The Real Keys To Success

BY MIRANDA CHRISTOPHER

Most entrepreneurs describe becoming their own boss like falling off a cliff. On Friday they leave employment and on Monday they are self-employed. Whilst the physical change is straightforward, the psychological identity change is often too great to bear.

You may have heard the phrase “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway”, yet most of us just feel the fear and end up feeling stuck or moving two steps forward and the three backwards; the latter known as ‘oscillating’.

Ultimately the psychological tension created leads to failure and it’s why, as a business mentor, I used to advise people to start their business alongside having the regular income of a job.

Once a buddying entrepreneur has regular income from their selfemployment, the next obvious step is to go part-time before leaving employment all together. By taking this approach they are able to develop their self-awareness without falling off the cliff. And self-awareness is a primary key to building a life and business you love.

If you’ve read my book MINERVA Manifesto™, you will have gained some awareness of how we follow our unconscious rules of “how it is in life” for us. These are the rules that we learnt as children to ‘survive’ in the world. Everything, and I mean everything, in your life is dictated by these rules. The relationships you have, your health and definitely your results in business.

Ordinarily, to create success, I teach people how to engage and operate from genius - the highest level of creativity. However, this requires a level of self-awareness that most entrepreneurs develop only from falling off the cliff and becoming stuck or oscillating! A real Catch 22.

I first observed this in my corporate transformation consultancy work. The business had to be literally hanging over the edge to allow me to do the rapid transformation work I became so renowned for. Up until that point, “the way we do things around here” – the unwritten rules of the organisational

culture – wouldn’t allow anyone to change the way things were. There has to be that tipping point.

When I hit life changing burnout in 2014, something I now know was a direct result of my unwritten rule of “not good enough”, I had the opportunity to develop my own self- awareness. Sometimes, we need others to call it out to us, and that’s what I’ve built it into the MINERVA offerings focused on accountability and support, hosted inside Thrive & Grow which is a community of people raising their awareness and thus their results, co-founded with Brand and Marketing expert Judith Wright.

Did you know there are two ways that you can become stuck? The first is that your ‘next step’ was just too big. Your egoic identity or culture, in the case of businesses, doesn’t recognise who you are becoming, and thus enforces the unwritten rulebook. The second way is when someone (or an organisation) has so many great ideas that they try to implement them all at once. They lack the understanding of how they fit into the bigger picture and are driven by fear and lack. They both lead to the outcome of not achieving very much and usually end up blowing the budget, plus some.

Which is why I share inside Thrive & Grow a simple system called Debt Free Living to help those who started their business by using credit and been unable to pay it off. Again, awareness factors, helping us to face up to the situation and all that psychological stuff that means we get in our own way. This system has helped thousands around the world clear their debt and become savers.

In doing my research into the failure rate of businesses, I recognised a common theme; most of the people I interviewed didn’t have a clear vision for their life and thus for their business. In fact, most people put more effort into planning a holiday than they do for their business.

Focus creates reality. If you are following unconscious rules of “never good enough” like I was for a very long time, what do you think the ultimate result will be? Yes, I was able to create a multiple six figure business however I worked very long hours unconsciously trying to prove I was good enough! Until my body said enough.

Now, with my vision for my life and business – both of which I love – my focus easily creates the reality that I choose. Notice the difference?

What I also observed during my research was that, until we develop our awareness, our vision isn’t actually really our vision. It’s a product of that unconscious rulebook. Why? Because your beliefs, definitions and

meanings you have in life create what you think is possible for you. You may state you want a million pound business, but your rule book will do it’s best to make sure never happens.

That said, it’s unlikely that money is one of your true desires in life, and by setting money as your vision, unwittingly you have now created a barrier that you have to overcome to have your dream life. Another Cath 22. Your focus is on money and that’s not what you truly desire, you then build up resistance to having it, which then stops you having it. It becomes that self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t want money becomes “no money” and thus no time for what you really desire, like more time with the family. When we learn to create the right

kind of focus, we can neutralise the psychological tension created simply by comparing now and “how it is” to what’s next. By just sitting with the difference, it allows the obvious next step to emerge.

Our hidden rulebook has it’s first chapters written in early life by the influences of our immediate family, these early chapters are built on

by the cultures we are part of such as a religious affiliation and our experiences of education. All within the story imposed by the wider society we are in.

