To create your success, you need to focus on your own value
We all have moments in our lives where the wrong mindset holds us back. I’ve seen it time and time again… in my team, other business owners, and even in myself.
It can be easy to compare yourself to others. To fall into a negative mindset and become jealous of others’ success. You talk about all the reasons why it should be you not them… or maybe, you actually think you don’t deserve it. And when you don’t think you deserve something, you’re thinking at a lower frequency.
Your negative thinking actively impacts the people around you. You talk about it so much, it’s what people expect you to say when speaking to you. At first, they listen, but eventually… people leave.
Why?
Because you’ve become a drainer. And they’re right.
Outside of what you can learn from others’ success, their situation doesn’t really matter. Instead of living in a state of jealousy, wouldn’t it be better to form a relationship with this person? To learn from them? To apply their experience to your own life? Every moment in life is instructive. Look for the right lessons so you can model, mimic, and master.
What value are you creating in others’ lives?
Truly successful people are successful because they create something of value for others. Read that again.
It might be a product or a service that improves the lives of their customers.
It might be the level of leadership you show the team in your organization, where you’re actively mentoring the next generation of leaders by sharing your experiences with them, challenging them with the next professional opportunity in their careers, and giving them leadership opportunities by creating and growing their own team.
Or you might be an individual contributor who is filling their role in a way where they’re making themselves, their process, and their insight absolutely invaluable to the organization.
You see, in any of the above examples, these are situations where you as an individual are creating value for others, and are therefore making yourself valuable. Making yourself valuable is where success is ultimately derived from. The concept of “success” can’t be achieved in the absence of having created value.
So, ask yourself these two questions:
- How am I creating value in other people’s lives?
- How am I using that value to make myself valuable (and therefore successful)?
If you’re having trouble answering that question, then it might be because you’re focused on the wrong things.
Everything rises and falls on leadership
It doesn’t matter what your role is in an organization, if you’re not being a leader in that role, then you’re not creating value, you’re making yourself valuable, and you’re not contributing to the success of that organization. In fact, you might be contributing to its failure.
Tough, but true.
My friend and mentor, renowned author and speaker John Maxwell, taught me that everything — absolutely everything — rises and falls on leadership. And it’s one thing to put yourself in a position of leadership, but it’s altogether a much more valuable thing to empower others to be leaders in what they do.
So if you’re a team leader, seek out new challenges for your team members… ones that grow their skills while also putting you in a position to be more strategic, and therefore valuable, to the organization.
If you’re a contributor to a team like this, then embrace those new challenges, but do so in order to create value vs. doing so for the attention and acclaim.
Those perks come later.
They come after you’ve made yourself valuable, created value, and generated success. It’s making others’ success easy, too.
This is what leadership is about. Seeing the opportunity and aligning people who can make the most of such a situation, and empowering everyone to do their best instead of acting out of self-interest.
Not acting purely on self-interest will benefit you in the moment, and will serve you in the long run, because you’ve built trust with your peers, confidence in your superiors, and results for your clients. In other words, you’ve made yourself valuable, and valuable people, without question, are the most successful people of all.
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