How can others help me be successful for free? (180 days to go)
Thursday, April 9th, 2009“Ability to influence a system, or an environment, in a way that multiplies the outcome of one’s efforts without a corresponding increase in the consumption of resources.”
www.BusinessDictionary.com
The above is the definition of “leverage”. In the past I have talked mainly about using leverage to help others, through charity etc. An example would be my fast approaching marathon, where I am trying to raise over $10,000 for Stop the Traffik. (If you enjoy this post - please sponsor me here) By contacting some local and national newspapers, I have managed to get my story run, and attracted a lot of interest in my efforts to raise funds to stop human trafficking. Seeing as I had already decided to run the marathon, the only extra thing I did to generate interest, was to simply contact a few local publications. Only a little effort compared to the massive results it obtained for me and the charity.
Today I’m going to talk about using leverage in a different way - to help you achieve success in your life. I’m assuming that by now you have some direction in your life, you have set your goals (and written them down), have your dream/vision board setup and work towards your goals on a daily basis? Excellent - if not, maybe start here. So now that you have your goals - how can you use leverage to achieve them?
How to use leverage to achieve your goals:
- Choose a goal to focus on.
- Find someone that has mastered that goal before. If you have a goal that hasn’t been done before, or you can’t find anyone that’s an expert in that field, then try to get in touch with someone as close to that description as possible.
- Contact them. By taking action to simply saying “Hi, this is my goal, I believe that you have done this before, can you please give me some advice?, you’ll be surprised at the reaction you get. Lots of successful people are more than happy to share their experiences. Whether it’s just a quick email, or perhaps they take you under their wing and provide some mentoring - you’ll still be getting some top advice that you can use to achieve your goals!
As you are no doubt all aware. I’m running a marathon on May 2nd, after never running further than 3km before I started training 8 weeks ago. When I made the decision to run a marathon, I began to research running on the internet and sifted through countless pages of conflicting information about what I should and shouldn’t do.
So I decided to see if I could find someone who had at least run a marathon, and have a chat to them. Somehow I managed to do a lot better than that. I found Ross Steele, who also lives in Tauranga, New Zealand. Ross has just returned from Kilimanjaro after running his 26th Marathon!!!
Not only that, but finishing that Marathon meant that he had run a marathon on Seven different continents, making him a member of an elite club, with only 240 members world wide. Ross was definitely qualified to give me advice about running marathons. Ross will also be completing in the same Marathon I will be completing on May 2nd.
I emailed Ross the yesterday and he gave me a call shortly afterwards, only too happy to meet me to talk about this passion that is running marathons. Ross was fantastic, giving me time loads of advice and practical tips that I now see as invaluable.
I feel much better equipped for my marathon and have only grown more confident since talking to him, and learning from him. Even if it was just an hour that we spend discussing running. So I learnt what a powerful tool it can be, to talk to someone who has achieved as much success in the area that you are trying to excel in.
You can read more about Ross’s recent achievements here. So now that you’ve finished reading this. What are you going to do? Have a coffee? Get back to work? Have a sleep? Or are you going to take action, and get in contact with someone RIGHT NOW, who will be able to help you achieve your goal?
