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2 Forces That Drive Your Success

SUMMARY

When it comes to assessing where you are in life in terms of business, health, finances and relationships you can make use of the two success drivers: 1)Action and 2)Focus and they give you an indication of where you stand. These two forces that drive your success helps you in knowing where you are currently and what you should do to push towards where you want to be in life.

The two forces of success along with the four indication zones can be better understood with the help of the following quadrant model:

The Success Zone Evaluator

On one side of it is action, and on the other is focus. Depending on how you score on these two factors, you lie in one of the following four zones:

  • Frozen Zone: With very little focus and action, the people that are here are doing nothing to vitalize their life and are spending the time that they have on things that don’t contribute to any type of positive results. They have been squandering away the years on things that may erode their health, business, relationship and wealth.
  • Scattered Zone: If you rank here, then you are full of energy but you lack the focus to invest the energy in a particular direction. Sporadic results are common in the scattered zone where there may be momentary successes but they are not sustainable. Instead of shifting gears regularly, you have to create systems in place to focus your energy and trigger yourself for productivity gains.
  • Hope Zone: People who hope all day long instead of taking action is in this zone. They are hoping, they stare at things, and all they know is where they want to be and what they would like to have. Identifying the goals isn’t enough because we need to have a process in place for you to take action so you find yourself in a better and successful position.
  • Success Zone: When you have high focus and high action that is moving you towards the direction of triumph, you are in this zone. You are someone who has a conservative focus that moves you forward. High performers and achievers who know where they want to go and are pushing their actions to take them there are the folks in the success zone.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.

And welcome back to this episode, episode #47 of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. I can’t believe that we’re hitting 50 episodes already. It’s been a tremendous joy for me. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about something given the time of year and everything that’s going on.

A lot of people say, “What does it take to be successful?”

And I think that it has to do with a couple of things, and I’m going to give you a framework and a way to assess where you are depending upon what area of your life it could be.

  • It could be relationships.
  • It could be business.
  • It could be finances.
  • It could be health.

What area of your life you’re in to decide what zone you’re living in. It’s called The Success Zone Evaluator. You can actually download The Success Zone Evaluator by going to MelAbraham.com/session047. Or you can just text me MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470.

But when we come back, when we come back from this brief introduction, we’ll jump right in. I’ll give you an idea of how the whole thing works. What is it to consider and maybe understand a little bit better of where you are in different aspects of your life and what maybe needs to happen to get you to move, and to shift, and to change things in the upcoming 12 months. Alright!

Hope to see you right after the introduction. See you soon. Bye.

Hey there, welcome back. I’m Mel Abraham, the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution; founder of Business Breakthrough academy and welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. And in this episode, we’re going to spend a little time talking about success, and talking about what I think are two of the main drivers of success.

When we talk about success; I’m not talking about just business success or wealth. Certainly, that’s a big part of it.

  • So, how successful are you in business?
  • How successful might you be in business going forward?
  • How about wealth or money matters?
  • How about health? How about health?
  • How are you doing with your health?
  • Are you feeling vibrant?
  • Are you … maybe you need to lose a few pounds.
  • Maybe you need to gain a few pounds.
  • Maybe you’re not eating healthy.

I know, me, every once in a while, I get that sweet tooth and it gets the best of me but I got. That it’s about where you live most of the time and not necessarily where you live all the time.

So,

  • Wealth
  • Health
  • Business
  • Relationships

How are your relationships?

What are the things that you’re bringing to the table or relationships that might:

  • Increase the success of the relationships.
  • Deepen the intimacy of the relationship.

All of those types of elements and I think it comes back to two factors and those two factors when we go through them kind of puts you in what I call one of four zones of success. And depending on the four zones of success it starts to give you an indication of where you’re spending the majority of your time and may be why the results you’re getting are the results you’re getting.

Now, those results might be the ones you’re looking for. But again and again, they may not. And so, understanding how that plays out and this model kind of gives you away to access yourself, to score yourself—if you will—to really kind of graph where you are in each area of your life. And I invite you to do that.

So, why don’t we get into it a little bit?

  • Give an idea of what it is?
  • How I use it?
  • And how you can use it in your life?

