HOW DO YOU DO IT?

For years people have asked me the following questions… either friends… or strangers at a bar or a ball game… 

• What’s your secret? 

• How do you do it? 

• Man I want to be you when I grow up! 

And while I appreciate the implied compliment… as apparently they see a life well lived… as we all know… there is no secret. 

I believe in hard work…. I also believe in luck. 

However… if forced to boil down the myriad events, strategies and circumstances that lead to “success” however it is defined by you… these two things would top the list:

• Maintaining an older…wiser…more accomplished group of friends. 
• Never wavering from my Values List… though I didn’t call it that at the time. 

OLDER…WISER… FRIENDS

I made a post on the socials…@chasingless if you’d like to follow along…recently that read like this:

“Find the three smartest people you know… the ones who both care about you and your well being… but will also constructively disagree with you…. and ask them *the* questions of your life…. there is nothing more powerful. 

Similar to the old tome… “you are the average of your five closest friends.”  

Better people. Better questions. Better you.”

It’s without question that I attribute most of my material success to surrounding myself with people older and more successful than I. 

I remember years back when I invited my good friend Ken to my birthday party. I had just moved to Charlotte NC and we had been hanging out for a couple of years at that point. Mostly lunches and the sort…he a custom home builder of more than a decade… and myself just getting started in the business… 

“Ahhhhhh the big 4-0 man… congrats!”, he said. 

“I’m turning 30 buddy….”

I’ll never forget his look of disbelief…. 

He still tells the story to this day.

I’ve learned an immense amount from Ken… and am forever grateful for his friendship and his guidance in many areas of my life…. 

If Ken were my same age could I have leaned on his wisdom as much as I did?

Maybe… but I doubt it. 

VALUES…VALUES…VALUES

The Values List has become such an important piece of my life and such an important tool for the clients in my professional coaching practice… that I no longer take one on one clients without them first completing our values workshop. 

It’s that important….

So important in fact… that I’m going to save it for the next post…. 

See you on the journey!