Your Success Recipe Holds You Back
Over the past 20 years, I have worked with leaders in all types of organizations. And one pattern has stood out: every one of them had a success recipe.
Through their experiences, they all adopted internal “truths” and decision rules of what works and what doesn’t, and therefore they lead from those beliefs. That success recipe guides how they think, how they make decisions, and how they lead people.
It makes sense. We all experience the world through our own lenses. And through our experiences, we determine what works for us and what doesn’t. And when something works, we stick with it. In fact, we double down on it. For people who have a pattern of success, those guiding beliefs that form the internal success recipe become sticky and even entrenched.
But here’s the problem. When we choose a success recipe, it becomes our frame for the world, and then we stop questioning it. Said another way, the minute we choose a specific success recipe, we get stuck in it. It’s like a self-created box, where we only see what is in the box and can only act in ways that live within its walls. As a result, we don’t see the alternative ways of thinking or believing that might lead to other decisions or actions.
There are two risks to this.
- Because you can’t see what you can’t see, you miss opportunities for connection, learning, growth, and evolution.
- You become outdated or even irrelevant. The success recipe you have chosen, which works in the current paradigm, or the current state of your world, no longer works when anything changes. You are now playing out an “effective success recipe” in a world that no longer exists.
So, in a constantly changing world, the question is: how do we be successful in the current paradigm and simultaneously evolve to be successful in the next?
To create a healthy balance between success now and evolution forward, here is the key: Become aware of WHY you chose your current success recipe.
The key is NOT in clarifying the elements of your success recipe. You probably already know what they are. The key is understanding WHY you chose those elements.
The WHY behind your success recipe is founded in two things: your core identity and your core beliefs.
Your identity is effectively articulated in a set of “I am” statements you carry inside. “I am a leader,” “I am a team player,” “I am the one to save the day,” “I am a mentor/teacher,” etc. The identities that you choose then directly influence or create a set of beliefs. If “I am the one to save the day” or “I am a problem solver” in whatever language I have chosen, then I may adopt beliefs that “I must have the answer in all situations” or “I always have to be right.” These beliefs both frame the way that you act and come with blindsides that can hold you back.
Becoming aware of the core “I am” statements you have chosen and the beliefs that come with them is critical to claiming your power of choice over them and being able to break out of the self-limiting box that they create. Remember, breakthroughs come when you simply clarify a belief that is no longer working for you and consciously choose to change it into something that serves you better.