And so, again it’s called The Success Zone Evaluator. It’s affectively a quadrant model and so, there’s two things that I think are primary drivers of success. Now,

  • We can talk about purpose
  • We can talk about desire
  • We can talk about…

I’m going to assume that those are there because one of the things that comes into play when we start to look at all those factors is we need to get clarity on a couple of things first.

  • What’s my values?
  • What do I stand for?

If you see me speak, you know that I am constantly asking the question, “What do we stand for?”

  • What do we stand for as a business?
  • What do we stand for as an individual?
  • What do we stand for as a leader?

It’s one of the most important questions, the most fundamental questions we need to answer and that many times we don’t answer. And when we don’t answer,

  • That’s when we get sporadic results.
  • That’s when we get haphazard results.
  • That’s when we get inconsistency.
  • That’s when we get people that will compromise their values.
  • That will do things for greed.
  • That will do things for need.
  • That will do things that maybe, in other circumstances; they wouldn’t otherwise do because they didn’t get clarity on what they stand for.

So, let’s assume that you’ve got clarity on your values and that there’s conviction behind them, and the way to figure that out is just see what you’re doing every day. You may say, “That this is what I am. This is what I stand for.” But if you’re not living it, if you’re not doing it each and every day then maybe that’s not what you stand for.

In fact, one of the things that I tell my clients and folks is that,

When you want to really understand what someone’s convictions are and what someone’s values are, don’t watch their lips, watch their feet. See what the actions are that they’re taking because those will give you a true indication of what’s important to them.

And they may turn around and say, “Hey, getting this project done is important” but they’re leaving at 3 o’clock. It’s not important; they can give it lip service all day long but it’s not that important if they’re leaving at 3 o’clock without some outside force like some family emergency or something like that. So, we watch their actions to demonstrate their values.

Values are not illustrated, they’re not talked about; they’re demonstrated. And that’s the key. So, I’m going to assume that we already have clarity on the values and what we stand for and purpose. Once we have that clarity, once we have that clarity then there’s two elements that I think really start to drive it, and that is focus and action.

It’s interesting how we look at people and will say that they’re gifted. “Yes!” but maybe they have been gifted with the fact that they stayed focused long enough, and they took action—one large enough action on a long term basis persistent enough to be successful.

Many times people quit just on the cusp of success. They’re just inches away from the finish line. They’re just inches away and they give up. And so the question then is, “How much focus and how much action are you bringing to the table.”

And I think that people live in four zones and the first zone is those that have very little focus and very little action. This is what I call the Frozen Zone. They’re pretty much doing nothing. They may be the couch potatoes, they may be people that; in fact, I heard a statistic that most of the average American watches 4 hours of television a day—a day!

Four hours, it’s kind of crazy to think about you’re taking four hours out of your day to watch mind numbing television which … I get it, I watch TV but I do it specifically and I watch specific shows. Some of it is just to unwind and unplug but it’s intentional. But to all of a sudden sit in front of the TV or in front of your computer, mind numbingly going through your day, and all of a sudden 4 – 5 hours is just squandered away.

If you do the math, if you do the math on that, you would see that you would be squandering away years of your life doing things that don’t move you towards the things that you’re dreaming about. Doing things that don’t move you closer to what your goals are. Doing things that actually erode your wealth, erode your well-being, erode your health versus getting out and doing things that are more productive. That’s what I call the frozen zone. And so, those are the folks that take very little action and have very little focus in their life.

Now, when we talk about this zone evaluator, one of the things to do is do it in a context. So, when I use this tool, I use it:

  • In the context of a relationship.
  • In the context of business.
  • In the context of my leadership.
  • In the context of my health.
  • In the context of my wealth.

So, I will run this process multiple times in different context of my life to see where I am in that process.

The second zone that I think exists is what I call the Scattered Zone. These are the people that they are just full of energy. And this is actually a curse for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, thoughtpreneurs, those folks; they got so many ideas, so much creativity coming out of them that what happens is they take a lot of action with very little focus, very little focus.

And ultimately, what ends up happening with them is that they use up a lot of their energy and they get very little progress in the process because it’s so scary, it’s sporadic, it’s what I call The Hummingbird Syndrome. The hummingbird doesn’t stay on one flower very long and they move from flower to flower to flower.

