Simplicity out of the complex
We are always trying to simplify. Life is complex and we struggle to understand and control the things of life. I have a coach who helps me do that and I want to share some of the things I’ve learned. Maybe it will help you too.
Life can be broken down into 5 circles according to my mentor (Brian) and coach (Donna). Spiritual, Family, Business, Financial and Personal. The order of these is reflective of their importance. At Keller Williams we talk about God, Family, Business as our core value. It is the same thing my coach talks about.
Inside each of those circles there are levels of achievement.
My mentor calls it The Sequence of Success. We all start at Survival. It is the most basic level. We don’t have to do anything to get there except decide to start. We can progress to Stability if we make good choices and focus on the important things in life. Success follows as we pour effort over time into Stability. We can get to Significance eventually if we continue to be diligent.
All of this is built on Trust. We have to trust that the results will come from our continued work. It comes back to the Law of the Harvest. We reap what we sow. Some call it Karma and others perhaps say it’s God’s will but the truth is, we do get results from what we do, decisions we make and things we focus on.
If I try to control everything I will quickly find out I can’t and will just be frustrated.
That picture in my mind comes from a presentation my mentor did. He had 3 bowls, stacked up on top of each other. A large bowl at the bottom and the smallest at the top. The picture at the start of this post is from the lobby of my mentor’s business. Check it out.
At the meeting he began to pour water into the smallest bowl and talked about it representing Stability. Do the work, serve the clients, ask for referrals and do the work again. As you grow skilled in the work, the benefits overflow into the middle bowl that represents Success and finally if you do it right the Success bowl overflows into the Significance bowl. It takes time and effort and you need to stay in sequence.
Getting out of sequence is easy because we get distracted. Doing the Stability work is not usually exciting. It can in fact get a little tedious. We start to pour into the Success or Significance bowl and ignore the Stability one because if ‘feels’ like fun. If looks OK at first but that behavior will cause problems later. Ignoring the Stability actions will cause all the others to collapse eventually. I watched my mentor do this demo about 2006 and realized I was out of sequence. In that moment, it actually took my breath away. I had to make some changes and it saved me so much grief.
Since then I have been focused on Stability and things are going better. Spiritual life is going well, Business is good and all the other “circles” are improving. It’s a constant battle to make sure I don’t drift from doing the right things and yesterday I got an email from my coach that exposed a way to tell where you are in the sequence. I loved it.
“It is not enough to have the answers, you need to ask great questions, and great follow up questions.
That led me to this thought:
Survival – Giving Answers
Stability – Asking Questions
Success – Asking Great Questions, and Great Follow Up Questions
Significance – Asking Questions with Heart – from your heart, because you care about the answer – and past your clients head and into their heart.”
Sometimes we think we have to have the answers and when we don’t we question our abilities. It’s revealing to me that questions are in fact a better measure of our place in life. What questions are you asking?
I would love to meet up with you and explore this thought. Call me anytime and we’ll get together.
Thanks for listening,
Jerry Robertson
678-231-1578 Cell