The Ten Pillars of Success (eBook)

Secret Strategies of High Achievers

Josephine Perry (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Allen & Unwin (Verlag)
978-1-83895-774-2 (ISBN)

Infos

A proven, practical and motivational guide to the 10 psychological characteristics displayed by high achievers, that we can all develop in order to be more successful in life and work. 'An inspiring and practical guide, showing how we can all use our strengths to achieve success' - Dame Kelly Holmes 'A must-read for anyone interested in maximising their potential!' - Chrissie Wellington OBE Sport psychologist Dr Josephine Perry spends her life working with exceptional performers. She has identified ten psychological pillars that the ultra-successful have ingrained within their approach. And the good news is that we can all learn these mental building blocks. In this book you'll hear those who have excelled in their field discussing their route to success and learn how you can emulate them. A sense of belonging, mastery, autonomy, purpose, confidence, process, courage, optimism, internal insight or gratitude - all these skills can be vital in helping us overcome setbacks that can stand in the way of achieving our goals. From the double Olympic champion who is passionate about collaboration, to the James Bond Stuntman who has cultivated courage, to the Ironman athlete who harnessed the power of gratitude, each case study demonstrates how we can turn a pillar into a superpower. Illuminating and inspiring, The Ten Pillars of Success will give every reader a roadmap to reach their full potential.

Dr Josephine Perry is a Chartered Sport and Exercise Psychologist who founded and directs Performance in Mind, a consultancy integrating expertise in sport psychology and skills in communications to support athletes, stage performers and business leaders to develop the approaches, mental skills and strategies which will help them achieve their ambitions.

Autor

Dr Josephine Perry is a Chartered Sport and Exercise Psychologist whose purpose is to help people accomplish more than they had previously believed possible. She integrates expertise in sport psychology and communications to support athletes, stage performers and business leaders to develop the approaches, mental skills and strategies which will help them achieve their ambitions. She has published three other books to date: Performing under Pressure: Strategies for Sporting Success (Aug 2019), The Psychology of Exercise (Oct 2020) and I Can: The Teenage Athlete's Guide to Mental Fitness (April 2021).

Textauszug

Introduction

One of the first activities I do with my sport and performance psychology clients is give them a pack of fifty cards. On each card is written a value; not a numerical value, but a word – ‘ambitious’, ‘family’, ‘spirituality’, ‘courage’; the type of values we can live our lives by. Clients sort the cards into three piles: ‘not me’, ‘a little me’, ‘definitely me’. We usually end up with about twenty cards in the ‘definitely me’ pile. Then I get mean. I make them filter and filter until they have three cards left – three words which get to the core of who they are and what matters most to them. One card which is almost always in those three is… Success.

It was this realization that we all have a similar desire for success that prompted me to explore just what it is that makes us successful. Each individual client I see has their own unique way of trying to get there – their own approaches, their own background, their own environment, their own talents – but there do seem to be some psychological characteristics that many of them share.

Success is clearly something that many of us crave and yet achieving it is so difficult. To try, we often look to learn from others. We are told to surround ourselves with those we want to be like, in order for their skills and approaches to rub off on us. In doing so, we want to understand what allows those who seem successful to hit their goals. What is it that medal-winning athletes, spellbinding performers and captivating CEOs do differently? How do their minds work? And what can we learn from them, so that those of us who have yet to become exceptional can get closer to achieving our ambitions?

The truth is, though they may not realize it, these successful people do share some ingrained psychological ‘pillars’. They have, purposely or inadvertently, developed an understanding of what success looks like in their world and use the benefits which come from those pillars to move towards it. By contrast, most of us have yet to locate our version of success. The feeling is something we all crave, but if we struggle to grasp that tangible ‘what’ we want and ‘why’ we want it, how will we know when we have achieved it?

We can start by being clear on what success is not. Success is not winning. Winning might feel great for a moment or two, but such moments are fleeting and don’t help us feel satisfied when we are looking back or give us a sense of wellbeing. The idea of winning is divisive, implying that there is a loser, but there doesn’t always have to be. Take driving tests for example. Our ego feels good if we pass first time when others haven’t – but, surely, we all do better when more people pass and the roads become safer.

Winning is also problematic because so much of what we achieve in life depends on the cards we are dealt; we do not all start out on a level playing field. Even when we do win it is often down to luck, such as picking the right lottery numbers, and, even in that, case studies have found that winners are often no happier a year after their jackpot. We need to stop obsessing about results, and concentrate less on winning and more on making long-term positive impacts.

