'successful' how to boost their life from good to optimal. Using innovative, proven tools, targeted strategies, and your own unique input, Tevis helps you design and set a course toward a personal best you once only dreamed of, changing your owngame - and reaching your own Radical Success.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

AM I LIVING OR JUST EXISTING?

Dare to ask, and answer honestly. If you’ve done pretty well in life already, then clearly you know how to seek fulfillment. This might mean you’ve collected the right combination of V’s, S’s, P’s, or even C’s after your name on your business card. It might mean you’ve created the configuration of family you want, you’re living in a home that you truly aspired to own, and you travel according to your sense of curiosity or reward. It likely also means you command a degree of responsibility that’s not only evidence you possess the requisite skills, but that you’ve also earned the respect of others.

But even with all you have, and have accomplished, are you living life at your very best? (OR in the best way possible? At your very best…not sure about) Are you Optimal in all you do? Are you truly thriving and fulfilled? To what level are you personally engaged with everything in your life? Your level of personal engagement is key to your fulfillment. For many, engagement is the hardest thing to establish and maintain. But that’s not cause for regret: It’s an invitation to assess and take action. A different kind of action.

All the achievements in your life have required a certain kind of action. They’ve required a hunger and drive on your part. You’ve had to be disciplined and attentive. Living Optimally requires those things, too, but it also requires something else: the courage to gamble big.

Optimal is the state you experience when you consistently align your thoughts, words, and actions in support of the life you want. It depends on resolute rejection of the notion that what you currently have in your life is all that’s possible—even if, in the eyes of others, what you already have seems pretty good. It means being greedy with life itself, unyielding in your choices, actions, and ways of being that make you feel vibrantly alive. Game-Changing in support of an Optimal life requires all of that achievement you’ve created for yourself and attending to your quality of experience. It means shifting focus from simply achieving benchmark accomplishments, to sustaining a deep, radical experience of success that is true to your deepest longing. It’s having the beach house if that’s what you want, but also feeling supremely alive in it.

A TIME-HONORED QUEST

That you want this type of something more for yourself isn’t to be downplayed or dismissed. It’s nothing to be embarrassed or demure about. It’s been a topic of fascination for influential thinkers throughout history. Countless traditions maintain that realizing this longing for fulfillment, for more, is actually the point of being alive. The kosha system in Hindu philosophy is one of the many models from Eastern traditions that demonstrate how earnestly addressing your longing for fundamental happiness is your ultimate challenge and point of evolution. It says you are made up of five layers (koshas), each with their own distinct function and organized in this order: physical, energetic, mental, wisdom, and finally, way on the inside, the essential self. While your survival focus is to attend to the most tangible needs, it is not until the most subtle, essential self is expressed through all those layers that your life is complete. The word for the most inner layer? Ananda – which is Sanskrit for bliss.

These kinds of ideas aren’t limited to eastern thinkers. They appear in western traditions, too. From the Greeks, we get a word you might use every day without realizing its root meaning. We use the word enthusiasm broadly to express positive emotion for anything from puppies to winning the big game, but its foundation is en THEOS – full of the spirit of God. From the Romans, we get the Latin-derived word inspired, the most basic translation of which is full of spirit, breath, or life.

It’s not just ancient sages who say true success is an inside job. Contemporary thinkers also offer ample theories as to how all this works. In 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow studied the top one percent of society to arrive at his theory that once our physical and social needs are met, and we feel safe and good about ourselves, we then face the ultimate challenge: actualizing Self, or who we really are. Maslow is not alone in this line of thinking. University of Chicago Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi makes the case that happiness isn’t so much about how much stuff you have or what your profession is. He says cultivating absolute engagement and mental absorption is the condition for Optimal experience. University of Pennsylvania Professor Martin Seligman’s work on positive psychology has resulted in volumes of content and practices that are shown to help you be more present, engaged, and fulfilled in your life, and none of it has anything to do with your job title, marital status, zip code, or whether you like your boss. So, no matter what you’ve already accomplished in your life, there are countless voices of wisdom urging you to get on with addressing the transcendent question of what will actually make you happy.

“Radical Success” is an expression that encapsulates this concept of maintaining profound happiness in the midst of living an externally successful life. It is different from success as evaluated through the eyes of the outside world. It comes from the root of your being, and exists irrespective of moderation or appraisal by others. Unlike the relative success you have been taught to value above all else, Radical Success is fundamental to who you truly are, and is inextricably tied to the success of being who you are in all you do. It bears comparison to no one, because it is grounded in your individual truth.

Some exemplars of Radical Success are Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Warren, Twyla Tharpe, Galileo, Leonardo DaVinci, Shakespeare, great artists, musicians, risk-takers, inventors and creators of every type and stripe. These Game-Changing individuals and countless others like them move into their respective arenas with a passion for what they do. But it’s more than just that. They’ve also cultivated a deep relationship with who they are. The game they play is not one of conformity, comfort, or currying favor. Their modus operandi is purely focused on the precious and solitary task of being fully alive as themselves. Just consider the breathtaking results. To achieve such a level of self-expression and Radical Success, you must first examine your own life for insights as to what you’re creating – and want to create – out of the experience of being alive.

I HAVE ASKED MYSELF THESE QUESTIONS, TOO

When it comes to assessing the connection between accomplishment and fulfillment, I can offer my own life as a ready example. At the height of my career as a corporate strategist and dealmaker, I had an impressive job title and an enviable Manhattan apartment, and enjoyed the satisfaction of real organizational responsibility. I vacationed around the globe, and was blessed with many wonderful relationships with friends and family, including a romantic partnership that kept me warm at night with commitment and children on the horizon. I carried not a cent of debt and was steadily building assets. By most standards, I’d made it. I “had it all.” What else could I want?

A lot, actually. But I couldn’t put a name to it. I found myself experiencing a state I can best describe as yearning. At times I attributed this profound disquietude to external issues and outcomes beyond my control. If a friend had managed to drag out of me what was really on my mind, my knee-jerk responses might have begun with the words: “If only so and so would...” or “When such and such finally...” But as quickly as one external complaint was resolved, my discontent would morph and resurface through another expression, another focal point of festering. I was deeply discontented, yet unsure of whatever it was for which I longed.

I did what most of us do in the face of unhappiness—I tried to bury it. I ran from it. I diluted it with alcohol. I did everything I could think of to soothe my ache: had sex, shopped in fine boutiques, lined up bigger business deals, hosted creative parties, took up cooler hobbies, made new friends, reconnected with old friends, went on fancier vacations, spent time with family, avoided time with family, engaged in volunteer activities, and, when all that failed, meditated. No matter what I did, after the Saks bill was paid, savasana was over, or the hangover passed, the ache was still there. I was successful, but I wasn’t content. So I surrendered, and started to listen to my inner voice.

Dogged attention to my thoughts showed me that although I was working myself into a frenzy to make sure I had all the elements of a successful life, in my head I was constantly finding fault with my life. With all that energy spent achieving and so many fruits to show for it, why the incessant fixation on everything that wasn’t okay? While notching up the ladder of achievements, I’d spent no time cultivating my own happiness.

By charting my satisfaction relative to the little losses and wins embedded in the course of a day or week, I was able to see there wasn’t much of a correlation between attainment and contentment. My state-of-being apparently depended very little upon external variables such as projects under way, financial security, or how well I was relating with others. While...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.8.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-1746-7 / 1098317467
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-1746-1 / 9781098317461