success

  • How to Get What You Want

    Can I be real with you?

    For the past 25 years, I have guided business executives and influential leaders across the globe to go beyond self-imposed limitations to new levels of leadership. I am an international keynote speaker and author of three books on leadership. I have transformed accomplished individuals around the country and initiated cultural change with major corporations like Microsoft, Merck, Georgia Pacific and Firestone. I recently completed my first film, Climb For Freedom, a documentary about the transformation of seven men summiting one of the world’s highest peaks and the profound impact of that journey on their lives and relationships.

    Why am I sharing all this with you? To brag? Certainly not. I’m sharing this with you because my life almost went a very different direction – a direction not aligned in my truth and purpose in this life.

    You see, in 1994 I decided to leave a very prosperous position as an investment banker. In theory, I had it all. However, for me the work I was doing was not integral. Our business practices were out of alignment. I left banking to pursue the entelechy of my Soul. I let my insurance lapse and found myself in the emergency room, from a weight training accident. They gave me a strong medication to remove a blood clot and I can remember leaving my body. I spent the next 8 days in intensive care. This was a great gift to me, because I had time to ruminate on my life.

    This experience was clarifying for me and I feel as if I received information on leadership that I have been teaching ever since. It was a pivotal time for me, as I left the finance world and came away with a sense that anything is possible.

    I’m not suggesting you experience a life-threatening experience like I did. But maybe this sounds familiar to you. Maybe you’re stuck in serving other people’s expectations of you at the cost of your own. You’ve reached a certain level of success … but you want more. You feel like, if you just keep pushing harder and harder, you should be able to break free, achieve more, earn more, impact more, and reach the level of excellence that you are made for.

    The problem: something keeps getting in the way, doesn’t it? You know this; you feel this. I’ve been there. There is a solution.

    I’m inviting you to Join me beginning April 3, 2017, for AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP: Supercharge Your Productivity & Team’s Engagement, and Achieve Even More Incredible Success in Business, a FREE online series designed to guide you in accessing your inner wisdom so you can be an authentic, courageous leader, while increasing your productivity and effectiveness.

    This is a Joint Partnership opportunity with my friend and executive business coach colleague, Judi Glova. Judi is spearheading this special limited series with me and over 20 other experts in the field to share our secrets and strategies for authentic leadership.

    A few words from Judi…

    Join Stephen, me and 20+ other leaders for this special free online series where, you’ll discover how to create a clear path forward—from where you are now to exactly where you want to be in your life, leadership, and happiness.

    Here’s exactly what you’ll get:

    • Develop a clear picture of what Authentic Leadership is, what it means for you, and how to start living it, so you can enjoy being an incredible leader while achieving and maintaining that level of excellence about which you’re so passionate.
    • Discover how you are getting in your own way of being the kick-ass leader you were meant to be and what to do about it, so you can get the most out of your team and get the results you want.
    • Learn the importance of a powerful mindset and how to move beyond your self-imposed limitations, for good.
    • Learn powerful tools and strategies to dramatically increase your ability to experience more focus, productivity, success, and money in business.
    • And more.

    By now, you’re beginning to understand that pushing harder isn’t necessarily the answer. And you know giving up isn’t in your nature. The good news is that with what we’re sharing with you on the AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP: Supercharge Your Productivity & Team’s Engagement, and Achieve Even More Incredible Success in Business, you’ll discover that you don’t have to push, and you certainly shouldn’t give up.

    When you discover how to access, deeply access, your own intuition and own your value—which we’ll show you how to do—you can unleash a force stronger than you ever thought possible and become the leader you have the potential to be.

    I know this from experience: for nearly 20 years grinding through the corporate world I bought into the “fake it ’til you make it” philosophy. Constantly trying to prove my worth, I burnt out. I started my executive coaching and leadership development business 12 years ago to ensure other brilliant leaders, like you and me, don’t make the same mistakes. This free online series is the culmination of several years and considerable financial investment in tapping into the strongest, most productive leaders from around the world.

    Now, we’re coming together to share our practical, proven strategies for becoming the best, most effective, most authentic leader you can be—and it’s FREE.

    Sign up here to reserve your spot for the April 3rd kick-off. Space is limited and this program is likely to fill.

    Be The Best Leader You Can Be <<< Reserve Your Spot At No Cost

    If you’re ready to get real, embrace courage, and unearth your greatest potential, this is your chance!

    To your success

    Stephen and Judi

    P.S. When you put to use the strategies we’re sharing on this online series, you’ll find that you don’t have to push hard to be a better leader. When you’re in the zone, everything flows! Plus, when you sign up to join us, you’ll receive special gifts from most of the experts, designed to guide you toward successful, effective, authentic leadership. So sign up now, here:

    Get Out Of Your Own Way <<< Discover Authentic Leadership

  • How to create momentum and freedom in life and business?

    Sometimes telling the truth is just the beginning.  Sometimes when we know the truth about what needs to be done, we are also the ones who have to get off our butts and do something about it.

    One day I was driving home and singing along to one of my favorite songs on the radio, feeling peaceful as I contemplated a relaxing evening. Then, as the garage door opened, I stopped singing. Something dreadful loomed in front of me. It had been sitting there for months gloating at me. I’d seen it maybe a hundred times before, and I knew what needed to be done. Yet I’d done nothing. As if it would somehow fix itself, over time; like the problem would just go away by ignoring it.

    It was a lawnmower with a broken wheel. The day I’d first discovered that broken wheel, I’d told myself, “I need to fix that wheel.” Then I thought, “I’ll fix it later.” That was more than six months earlier, and now my nemesis had become so powerful it had silenced my song and darkened my mood. I had turned my lawnmower into an incomplete in my life, and incompletesprocrastination_stop rob me of creative energy.

