Moving To The Next Level In Your Personal Growth

For everything you gain, you must give up something.

What is the key to going to the next level in your personal growth? Put another way, what is the greatest obstacle you will face once you have begun achieving your goals and tasting success? I believe it is the ability to let go of what you have so that you can reach for something new. The greatest obstacle leaders face can be their own achievement. In other words, the greatest detriment to tomorrow’s success is today’s success.

WHAT IS THE NEXT LEVEL WORTH?

That’s a question that every person must ask him or herself more than once in a successful career. In Leading Without Power, Max DePree wrote, “By avoiding risk, we really risk what is most important in life—reaching toward growth, our potential and a true contribution to a common goal.”

Over the years I have learnt that I should do the difficult things first, and then enjoy myself. We all pay in life. Anything we get will exact a price from us. The question is, when will we pay? The longer we wait to pay, the greater the price. It is like interest that compounds. A successful life is a series of trade-offs. In my career, over and over I have traded security for opportunity. I’ve given up what many would consider an ideal position so that I could grow as a leader or make a bigger impact.

I’ve found that the higher we go, the harder it is to make trade-offs. Why? We have so much more that we risk giving up. People often talk about the sacrifices they had to make in the beginning of their careers. But in truth, most people have very little to give up in the beginning. The only thing of value that they have is time. But as we climb higher, we have more, and we find it more difficult to let go of what we’ve worked for. That’s why many climb partway up the mountain of their potential and then stop. They come to a place where they are unwilling to give up something in order to get the next thing. As a result, they stall—some forever.

Something in human nature tempts us to stay where we’re comfortable. We try to find a plateau, a resting place, where we have comfortable stress and adequate finances. Where we have comfortable associations with people, without the intimidation of meeting new people and entering strange situations. Of course, all of us need to plateau for a time. We climb and then plateau for assimilation. But once we’ve assimilated what we’ve learned, we climb again. It’s unfortunate when we’ve done our last climb. When we have made our last climb, we are old, whether forty or eighty. – Fred Smith 

WHAT WILL YOU TRADE?

• Trade Affirmation For Accomplishment

When I began my career I was a people pleaser. I wanted approval from my followers, admiration from my peers, and awards from my superiors. I was an affirmation junkie. But accolades are like smoke that quickly fades away. Awards turn to rust. And financial rewards are quickly spent. Now I prefer to get something done than to just make myself look good. That decision has paved the way for most of the other trades I have  made in life.

• Trade Security For Significance

Success does not mean simply being busy. What you give your life to matters. The great leaders in history were great not because of what they owned or earned but because of what they gave their lives to accomplish. They made a difference!

I chose a career in which I expected to make a difference. But that did not exempt me from having to take risks to do things of greater significance. The same will be true for you, no matter what profession you have chosen.

• Trade Financial Gain For Future Potential

One of life’s ironies for me is that I have never been  motivated by money, yet I am doing well financially. Why? Because I’m always willing to put future potential ahead of financial gain.

The temptation is almost always to go for the cash. But this goes back to the idea of pay now, play later. If you are willing to sacrifice financially on the front end for the possibility of greater potential, you are almost always given greater chances for higher rewards—including financially.

• Trade Immediate Pleasure For Personal Growth

If ever there was something our culture has a difficult time with, it is delayed gratification. If you look at the statistics on how much people are in debt and how little they put into savings, you can see that people are always seeking immediate pleasure.

Many times I have put off or sacrificed pleasures, conveniences, or luxuries in order to pursue personal growth opportunities. I’ve never regretted it.

• Trade Exploration For Focus

Some people like to dabble. The problem with dabbling is that you never really become great at anything. True, when you are young, you should try out new things—see where your strengths and interests lie. But the older you are, the more focused you should be. You can only go far if you specialize in something. If you study the lives of great men and women, you will find that they were very single-minded. Once you have found what you were created to do, stick with it.

• Trade Quantity Of Life For Quality Of Life

I have to confess that I have a “more” mentality. If one is good, four is better. If somebody says he can hit a goal of twenty, I encourage him to reach for twenty-five. When I write an article to post on my blog I want to include so much content in it so that the people who read it will get as much as they can out of it. Because of this natural inclination to do more, I’ve often had very little margin in my life.

