What is a beginning…can you pinpoint a time when something changed your life course?
I’m sitting listening to some music drifting out over the vineyard … my head nodding with the rhythm … and the words of the song remind me of a conversation I had this morning with my mentor. He wrote to me about how people have stopped thinking. That’s an interesting thought within itself.
Let‘s get back to that in a just a few moments. What I would love to do for you now though, is to highlight something else I see in all of of my clients who become successful. And when I look around me, it’s something I don’t often see.
I’ll write a little more on that in a moment, but first, let me set the scene with a little story.
I was in my early twenties, living in Melbourne, working as a Coronary Care / Intensive Care Nurse when I read a small “classified ad” saying that there were a series of Lectures on the work of “Hay”, who was a pioneer in Nutritional Medicine.(This lecture series was life changing) A few weeks later I became an inaugural Member of the Victorian Herb Society with some other fascinating people and a wonderful journey into the world of nutrition, food and wine, human behaviours and and learning strategic thinking.
I bought book after book, attended permaculture classes, made wines with a fascinating French wine maker and restaurateur, created new recipes for bottling my home grown and delicious orchard fruits, grew Shitake mushrooms, attended Cordon Bleu cooking school and then learnt to integrate local innovative Australian produce with French cooking techniques … attended Italian food classes, made friends with primary producers and on it went. I just loved learning about real and delicious wholefood nutrition …and I continued to work and teach people what I was learning. I had so much fun!
So, what’s the lesson? I’m getting to that… hold on for a moment longer.
You see these classes and my life journey didn’t just happen.
I was always on the pursuit for new knowledge …new things to learn, which is how I got to where I am today… these first classes were the beginning of what I do today. And it was all because I followed up on that first small advertisement in a local Melbourne newspaper.
And this is the lesson.
Successful people are proactive. They make things happen. They are not passive. They search out the people and the information needed to achieve their goals. They create lives that they love.
They create a vision of what they need to do to achieve their goals and they go after it with fixed determination.
If you don’t think I’m right, think of the alternative.
So many people sit on the sidelines of life wishing that their lives were different. They passively react to their environment, fearful of the future, unable to imagine what they need to do, to take back control of their own life. There is a lot of talk and not much action. Sad and true.
And if you don’t take control, you may end up surrendering your life to live other’s dreams, having little time to “play” and follow your own passions. This isn’t “living”. This is existing.
This isn’t about being cynical or belittling others. I’ve been there and have complete empathy for being stuck in a life where you feel trapped.
Early on, I made different life choices which enabled me to be able to work from home. I was able to follow interests which then became passions. My life is truly of my own making.
This led to further studies and later into my career, to Coaching, NLP and Hypnotherapy… where I studied and worked with hundreds of clients to try and understand how they could become even more successful. And many of my wonderful clients have also ended up becoming close friends.
I wanted to know what was different about my most successful clients and what drove them. I wanted to know what behaviours set them apart, made them stand out.
After all, success leaves clues.
And what I determined was that they were thinkers and hunters of knowledge.
The successful amongst us think about what they want, work to understand why they want it, then they go looking for the right mentors and the knowledge that will support them.… they are interested in “hands on” experience… they look for people who are better than they are to “model” on. They are humble and hard working and proactive. They are not reactive.
Modelling by the way is one of the fastest ways to create your success.
And they don’t stop. They understand that we are all a work in progress. And they have 2 options, either to continue learning or to fall back. They know that it’s that simple.
I am always happiest when I’m learning something new… and I have so much I want to learn. So many fabulous little changes I can make to my daily life and to the way I teach others.
And I’m thankful for all my coaches and mentors, including those generous souls who are in my life right now, reading this Post, for showing me new insights, helping me to create new skill sets. Encouraging me to learn even more.
There is so much life to live and so much to learn don’t you think?
If you’d like to continue with this conversation and tell your story, please come and join me in the private FB group, Live Young with Susan Macintosh… you will be made most welcome.
