Four Key Lessons to Success
In this post, I will be going over four quotes or ‘nuggets’ of information from John Maxwell’s How to Be a REAL Success book.
What does it mean (to me)?
I will be choosing one thing each from the four main sessions and describing what exactly it connects to from my life as a person with the intention of being successful.
Why did I choose it?
I will also be explaining why that piece of information jumped out at me specifically and the relevance it has to obstacles that I am going through or have had in the past.
How am I going to apply it to future activites and events?
There is no point in receiving guidance that connects to me if I am not planning to use it in the future during certain challenges that I will now be able to overcome.
Relationships
“The first person you learn to get along with is yourself”
When I read this, I immediately thought of back to Middle school. This was partially a time when I cared a lot more about other people and what they thought of me, rather than being myself. I think that it is very important to focus on getting to know yourself a little bit better every couple of months at least, to build character.
Although relationships are an extremely important part of success, that doesn’t necessarily limit you to other people. Something to always remember is that the relationship you have with yourself is the only one that lasts forever. The second reason that I chose this quote was that knowing who you want to be rather than being who you think other people want you to be is a lot better overall and will get you farther with this topic in the long run.
For me, I picture using these pieces of advice when planning leadership events, or during sports activities when I have to be a leader. I think that this particular quote will be most useful when I am just getting to know people. Although relationships can be formed and grown over time, a first impression is what sticks with you, and you only get one chance at it. But in order to present yourself to a new person the way that you want to, you have to know what that looks like in advance. In other words, you have to understand yourself better, to know how to be yourself.
Equipping
“We receive ego satisfaction for being needed”
This is one of the seven reasons why we don’t equip people enough, and I think that it’s is an important one to remember too. When I read this, I think of when I used to monitor little kids in elementary school. We weren’t just watching them, we had to teach them when they do something wrong and be leaders. This quote was a huge component to monitoring, and I wish I had learned it before because it was mostly habit to just do everything for them because we could.
I said before that it is really important to always keep this in the back of your mind because I believe that it is one of the most difficult parts of equipping people to forget about. Although it is good to get a little bit of ego strength to boost confidence, overall it’s more efficient to teach other people how to do things whenever you can.
My basketball coach said that the only way to get better is to practice how we want to play, and in those practices, you make each other better based on how hard you work them. A selfish player would only care about their personal growth, and a team player is always looking out to let their teammates improve. That is how this quote can be used in basketball.
Attitude
“Our attitude is a choice, and it determines our our aproach to life”
I sort of mixed two different sentences together, because I feel like they are both related, and they both also mean something to me. I would consider myself a positive person, and I don’t like to stop being one when things don’t go the right way. As they say, a good attitude doesn’t go unrewarded.
I think that this topic builds off of the other three in a way, which makes it just as important. First off, you cannot have good relationships with people having a bad attitude. You can’t have people look up to you as a strong leader in general either. It is difficult for some people because not everybody has a growth mindset. People with this kind of mindset won’t give up when they make a mistake.
During the leadership day trip up Burnaby Mountain, there were numerous times where my feet or legs were sore. However, I noticed that all of the times that they weren’t, was whenever I was socializing with my classmates; I guess it took my mind off it. The lesson that I learned that day, and will continue to remember, is that a tough situation can be done easily with other people who are positive.
Leadership
“The law of the lid”
The final and fourth key to success is having good leadership skills, and the law of the lid explains just that. When you are trying to lead a group of people, the better leader you are will determine the amount of success you and your group have. It is impossible to have a successful company or group, without a good leader, it just can’t happen.
I think that the law of the lid is crucial to leadership skills because it proves how important leadership is to be successful, it’s probably the most important part of it. I chose it because if I am lacking as a leader, then it is going to show with the level of success that the group that I am trying to lead has. In other words, any part of leadership that I need improvement in I need to take care of as soon as possible.
Even though it is still my first year in TALONS, I have already been put into situations where I need to be a leader, rather than relying on grade tens to take that role. That is why it is so important to remember all of these lessons and constantly work on them, (especially this one) because you never know when you are going to need them in life.