And these people that live in the scattered zone will do something for a short period of time not very focused, and then move to something else. It’s the, some people call it The Shining Ball Syndrome. And so, those folks live in the scattered zone and again their results become sporadic. They may get momentary successes but they are not necessarily sustainable because they cannot continue on the path, they shift gears and they move and they change strategies and they change tactics regularly, daily, weekly, monthly, annually. So, there isn’t a system or process to them.

So, one of the things that we need to do if we find that we’re living in that scattered zone in some aspect of our life, is to create systems and processes in place to put focus in—triggering mechanisms. When you get up, maybe it’s, “I’m not being really good with my health; I need to drink more water.”

So, what’s the trigger when you first wake up in the morning to drink 8 ounces of water, 10 ounces of water? What process can you put in place that embeds your success as a result of the process?

So, you’re not having to constantly think about it but maybe it’s settings alarms. I know for me, one of the things that I do and we’ll talk about it in a later episode is: I work in, somewhere between 30 and 90 minute intervals. I try to … I do not exceed 90 minute intervals and sometimes what I do because you can get caught up

  • In your thinking
  • In your creativity
  • In the work that you’re doing

And you could try to work for hours straight but there are studies that show that there’s a precipitous drop in your effectiveness when you start to work long hours without breaks, and

  • We need to stand up,
  • We need to move around,
  • We need to take breaks,
  • We need to hydrate,

We need to continually fuel our system if we’re going to continue to be at the highest level of productivity and high productivity levels.

And so, one of the things that I’ll do is I’ll set an alarm on my phone that will buzz me every 60 or 90 minutes; whatever I set. And so, I’ll get up and I’ll move around.

  • I will make sure that I’m getting hydration.
  • I will make sure that I’m getting a mind break.
  • I will make sure that I refocus my eyes on distance and openness.
  • I will walk outside, walk down to the beach and then come back.

Some people will say, “Well that erodes your productivity because you’re taking time away” but it’s actually a fallacy unless you’re taking the whole afternoon off; it actually increases your productivity because you come back with a renewed vigor. You don’t have the fatigue that’s wearing on you in that process but the point being is that to create a process that will bring that focus into play so you can continue to move forward and move yourself out of the scattered zone.

Then there’s the third zone that exists and this is the Hope Zone. This is the people. Not to poke fun at it but I’m going to poke fun at it. This is the people that like for instance: the movie The Secret. I love the movie. I love the concept. I love the people that are in that.

But the fact of the matter is you can hope all day long, you can turn around and talk about the all the elements that … bringing things into your life but I got to tell you it ain’t coming into your life until you do the work, until you get up and do the things that are necessary and so the folks that are in the hope zone are sitting, they’re staring at things. They’re hoping for things to come in their life but they’re not taking action.

So, they’re not a whole lot better than the frozen zone as far as the results they’re getting except that they know what they would like to get. The frozen zone—a lot of times—they don’t even know what they’d like to get. The hope zone, they actually know what they like to get; they’re just not taking the actions to get them there and that becomes a challenge.

So, one of the things that we need to do in the hope zone is if you find yourself whether it’s in health, wealth or business or relationships or any of that type of stuff; whichever context it is if you’re living in the hope zone then

  • We need to bring action.
  • We need to change the things we need to do
  • We need to break the patterns and again put a process in for you to take action.

Well and then there’s the last zone of success which is what I call the Success Zone. This is where you’ll have high focus, high action with focus that moves you in the direction that you’re looking to move into and these are the people,

  • The high performers
  • The high achievers
  • The high productivity leaders
  • The high-deep intimate relationships
  • The high leadership folks

It’s because they have a conservative focus on that arena in their life, on that zone in their life; that context of their life. And in addition to that focus they have a pattern of action that continues to move them forward on a regular basis.

So, I ask you this when you think about health and your life:

Where are you?

image
  • In the frozen zone?
  • In the hope zone?
  • In the scattered zone?
    —you’re taking lots of action but it’s not focus so you’re not getting results.
  • Or are you in the success zone?

How about your wealth?

If you think about your wealth for a moment where are you with that?

  • Is it low action; high focus?
  • Low focus; low action?
  • High action; high focus?

Where are you? Which zone are you in?

