AND THE ULTIMATE SUCCESS SECRET IS.......?

AND THE ULTIMATE SUCCESS SECRET IS.......?

(NOT WHAT YOU THINK)

Right off the top here I'm going to take issue with my own headline. I'm going to propose that there are no “secrets” to success. It's my experience that whenever some self-appointed high-priest of Success finally revealed a “secret” to me (usually for a fee), it struck me as a blinding flash of the bloody obvious! And useful!

It's no mystery, either, why "secrets" to success are generally so practical. A career involves many kinds of decisions, and we all foster the hope that there's a recipe for making these decisions, even though research combined with experience tells us that there isn't. This doesn't stop aspiring, ambitious people from clinging to a set of habits, attitudes, beliefs, etc. that they're been told will give them a gold pass called “the competitive edge”.

I believed this stuff, too. I'd already come to the conclusion that the hotchpotch of beliefs, thou-shalts and Ideas I'd picked since birth just had not worked. My business was struggling, my wife finally left, and my daughter was lost. Fortunately things had gotten so bad I was at long last prepared to try anything “new”. That's when I found an entire industry devoted to revealing The Secrets of Personal Success. I lapped it up. One of the conditions of following this path to power was that “you must believe to achieve; you have to fake it 'til you make it.” So I went in, boots and all (as is my wont). I faked and believed, and things got better, they really did! For a while. And then things began to unravel. Back to the drawing-board again!

This time, though, there was a difference. I'd picked up along the way some insights into other as yet unexplored possibilities. Most of these side flashes were less practical and more metaphysical, but being somewhat aware of myself as spirit, they now beckoned for my closer attention. Maybe there was a way that I'd missed in my narrowed-down focus on what my goals should look like and what success should feel like. Maybe focused efforting and “making it happen” was only partly “the answer”; perhaps I should also try something I'd never really considered before – surrender to not-knowing and “allow something to happen” needed to be brought into the process. Perhaps I should also relax my prejudices around what opportunity should come dressed as. My question was “How?” How can you Control and Surrender at one and the same time? My mind told me it was impossible, but my new mentors were telling me “Don't try to figure it out. That won't work. For the time being, just say “Yes” to everything, and be patient. See what happens. Do less, and be more. And Be Aware of what's actually happening. Who's calling you? What do they want from you? What songs are grabbing your attention? What if you opened your mind about what an angel messenger should look like. If you did that, is it just possible that chances are knocking on your door ever day, and you're sending them away? For starters, all you have to do is wake up and pay attention!

The irony is that there actually is a crucial “secret” to success, whatever you define that to be for yourself, but it doesn’t lie with anything taught in the conventional wisdom. In case you missed it, I just pointed to it. Go back and read the last paragraph again.

At last! Something made sense! I'd tried everything that “made sense”, and had not found what I was looking for. It suddenly made “sense” to try things that I'd rejected because they didn't make sense.

As long as we remain hung-up on any particular thoughts, or thinking, we remain imprisoned by a need to be right about it.

Freedom is detached awareness – letting go of identities (“that's me”) – cultivating an uncritical awareness of everything (including the thoughts that bind us unto themselves) – awareness that is not in time, or out of time, or on time, or off time.

The secret to fill-fullingment is so disarmingly simple that it is no wonder I had never thought of it! The human mind loves, and thrives on, complexity! And the mind wants to be supreme; it has to be right. We're entranced and imprisoned by our own creation – our mind.

The secret is to make a different basic choice than the one we've been coming from until now. Choose to let go of complexity and the habitual churning effort of “thinking”. Stop it. Just stop. Right where you are. Don't move. Don't think. Listen to the quietness. Let thoughts be; let them come and let them go. Just watch, like you're doing a surveillance on your own mind, watching its comings and goings, making mental snapshots of your thoughts coming and going, without considering them; not intervening or getting implicated or involved.

All that's required of you is merely to become more aware, to adopt a conscious lifestyle. Only this decision enables you to become dynamic, flexible, and resilient in a crisis. When there is no crisis, awareness leads to better appreciation underpinning day-to-day decisions, and a string of attuned decisions carves out a path to success.

Further down the track, if we narrow our focus to the specific challenges of being a leader, awareness naturally becomes more detailed in those arenas.  All of us generally benefit by being more aware, but a leader has to be extraordinarily aware of the nuances of each situation, of their own reactions, and particularly of other people, and quite often aware for other people.  That requires Empathy, anticipating what everyone involved is thinking and feeling, and the possible effects of that.

