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The first article on ‘Strong Leadership Will Make You Money’, which was based on a list found in Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’, proved so popular that I decided to delve further into this topic.

One facet mentioned was – Lead By Example.

We all know that we only listen and retain a certain percentage of what we hear, however we do learn by modeling behavior.  Much of this happens sub-consciously such as taking on the habits, either positive or negative, of our parents or adult role models from childhood.

How can we choose who to model from?

Study successful people.  However firstly we need to decide for ourselves ‘what is success?’ Success means different things to different people, however in general the wants of us all fall loosely into the following categories:

Love, peace, joy, hope, financial freedom, good health, and living a purposeful life.

So look around at the people you see as successful, then just for fun give them a report card on these various aspects of their lives using the following legend:

A doing great, B doing pretty good, C – average, D – needs work, F – requires a major overhaul.

Examples

Love

A = has close family and friends, supportive peers, generally well liked and respected

C = Most family is close knit, few close friends with others being more like acquaintances, needs work on people skills

Hope

A = optimistic.  If having a bad day they will choose to feel the emotion, then choose to turn it around into a positive such as swimming laps to work through the anger, or listen to a motivational audio on the way to work to change the attitude.

F = pessimist, does not see a future, does not believe there is a God or any reason to live

Living a Purposeful Life:

A = heads an expanding company with a great team of motivated managers and staff.  Volunteers on weekends as his son’s assistant football coach.

B = Has an okay job, earns good money and is writing articles on the side in preparation for a career change to then work in his passion of writing for the national newspaper.

D = Unhappy in his job, doesn’t earn much and is not using his skills, however volunteers on the audio visual team at church which has an international television program. [so minimal changes are required to radically improve this area]

So successful people are not those who have achieved the highest in their field or earn the most money or have the biggest toys – although they could also have these!!  Success is living a balanced life.

If you plot this report card on a wheel, the ideal is balanced.  The person can have all C’s so there is room for expansion. However if the person has AAA then an F in love or purposeful life, the wheel will cause the vehicle to spin violently out of control and crash.  Even little bumps can cause unbalanced wheels to derail over time.

So the goal here is two-fold.  Aim to change your life to be one of balance and also choose to follow balanced people.  This could be as a coach or mentor (remembering that all successful people have others in their lives, who hold these types of roles, either formal or informal).

Stay tuned for the next post on how to live a balanced life and stay in control.

For further information on this topic, go to the tag cloud on the left hand side or do a search on this blog.  A great search is ‘Zig Ziglar success’.