Don’t Waste Your Chance to Shine

 Are you truly applying yourself to be a winner?

Once every four years it is hard to avoid being dazzled, amazed and inspired by the achievements of the World's Athletes as they “Go for Gold” and maximise their chances to shine, such as at the games in Rio.

Behind and before the smiles, the tears and the gold, silver and bronze medals though comes a number of things that even the most un-athletic of us business owners could learn from and, dare I suggest, adopt in our keyboard and chair ridden daily lives.

Firstly we have the athlete’s passion for what they do and the goal(s) they have set themselves – this is set a long time before they even start to compete to be in a team representing their country, it is what comes first. So are we as enthusiastic and passionate about our businesses goods and/or services and as clear about our goal(s)?

Secondly come the application, dedication and sacrifice to achieving those goals that they are so passionate about. These people are up early, go to bed late and working on achieving their goals day and day out. They will give up on a social life, family time, holidays and more in order to put in the effort that is needed to win – to get to their goals. Are we in business as good at applying ourselves and dedicating ourselves to achieving our end goal?

Thirdly they have a plan, process and/or system. Each day, each week, each year there is a routine that they follow. By doing so they can see and measure their progress towards their goals, take heart from the successes and achievements along the way and learn from the setbacks and less positive situations that they find themselves. Do we all have such a

Fourth is that they surround themselves with those who believe in them and support them. There is no room for self-doubt and no time for those who might doubt them, all around them, will be ‘in their corner’ no matter where their journey takes them. They will have at least one coach and/or trainer to support them with knowledge and skills to achieve. Do we all have a coach in our corner – I know I do.

I often find business owners very resistant to declaring their passion for their business and what goods/services it offers, lacking the dedication to make it successful, without a plan or process in their own lives or that of the business they are running and often plagued by doubters and those who will drain their enthusiasm and energy more through being negative.

By putting all these things in place we can all achieve far more just as the World's Athletes do and have, we in business are fortunate in that we can display our successes more often than a few times in our careers, so lets make the most of the opportunity and shine as brightly as we can.

I’d love to hear what you already do, what you will be doing in the future to keep yourself on track to achieve your goals and the benefits that you see, please leave a comment on these and thank you for investing some time in reading this Blog.