Awareness, even self-awareness, is surprisingly selfless. Egotism blocks clarity of awareness, and so does selfishness and ruthless competitiveness. They will cloud your perceptions and your judgment. Open inner and outer awareness sharpens your seeing and maximises your effectiveness. You become known as someone who gets “results”.

To begin at the beginning, persistently cultivating self-awareness produces more and more realistic self-assessment. If you cultivate awareness seriously, you find yourself asking some fundamental questions: Who am I in relation to this? What do I want this to lead to? What does this situation require of me​? What have I got, and what can I develop that will meet that need? A leader must ask these questions of him or her self and inspire the team to require a similar self-evaluation of themselves.

Many would-be leaders shy away from psychology, but that's not what awareness is. The psychology of anyone or anything is yet another subject of Awareness. Awareness is something that we show up with – it doesn't have to be learned. It isn't even something we have to do. Awareness is what we ARE. What has to be done, if anything dear fellow-human-being, is a giant clean-away of everything we've piled up that's obscuring our awareness, and re-introduce a consistent habit of re-membering “What is Awareness aware of right now?”. Just remember to notice it. You are the camera; Awareness is the cameraperson.

A recent biographical PBS program on Henry Ford noted that he had almost no inward gaze. His entire life, from childhood onward, was based on a rock-solid self-evaluation. Ford quietly knew he was special and had something important to contribute. He knew he wanted to make advances in machinery, and by the time he was twenty his focus turned to the motor car. He realised that he wanted to change the lives of common people by giving them cheap mass transportation, and this desire to improve the lot of the common man later extended to his own factory workers, who were given the highest wages in the industry (the famous $5 a day that Ford proposed in 1914), along with mandatory English lessons for a work force that was largely immigrant. Eventually Ford's vision extended to building utopian communities in faraway places like Brazil so that his ideal American worker could be a worldwide model. For him, “a better world” was not a verbless political slogan to be stickered onto some senseless, vague policy, it was the spine and skeleton that supported everything he did.

None of us is likely to become a “Henry Ford”, nor should we try to, but his example points out the critical ingredients of awareness: know Yourself, know your Intention, know what personal Values you are giving expression to, and keep expanding your Awareness as your life and career unfold.

• Know your vision and apply it despite obstacles and downturns.
• Be sensitive to outside forces, but ultimately be self-guided .
• Extend what you want to what others need. As Zig Ziglar used to say – “Get what you want by giving others what they want.”
• Be the lighthouse for your vision, inspiring others to join.

It's not often noticed, because Ford rose so quickly to dominate the car-making scene, that from the age of sixteen he worked for ten years in Edison's Detroit electrical plant, and that his first auto venture was shut down by his investors after three years. What sustained him during this time was his acute Awareness of opportunity, and the place he intended to create in it. His awareness gave him the kind of deep self-trust that sustained him and nourished those who engaged with him.

Awareness as a consciously developed habit is like an antenna, constantly assessing the feedback being sent both inside and outside. You are aware of where you stand in relation to your environment and where you stand in relation to yourself. That is, you know realistically who you are and where you are, and how you are with all around you.

Some key points:

Awareness is the birthplace of Possibility. Everything you decide to do, everything you choose to be starts in Awareness. The level of your Awareness governs the level of effectiveness of everything you do and become. No-one gets high-level results from low-level awareness. It is really that simple.

To be a successful visionary, you must be as aware as possible. Awareness highlights possibilities, opportunities; it also keeps you grounded in reality. At every moment many paths lead forward. Awareness tells you which one to take. It may not be the “right” one, but it will be a “better” one. I'm very wary of people who claim to have license on the “right” way: the procession that ensues always ends up to be the blind leading the gormless.

As a leader, your awareness affects everyone around you. Those whom you lead and serve depend on your perception of the situation. You must reach inside for the appropriate response. You alone can raise the group’s awareness from lower needs to higher deeds. To do that, you first must fulfil each need in yourself, from the ground up.

There is no limit to what you can change, because awareness brings light to every aspect of life. If your consciousness is constricted, everything you do will be, too. And so will the consequences and results that you generate.  On the other hand, if you are in a state of expanded awareness, everything else will expand. 

The most ancient wisdom traditions say, 

Know that one thing by which all else is known.

That one thing is consciousness itself. There is no greater power of creation and transformation that pure, unadulterated Awareness.