I once read that the head of a large organisation sought out a wise man to get his advice. After describing the chaos that was his life, he silently waited to hear something of value from the sage. The older man at first said nothing. He simply took a teapot and began pouring tea into a cup. And he kept pouring until the tea overflowed and began to cover the table.

“What are you doing?” the head of the organisation exclaimed.

“Your life,” responded the wise man, “is like a teacup, flowing over. There’s no room for anything new. You need to pour out, not take more in.”

It has been very difficult for me to change my mind-set from quantity to quality. Honestly, I’m still working on it. Now I try to carve out more time for the really important things in my life. I suggest you do the same.

• Trade Acceptable For Excellent

This one is so obvious that it almost goes without saying. People do not pay for average. They are not impressed by anything that is merely acceptable. Leaders cannot rise up on the wings of mediocrity. If something is worth doing, give it your best—or don’t do it at all.

• Trade Addition For Multiplication

When people make the shift from doer to leader, they greatly increase the impact that their lives can make. It is a significant jump because one is too small a number to achieve greatness. However, there is another jump that is more difficult and has even greater significance—changing from adder to multiplier.

Leaders who gather followers add to what they can accomplish. Leaders who develop leaders multiply their ability. How is that? For every leader they develop or attract, they gain not only that individual’s horsepower but the horsepower of all the people that person leads. It has an incredible multiplying effect. Every great leader, regardless of where or when they led, was a leader of leaders. To go to the highest level of leadership, you must learn to be a multiplier.

• Trade The First Half For The Second Half

In his book Halftime, Bob Buford says that most people who are successful in the first half of their life try to do the second half of their life in the same way. What he’s really saying is that they reach a plateau and they are unwilling to trade what they have for a new way of doing things because it’s much easier to stick with what’s familiar.

If you are in the second half of life, you have probably spent much of your time paying the price for success. Don’t waste it. Be willing to trade it for significance. Do things that will live on after you are gone. If you are in the first half, keep paying the price so that you have something to offer in your second half.

• Trade Your Work For God For A Walk With God

As a spiritual and religious person, I understand the deep satisfaction of doing work that will improve my relationship with God. However, I also understand the trap of constantly doing for God without continually connecting with God.

If you are not a person of faith, then this may not make sense to you. However, if faith is a part of your life, remember that no matter how much value your work has, it cannot compare with a relationship with your Creator.

ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE UP TO GO UP?

To achieve excellence, I think you have to learn to travel light. You must learn to off-load before trying to reload. You have to let go of one thing in order to grasp a new one. People naturally resist that. We want to stay in our comfort zone and hold on to what’s familiar. Sometimes circumstances force us to give up something and we have the chance to gain something new. But more often than not, if we want to make positive trades, we have to maintain the right attitude and be willing to give up some things.

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was given a request for five hundred thousand additional recruits to fight in the army. Political advisors strongly recommended he turn it down since they thought honouring the request would prevent his re-election. But Lincoln’s decision was firm.

“It is not necessary for me to be re-elected,” he said, “but it is necessary for the soldiers at the front to be reinforced by five hundred thousand men and I shall call for them. If I go down under the act, I will go down with my colours flying.”

Abraham Lincoln is considered as one of the greatest US presidents because he was willing to give up everything—except final responsibility. That is the kind of attitude leaders need to have. Every new level of growth we hope to experience as leaders calls for a new level of change. You cannot have one without the other. If you want to be a better leader, get ready to make some trades.

Last year, a few months before my birthday, I took the time to memorize the following prayer, because I wanted to pray it in the presence of my family and friends on my birthday. It says:

Lord, as I grow older, I think I want to be known as . . .

Thoughtful, rather than gifted, Loving,

versus quick or bright,

Gentle, over being powerful,

A listener, more than a great communicator,

Available, rather than a hard worker,

Sacrificial, instead of successful,

Reliable, not famous,

Content, more than driven,

Self-controlled,

rather than exciting,

Generous, instead of rich,

and Compassionate,

more than competent,

I want to be a foot-washer.

I’m still striving to become that person. I’m still making trades.

Now more than ever, I am aware that significant birthdays can either mark the passage of time, or they can mark changes we’ve made in our lives to reach our potential and become the person we were created to be. With each passing year, I want to make good choices that make me a better person, help me become a better leader, and make a positive impact on others. That requires a willingness to keep making trades, because for everything you gain, you have to give up something.