    How many of us can relate to this scenario? In a way, it seems silly doesn’t it?

    I’m talking about things you know you need to handle, yet resist handling. Sometimes we’ll deal with the gnawing discomfort of procrastination for months, rather than deal with 10 minutes of “have to.”

    But make no mistake, when you put things off that you believe must be done, it steals the joy and creativity from other parts of your life. Why? Because your better Self keeps track of your internal promises. I knew I hadn’t fixed that broken wheel, and every time I saw it became a subtle reminder of a broken promise to myself.

    Here’s the terrible truth about things we don’t want to do that have to be done: if we’re waiting until we feel like it, we’ll never do it. I most likely will never wake up and say, “Today, I feel like fixing the wheel on that old lawnmower.” Meanwhile, when you’re waiting to feel like taking care of that one irritating item, a slew of others will follow on its heels, until the weight of all you’ve left undone threatens to make you feel so overwhelmed you don’t want to do anything at all.

    When we resist completion long enough it leads to numbness, inertia, freezing up.

    Let’s get real about the simplest yet hardest thing that leaders do. Leaders complete things. Leaders do what they say they’re going to do.

    I finally told myself that lawnmower would not fix itself, so I had one of five choices: 1) Decide I don’t give a hoot about the broken wheel, 2) Buy a new lawnmower, 3) Pay someone to fix it, 4) Figure out how to fix it myself, or 5) Do nothing and continue to feel frustrated every time I walk into the garage.

    I chose option four and fixed it myself. Take a guess how good that felt!

    I am not suggesting you should fix all the broken wheels in your life, unless you want to.

    When taking action, that’s an important thing to consider: Do you want to? Once you know that, it’s easier to complete the task. When you ask yourself that question, remember to consider the consequences if your option is not number four: How will you feel if you do nothing? Are you willing to live with that?

    Whatever you do, do yourself a favor, don’t wait until you feel like it to deal with the stuff that you believe needs doing. And let’s get real about the time element. How long does it really take to fix a broken wheel, or to handle most of the incompletes in your life? In most cases, not long!

    I spent many more frustrating moments not fixing that stupid wheel in my head than it took to fix it in reality—all of 10 minutes.

    task-completedWhat incompletes are you avoiding?

    Here’s some motivation to help you pick one and move on it: Incompleteness creates chaos, but completion releases energy and creates freedom and builds velocity in life and business. And it just feels good.

     

    Blessings,

    Stephen Paul

  • What’s The Meaning of Mistakes?

    Most of the people I know have a hard time making a mistake. I can identify with them. Many times in my life or business dealings I’ve had that same fear of making wrong decisions. When a bold choice confronted me, my mind started churning on all the things that could go wrong. This kind of thinking used to freeze me up like a winter pond.

    But the ice broke when I finally realized that there’s no way to know if a decision is good or bad until after you make it. What if I could see both possibilities as steps toward success? What if I could give myself the freedom to make a mistake? I realized I would be more willing to make the bold moves that lead to invention and innovation—true watchwords of success.

    fork in the road image for blog

    If your choice turns out to be right, you take a step forward. If your choice turns out to be wrong, it informs your next choice—and still, you take a step forward. If you don’t give yourself the freedom to fail, you take no steps forward at all; you just stand there, indecisive and afraid. And voilà, your fear of failure becomes failure by default.

    Sometimes all the time we spend trying to decide something becomes failure in and of itself. Inaction is failure. And tentative, uncommitted action can also lead to failure.

    Wise men and women can help us avoid some mistakes by sharing what they’ve learned. But they can also be examples: if you listen to them you’ll notice that most of what they learned they learned by making mistakes. Some of that mistake making you’ll have to do for yourself. Unless you only want to achieve what they have already achieved, and why waste time on that?

    It’s ironic isn’t it? Often the fear of messing up is what makes us mess up. Why? When we’ve set up an inner judge to stare over our shoulder, watching and waiting for us to mess up, we become nervously ineffective. When that internal judge promises to label us a failure for each mistake, our movements become constrained. We are no longer freewheeling and creative. We are no longer at our best. Our mind expends so much energy trying to guess how not to screw up that it has little energy left to imagine the possible actions that would lead to success.

    Leaders are most likely to turn to me for coaching when they’re struggling with a problem, a transition, or a tough decision. Sometimes their choices involve risking tremendous amounts of money, respected reputations, or important relationships. I have compassion for people facing these kinds of choices. Yet, I often see leaders put themselves through unnecessary suffering over the process, even when they can’t possibly predict the outcome either way.

    I had the privilege of interviewing Bill Farley, the former CEO of Jordache and Fruit of the Loom, and I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought set him apart from the hordes of businessmen who never made it to the top. His answer was simple: “My willingness to make the tough decisions.”

    He didn’t agonize or let himself get paralyzed with the fear of failure.

    After you’ve done your due diligence and researched all the pros and cons of the choices before you, it’s time to either listen to your gut, or just put your finger on the map and go. Don’t waste your time and the time of others. Get bold, make a move, and watch what grows.

    If you don’t see success growing outside you, stop and take a look inside yourself. That’s where the growth will happen, if you’re willing to accept failure, learn from it, and move on to the next tough choice.

    One day each of us is going to die, and most of us will have a tombstone, or at least a eulogy or obituary. Imagine for a second that yours will read one of two ways:

    “… a nice person who never made a mistake.”

    OR

    “… a true leader who inspired us all by living courageously.”

    Blessings,

    Stephen Paul