Because this will give you an indication of what your life could look like in a year, two years or three years, if you don’t change, if you don’t shift, if you don’t intentionally position yourself in the success zone.

So, how do we use this tool?

So, one of the ways that I use this tool is I simply rate myself. I’ll take health for instance and say, “Over the last 90 days or the last 30 days”. I may try to break things down. Again, I use a 90-90 rule: 90 minutes 90 days. I try to do, break my years down into four 13 weeks sprints—90 day increments because I think that they’re manageable, and they’re achievable, and I can make a big difference in 90 days.

And so, I get my focus zone on that 90 day but when I reflect on things, maybe, I look at it and say,

Hmm, how have I been with my health the last 90 days? Have I taken the actions I should be taking to move me towards optimal health, to move me towards vibrancy?

And I rank that on a scale of 0 – 10.

And depending on how I look at it, maybe, I rank it as an 8 which would put me in the high action; the higher action level. And then I look at it and say, “How focused have I been?”

You know it’s one thing to take action, to get up and go to the gym but it’s another thing that when you go to the gym, you’re just kind of going through with emotions; you’re not pushing yourself through heavier weights or through plateaus. You’re just kind of going through with emotions. I got my hour of workout in and I’m done. Okay?

How many times have any of us done that?

– I know I have.

And so, maybe my focus at that point is a 4. So if I’ve got an 8 and a 4, and I graph it on the quadrant, you’re going to see that what’s happening is I’m in the scattered zone which means I’m not getting; which means that I need to bring more focus to my workouts or my health when I come back into play.

Or maybe it’s my relationships. Look at the relationships and say, “Yeah, I’m doing a lot of things but I’m not present. I’m not focused.”

So, all of a sudden again, I’m in the scattered zone or maybe I’m present but we’re doing enough things; I’m not doing enough things that she wants—those things that are meaningful to her. And so, maybe I’m in the hope zone, and I’m just sitting back there.

So, in every context of my life; in every context of your life—here’s what I invite you to do: Download The Success Zone Evaluator and go through and score yourself.

  • In health
  • In wealth
  • In relationships
  • In business
  • In leadership
  • You can do it in parenting
  • You can do it in any context of your life.

But I would at least do health, wealth, and relationships, and as an entrepreneur do business, and as an entrepreneur do leadership.

So those 5 zones and just score yourself and graph it out. In the downloadable tool, you have the ability to graph it. You graph it out, and you can see where you are on that graph. You’re either in one of the four zones and based on where you’re at, now it’s time to plan, take action, to change or shift so you can spend the majority of your time living in the success zone.

So, I hope that was of value to you. I hope that you’re going to find this helpful. I know for me, to keep me on track; this is a great tool, a great process to go through. Every 90 days, to take it out and go, “Hmm, well that kind of sucks, I didn’t do so well that last 90 days. Now I got to focus on it and put a process in it to focus on it.”

So, I hope again, that you’ll take this, you’ll use it; it’ll make a huge difference. If you just conservatively use this for the next year, you’ll look it back on the next year and go, “Wow”, how much your life has changed

  • Because you were intentional,
  • Because you tracked it,
  • Because you knew that each and every time, each and every day, you spent the majority of your time in the success zone.

So, download The Success Zone Evaluator. Again, you can get it at MelAbraham.com/session047. And if you’re not by your computer, you happen to be out running around, shopping, at the gym maybe, maybe you’re out, then just text. Text MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470. I’ll make sure that we get you the download link.

And if you haven’t done so already do me a favor: Subscribe. Okay? I love seeing subscribers talking to subscribers, seeing who you are, what you’re doing and seeing how I can support you so join the community; join the rest of the folks that have joined me on this journey and working for that.

And while you’re at it, share it with a friend. Send it to a friend; invite a friend to join in. Invite a friend to learn the tools that the successful are using. To learn the tools to build the dreams that you deserve to live. To learn the tools that are going to make a difference.

And so, I hope that you found this of value. If you have any questions about this, about wealth, about success, about business, about entrepreneurship, about thought leadership; whatever it is: Just got to AskMelNow.com. Leave me your message. Leave me a question there. I’ll make sure that I pick it up on one of the upcoming episodes of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show.

Until we get a chance to see each other again,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Now go make a success out of your life!!

— End Transcript —
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