As a Chartered Sport Psychologist I have worked with children as young as eight up to athletes in their eighties and I combine skills in sport psychology with a background in communications to support athletes, stage performers and business leaders in developing the approaches, mental skills and strategies that will help them achieve their ambitions. In all the work I do with these high-achieving performers, whether it is in the dressing room with athletes, the green room with actors, the court room with lawyers or the boardroom with CEOs, those who have risen highest and feel happiest understand that success is about much more than just winning – in fact, it is rarely the win itself that matters, but why they wanted to win. What does it mean to them? Where does that win take them? Notable athletes want to be brilliant at what they do; winning is a great side effect.

If success does involve any sort of winning, it is winning at being the best version of who you are. This is not about being macho and mentally tough – those are outdated and harmful concepts. Rather, it is about being flexible and authentic, shaping who you already are into the ideal version of yourself and giving yourself the best possible chance of making your ‘why’ happen. Success – and this book – is about finding who you are, rather than who you or anyone else thinks you should be. After all, what would be the point in finding that you are successful, only to realize that it is someone else’s version of success that you are living?

Following our own version of success is not easy. True success is rarely measured in terms of who was first across the line or how much money was made. Instead, we need to measure what matters and create meaningful metrics that resonate with our own values. This is within our control, but it takes work to learn to focus on the endeavour and the effort, rather than the triumph and the trophy.

In The Ten Pillars of Success, we will journey through the principles of success. By the end of this book, you will understand what will give you the best possible chance of attaining whatever goal you set yourself. You will be supported through the use of cutting-edge evidence in the fields of psychology, education and medicine.

These pillars are not innate personality traits. Some of us may be lucky enough to be born with one or more, but anyone can learn them. And when we have all ten, we possess the building blocks that help to shape and maintain a successful life. Academic studies have shown that these positive psychological interventions foster not only potential outward success, but also inner well-being. All the evidence suggests that possessing these ten pillars will lead to a happier, healthier and more successful life.

So what are the ten pillars and why do we need to focus on them?

• Belonging, mastery and autonomy: together, these create the sense of self-determination that is needed to be motivated to stretch ourselves.

• Purpose: without this, we don’t know where we are heading.

• Confidence: even with strong motivation and a destination, it is confidence which gets us to the starting point.

• Process: when we set out to achieve something, the outcome provides the motivation but it is the processes which facilitate it. These need to be kept front of mind.

• Courage, optimism and a large amount of internal insight: to keep ourselves focused on the process and not the outcome.

• Gratitude: without appreciating who and what we have in our lives, we will never make a true success of them. Though this is the final pillar, it is arguably the most important.

In each chapter we will consider the evidence for a pillar’s inclusion, highlighting its benefits and telling the stories of those who have used it. In examining how each pillar is incorporated by various high achievers, we will learn how we might use that pillar ourselves. It is the success stories that bring each chapter to life, following those who utilized a pillar until it became integral to their approach. Whether it brings a sense of belonging, mastery, autonomy, purpose, confidence, process, courage, optimism, internal insight or gratitude, each pillar has been fundamental in helping them to overcome setbacks to succeed.

We will learn about the importance of collaboration from a double Olympic champion. An award-winning actress will tell us how she became successful by tenaciously developing her mastery. An endurance adventurer will reveal that his world record attempts have been successful because he thrives on the sense of autonomy that his challenges offer.

We will meet an ultra-runner who uses strategically placed acorns to fuel his achievements and remind him of his purpose, and a paracanoeist who cultivated her own style of confidence and has achieved multiple world and Paralympic titles. A poker player will explain how understanding the process-driven nature of his game led him to success in Vegas, and a movie stuntman will share how he used the courage required for death-defying manoeuvres to recover from what might have been career-ending surgery.

We will also meet a choreographer and director whose optimism encouraged him to step up to challenges rather than remain hidden in the wings, and a comedian who used her internal insight to find the perfect career. Finally, we will learn about the importance of gratitude from an oncologist and Ironman athlete who achieved a top-ten finish at the World Championships only eight weeks after breaking her collarbone. In each of our success stories, their pillar has become their superpower.

This book first came out as an audiobook. Listeners got in touch to ask for a physical copy because they wanted to be able to take notes and underline key messages; they wanted guidance on how to do some of the techniques discussed. As a result, The Ten Pillars of Success has been updated and a toolkit has been added to the end of each chapter, so you can access some of the tools in a much more visual way....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.8.2022
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Bewerbung / Karriere
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Psychologie
• Schlagworte: josephine perry • Matthew Syed • Personal development • Self-Help • Sports psychology • Steve Peters • Success
• ISBN-10: 1-83895-774-X / 183895774X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-83895-774-2 / 9781838957742