I was brought up under the influence of a particular religion. Guilt and lack of worthiness were the foundational stones on which my life was built. So when, as a child I was told “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”, little did I understand how that would shape my life as an entrepreneur. This simple metaphor had been stored directly into my hidden rulebook as “making lots of money is a bad thing”. Can you imagine how that impacted on my initial results?

Another common “rule” for women, which isn’t so obvious, is how women create a self-imposed income ceiling based on their fathers equivalent income whilst they were growing up. It sounds bizarre, however, the more I explored this concept the more women I discovered were following an unconscious rule about respecting the man of the household and how earning more than this father figure was disrespectful. Thankfully for our up and coming female entrepreneurs, we have more and more females as role models and society as a whole is adjusting through diversity awareness to break these types of rules.

And it’s not just business where focus creates our reality. Maybe you want to become healthy? After all, what’s the point of becoming successful and not being able to enjoy the rewards of it? The traditional approach to health would have you follow a set plan to achieve success, and maybe you get there. But it’s likely to be a struggle. This is very prevalent in the weight loss industry. It’s a cyclical business model designed to make money from oscillating – achieve the goal weight using our plan then pile it all on again so you still need us. I’ve been observing my other half creating improved health in his life. He holds his vision of being healthy in mind. He began with completing a 5k park run. He then worked on improving his personal best time. He then challenged himself on different terrains. He explored how changing his eating habits affected his performance. As I write this he is putting in changes to run 10k under his personal best. His journey to health is one of taking the next obvious step, his focus on his end result is creating his reality.

By now, my hope is that a light bulb is beginning to switch on for you, especially in business. When I created the MINERVA Manifesto™, I identified two islands. The island of pain and the island of pleasure. The island of pain has very steep cliffs, it’s where you really don’t want to be, your current situation. The island of pleasure is your own definition of success. In between the two there is a sea of sharks and devastating currents. You set out, either away from the island of pain or towards the island of pleasure in your dinghy.

Because of that hidden rulebook combined with a lack of awareness, what most people fail to see is that there are other ways to cross this expanse of water. They fail to see that there is a lift down to a tunnel that links the two islands, totally bypassing the water. And for those that are not keen on tunnels - there is a bridge further round the coast line!

Either route, it’s one step at a time using the structure of the tunnel or bridge. When you take the next step, I can’t guarantee that you won’t encounter obstacles on your journey - you most likely will. However, knowing where you are going helps you to course correct as you encounter and overcome those obstacles. The more awareness you gain, the easier it is to do this.

You can still use the boat on the choppy seas full of danger and hit the island of pleasure. I’ve seen many people do this. They arrive exhausted, stressed by their experiences and at the expense of a happy balanced life. Just as I did.

At the foot of the cliff, the panic sets in and when we experience this level of stress, it precludes us from our creativity – our genius. We revert back to the rulebook. We can’t see the possibilities for our business and thus our lives. We treat our business as a self-employed job, only working way too many hours and usually taking a personal income that is less than the minimum wage.

When I was a teenager, my personal circumstances meant that I spent many hours lying on my bed looking out through the window at the clouds. I would contemplate the meaning of life, trying to understand why people did what they did. I guess I was one of those intense teenagers, dressing from head to toe in black! What I now appreciate is that this gave me the discipline to step away from the day to day to create a space to allow inspiration to come to me.

It was a discipline that followed into my college years. When my peers were doing their night before last minute “cramming” – which is actually useless under stress - I was in the student bar playing pool. They expected me to fail; the reality was that the total opposite happened.

When I observe most entrepreneurs, I see they are working 50+ hour weeks stuck in busyness, I am grateful for this discipline. This, and developing my awareness has meant that I am highly productive, currently work no more than 15 hours a week and spending quality time pursuing other interests. My intention for this year is to reduce my working hours to 5 hours at the same time as significantly increasing revenue.

At this point you are probably in one of two frames of mind, either you are highly dubious about what I am sharing or your curiosity has been piqued.

As a final note, when I trained in this work, the guy who owned the company I trained with had started his education business from scratch. Within two years he had hit £10m+ annual revenue – working just two hours a week.

Just remember, your focus creates your reality. Question is, are you focused on the hidden rules of “how life should be” that you created as a child or are you focused on creating a life (and business) that you love?

Co-founder, Thrive & Grow for Entrepreneurs and Business Owners. www.thriveandgrow.club