The 5 Requirements of Success

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and, if they can’t find them, they make them”

- George Bernard Shaw

When I was a young boy surviving a dysfunctional home I became obsessed with a question many of us ponder: What makes people successful and how do you drive performance to achieve it? Great question, hey?

What I didn’t know or appreciate was it’s really a pretty dangerous question.

If like me, you pursue it as an end in itself and fail to appreciate the nuances of where the drive to succeed often comes from, you miss what it can take from us in its pursuit. Most of my life has been a quest to find the answer to this question.

Interestingly, my greatest “success” has come from my most profound failures, not my achievements.

A few years ago my life was very different than it is today. The affair I justified being in because “I was successful and deserved to be happy” ended, and with it, the fantasy of “true love” I was chasing. The businesses I spent years developing at any cost were fledgling because without integrity life simply doesn’t work. I moved from a million dollar home to a 600 square foot dive, was estranged from my children, and lost the respect of everyone important to me. At one point, I seriously questioned if life was worth living.

Then something happened; Julie, the woman I divorced to find myself became my greatest teacher once I gave up knowing everything. She taught me the true meaning of success. Here’s what I got: to succeed is to love, that most of us really don’t know how and doing so is about asking the right questions, not about having enough status or things, finding the right person to love us or to get from others what we think we must have from them to be happy (If you want to learn more about the true love and how to design a relationship of your dreams, go to www.prevent-a-divorce.com). Success, ultimately, is measured by the quality of your relationships, not the robustness of your portfolio. Yea, I know, pithy but it’s really true. Trust me on that one. What I now know about success is that our “wounds”, and we all have them, are both the reason for it and the cause of new problems if we are unconscious to their risks. And despite being a licensed clinician, I was unconscious and sleep walking through life. What about you?

Pain gave me the gift of hunger to push myself further than many, and achieving more than most. What is also true is, you can’t simply transcend a wound and use it as success fuel because you will pay a hefty price; you leave behind seeds of incompletion and void in its wake only to return in another form some other day.

What we disown, owns us. That which we are unconscious toward, can destroy our lives, and with it, anything deemed successful. All the success in the world couldn’t fill me up in the areas I was asking it to.

The most important question I coach people on today determines whether or they will achieve success: That question is this; who do you need to become to have what you say you want?

This question applies to business and to personal relationships. In fact, it is applicable to every area of life where you want to increase performance effectiveness. The idea behind it is simple, but not easy to apply: “be at cause for designing your life”, and if the circumstances aren’t cooperating, then change the circumstances by choosing who you must become, what state you must operate from, what standards you will hold yourself to, and what beliefs, attitudes and actions you will embody until you’ve attained what you’re after.

When I failed in life I wasn’t asking this question. I was petty, small, and groveling that the world and people in it were not cooperating with my agenda or responsive enough to my needs. That single flaw in my strategy resulted in almost losing Everything important to me. It cost me “success” until I realized what success really was and how to achieve it.

Here’s why that is true: It’s not in “achieving success” or getting what we myopically chase after that makes us successful. Rather, it is “who one must become” to actually succeed in loving another human being (yes in work and life) and living consistent with your core values that transforms us. It is not in doing great things, but in becoming a great person that we find meaning, experience fulfillment, transcend self-imposed limitations, and rise above our human nature where true success is encountered.

Success has a design to it and always leaves clues. I know a lot of very smart and talented people who are not very successful, and for that matter, aren’t too happy or fulfilled either. Why? It’s all about relationship. The ability to connect authentically with another is the most essential component of success in business and life, yet most treat it as an afterthought, instead of the fundamental truth that it is.

As success driven people we like formulas for things so I have one for you that I learned from the trenches! Here are the “5 Requirements for Success” in an acronym called A-T-U-N-E.

A – Awareness: Acknowledge (hear it and say so) AND Validate (get it and let them know why you do) what people say to you before you advocate for your own agenda, needs or desires.

T – Tolerate: Honor, that in any issue, there are “3 truths” - yours, mine and what’s actually true. Embrace multiple realities and respect more than your own perspective.

U- Understand: Understanding must precede influence or you are dominating someone and acting from ignorance. Slow down; listen; honor and respect what’s being spoken. Once you “know” something, learning stops.

N –Non-Defensive Listening: Give up being right and making others wrong. Stop reacting to things and be open to influence by the coversation itself.

Your position is the least important part of a conversation; connecting in ways that allow collaboration are the keys to success.

E – Empathy: The key to performance is influence and the gateway to influence is rapport. Rapport happens only when another experiences that we “get them” and appreciate their experience of life as it’s happening. Step outside of yourself and into another’s understanding and you create a partner where true success can occur.

Success is more a thing to become, than a thing to do. It’s not in acquiring anything that we succeed, but in becoming someone who is worthy of our own respect and admiration when we wake up each morning. To your success...