…and the successful become more and more successful.
I have to confess something to you. While you can definitely glean ideas, tips, and important distinctions that will accelerate your progress, there are three advantages superachievers have that separates them from everyone else—advantages that are not easily accessible.
These advantages are access to Counsel, Connections, and Strategies.
Let me explain.
Counsel—The greatest achievers in the world have the greatest advisors, consultants, and coaches in the world. They surround themselves with the best. It’s how they gain advantage over their competitors.
The best golfer, tennis player, baseball pitcher, singer, Olympian, surgeon, CEO, and entrepreneur all invest in highly paid advisors, consultants, and coaches.
Why?
Unconscious incompetence.
You need to know about this as you seek high performance in your personal and professional goals. In fact, I’d say it’s critical that you understand what it is and how it can affect you.
Unconscious incompetence is a phenomenon that occurs when you don’t realize you are doing something incorrectly or not to the best of your ability. You’re unknowingly clueless. It takes someone else to observe, identify, prod, and counsel you in order to bring awareness to the defects and help you make the adjustments needed to take your performance to the next level.
A top CEO once said to me, “You can never pay too much to rent someone’s eyes, mind, and experience.”
If you want to take your life to the next level, you, too, will need to seek out the best advisors, consultants, and coaches to help get you there.
Connections—It’s not just who the top achievers in the world know and have access to; it’s also the high-achieving reference group this provides them that is critically valuable.
As human beings, we raise or lower our performance to match the expectations and performance level of our reference group. As Stephen Covey pointed out, if you take a walk with someone whose pace is quicker than yours, it will be uncomfortable at first but you will ultimately (and unconsciously) match their pace. The same is true if someone’s pace is naturally slower than yours—you will slow your pace to match his or hers.
Dr. David McClelland of Harvard University concluded after 25 years of research that the choice of a negative “reference group” was in itself enough to condemn a person to failure and underachievement in life.
Many people have written about the power of associations, and all have come to the same conclusion: most success seekers are greatly limited in their ability to raise their game and change their life because they aren’t connected to a reference group that can help them reach their goals.
This is why the ubër-successful join country clubs, symphony groups, the boards of charity organizations, private dining clubs, and other exclusive groups. They can mix with other like-minded high achievers. Then they unconsciously raise their respective games by keeping up with each other.
If you want to take your life to the next level, you, too, will need access to a high-performing reference group.
Strategies—The top performers in the world have the strategies and systems in place that allow them to execute at a much higher level than other businesses or people. Most people are constantly floundering and guessing; they don’t have a proven plan or strategy to follow at all.
Richard Branson said, “Once you create a success of one business you can create a success in many more by following the same set of principles.”
The key is to know those principles.
If you want to take your life to the next level, you, too, will need to know the proven key principles and strategies, complete with execution systems.
To gain the advantages of the rich, powerful, and super-successful:
1) Seek the best counsel—advisors, consultants, coaches—you can obtain.
2) Connect with and immerse yourself in a network of high-achieving relationships and associations.
3) Learn the specific strategies and systems that power the top performers in the world.