8 Principles for Achieving Greatness

8 Principles to Get You to Great

HOW do successful people think? The key to doing well is thinking well. It’s a way of being in the world.

Becoming great means making the hard choices necessary to get you there. Performance coach Doug Hirschhorn advances eight principles in 8 Ways to Great that direct the decisions of top performers.

Principle #1: Find Your “Why?”

How questions bring up negative thoughts and inadequacies. “The reason most people go through life with big dreams but fail to achieve them is because they ask themselves ‘how’ before they know their ‘why.’”

The why question energizes and motivates, “Knowing your ‘why’ is what’s going to get you to figure out how.” Ask yourself, “Why have I chosen this, and why am I still doing it?”

Principle #2: Get To Know Yourself

Identifying and understanding your strengths and weaknesses allows you to leverage your strengths and minimize the weaknesses that hold you back.

I’m talking about the kind of self-awareness that allows you to acknowledge both your strengths and your weaknesses so that you can use them to balance each other and keep yourself going overboard in either direction. Self-awareness allows you to do more of what you’re good at and less of what you’re not. It can also send up the red flag that lets you know you’re about to do something stupid.

Your weakness can force you to put guardrails in place that address your issue in such a way that it strengthens the habits that drive you forward.

Principle #3: Learn To Love the Process

To reach your goals, you need a step-by-step plan that becomes part of the process of reaching your target. Process thinking allows you to avoid distractions and prioritize the next step you need to take.

If you allow yourself to get distracted, you’re likely to abandon the process and start making stupid, self-destructive decisions. I just want to emphasize how important it is to concentrate on the step you need to take right now and not trip yourself up by looking too far ahead.

Principle #4: Sharpen Your Edge

Your edge is a two-sided sword. One side is knowing what sets you apart from others. The other side is learning all you can to increase the odds of your success.

Your personal edge is something you develop and lead with to help set you apart. “In a world full of choices, establishing an edge can make the difference between success and failure in whatever you do.”

The external edge guides you when to take smart risks. “Remember that your overall edge is determined by leveraging your strengths, minimizing your weaknesses, and then gathering as much information as you can before making a decision.”

Principle #5: Be All That You Can Be

Do not compare yourself to others. If you do, you may be doing well compared to them but still not doing your best. You don’t want to be doing just good enough. Challenge yourself to grow beyond your present level. “The difference between challenging yourself to be the best you can be and just trying to beat the next guy is that excellence is a constantly moving target, so you’ll always have something to work for.”

Hirschhorn says, “Don’t get sucked into external markers of merit. Measure your success in terms of how well you performed and not only the outcome.”

Principle #6: Keep Your Cool

It’s human to get scared. But you don’t want to act out of panic, ego, or insecurities. Remain objective with your priorities in mind.

You don’t need to always be right. “You can win when you’re losing when you make the decision you need to make instead of the one you might want to make even though you know that decision might mean taking a painful loss.” Know when to cut your losses.

When it comes to growth, fear comes with the territory. “Sometimes, being scared is the most rational reaction to a given situation. There’s no shame in that. It’s when people give in to those feelings that they get into trouble. As I frequently say to my clients, ‘Feeling fear is okay as long as you don’t act afraid or make a decision because you are afraid.’”

When you feel like panicking, “remind yourself of the process you’ve been following and stick to it; do what you need to do, not what you want to do. There are always aspects of even the scariest situation that are within your control. Take control of what you can instead of letting the situation carry you away. Thinking negatively is sure to tip the odds of success against you.”

Principle #7: Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

The perfect magical moment never comes. “Waiting for that last piece of the jigsaw puzzle or the exact alignment of the stars is what keeps most people tied to a job they hate or afraid to take the step that would get them to the next level in their career.”

Winners act. “If you want to make a change—I mean, really want to make a change—you have to be willing to do it right now. Not later, not tomorrow, not after the weekend, not on January 1, and certainly not only when that eternally elusive perfect moment arrives.”

Uncertainty creates volatility, but people react to it differently. The most successful people don’t freeze or panic or buy everything in sight. Instead, they take the time to look around and assess the opportunities available to them.

Principle #8: Make Yourself Accountable

Often, what holds people back is that they don’t have the structure or discipline to do what needs to be done consistently. “Unless there is some meaningful reward for performing well and an equally meaningful consequence for making a stupid mistake or breaking your own rules, you may not take the steps necessary to put your best-laid plans into action.”

It is easy to get caught up in the moment and get distracted. The fact is, “For most of us, the answer is to enlist the aid of someone to whom we make ourselves answerable.”

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Posted by at 10:24 AM

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