If I fail to plan, do I plan to fail?
Today’s blog is taken from a guest spot I did recently, on The Growth Zone podcast. Hosted by the insightful and imminently affable Christian Bartsch.
The Growth Zone Podcast covers topics from Business, Marketing, Sales, Startups and Innovation. Christian also has some fascinating interviews with industry leaders. Their Mission is to reach 20+ million people to grow their business and support local communities by creating sustainable jobs.
Christian and I had a fantastic chat about many aspects of business, mindset and team work. Check it out here:
How AI based startups use ISO 27001 to increase their value – The Growth Zone
- How AI based startups use ISO 27001 to increase their value
- How can you use an ISO Certificate to gain more business clients
- How risk analysis will help you achieve an iso 27001 certification
- How ESG and ISO27001:2022 ISO Certification interact to influence your business success
- Reaching your audience by building trust
Something from it that I wanted to highlight and unpack here, was the notion that we can be successful without clear intentions. I’m not so sure that we can, but then a lot of my thoughts on it are based around the subjectivity of ‘success’.
Could I be wrong?
Setting intentions with clarity, not only of thought but of heart too, is something that I speak about a lot. After all: if we aren’t clear about our target, how can we know if we’re moving towards it?
Now, a quick ‘Dangent’ (Dan-tangent) on that: I also say that we need to break our main goal down into bite-sized chunks or Micro-Shifts. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, that I’m suggesting that we focus intently on the specifics of your main goal, at the exclusion of all else. Not a bit of it!
This is about aligning you energetically with your desired outcome in all tasks, be that the culmination of your life’s work or taking the first step towards it (writing the email submission, that will get you an interview, that might lead to a publishing deal, that becomes your life’s work). Get me?
OK Dangent over, moving on…
Can we have success without clarity?
Well, I’m sure you can think of a few anecdotal examples where so-and-so just so happened to be walking through town, when they were plucked off the street by a head-hunter, thrust in front of someone powerful and wound up with a lucrative career as a model, or actor, or whatever (this has actually just happened to someone I know).
Yeah that happens, sure, but that’s just dumb luck for one thing. For another: is that really ‘success’? I mean, said person never set that as a goal presumably. If they did; ‘wondering the streets’ is hardly the kind of strategy anyone would seriously employ in pursuit of that end.
What is success?
I don’t want to get off into the reeds here too much, talking about the nature of subjectivity v. objectivity, and all that. Suffice it to say; success is (or really should be) about setting a goal and then executing it. Simple. Obviously these days we tend to equate financial abundance with success, obsessing over the lifestyles of the rich.
We tend to cast a scornful eye over those with wealth (especially un-earned wealth) while forgetting that we are judging them and their success (or perceived success) on our terms. What’s more; when it comes to assessing our own levels of success, we all too often judge it based on the terms of others! What is that about?!
We twist ourselves in knots over driving the right car, wearing the right clothes and living in the right house…for someone else!
So just on definitional terms; we need to set a clear goal, in order to know whether or not we have successfully executed it. It is also ludicrous, therefor, for us to set our agenda based on somebody else’s.
OK great, so I need to be clear with myself about my goals, but what about my team?
Well…teams (successful ones anyway) are a collective agreement, based around a singular goal. Even if that goal is just: ‘increase monthly earnings’. The key to creating a successful one is clarity in communicating that goal.
Once the goal is clearly set, the power of that collective agreement can be formidable.
We have to be part of that collective too though. I really believe that viewing a team as part of the uplift, there to share the journey and be part of something expansive, is the key. Rather than seeing them as there just to serve you.
The coherent frequency generated by a collective that is firing on all cylinders, is what makes the experience of success all the sweeter! It also makes success much more likely.
So: can we be successful without setting clear intentions?
I suppose, but that success is unlikely to be ours. We can be perceived to have succeed, should opportunity fall into our lap and we run with it, but was that our success? Did we execute a plan successfully, or were we successful by the grace of someone else/fate?
You might say that we succeeded, if we have the aim of finding any opportunity that just so happens to drop into our lap and then realising its maximum potential (let’s say), but then you still had a clear intention didn’t you? It just relied on an opportunity coming to you.
If you can think of an example of having had what you would term ‘success’ without setting a clear intention, I’d love to hear it! Please drop it in the comments below and we’ll have a chat about it. Let’s do the above and share a collective uplift on the matter.
Till next time…
Thank you so much for reading this blog, from the bottom of my heart! If you enjoyed it, I produce regular Do It With Dan blogs, podcasts and videos. I have three books published now: Stepping Beyond Intention, The Dreamer’s Manifesto and From Time-to-Time (a really great book on time mastery). All of these are here to serve you and make you part of the journey as well.
For more guidance on how to change your internal programming, to attract greater abundance and experience greater freedom: please click on the link below for free access to my…
