5 Steps To Living Your D.R.E.A.M.s

The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams – Oprah Winfrey

 

Last month I had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Levy. Matt refers to himself as a motivational speaker, coach, and author. I just call him The Peak Performance Guru. I have known Matt for nearly two decades from back in the day when I was a recruiter in the pharmaceutical industry and Matt was in HR at one of the top big pharma companies.

Our relationship changed about ten years ago when I began networking to evolve from a headhunter into an executive coach. Matt opened up his rolodex to me and put me in touch with some of the top minds in the coaching arena. Those conversations led me to pursue coaching and get several different certifications to become the best I could be.

My coaching led to my passion for workforce analytics, bringing all of my experience in recruiting and coaching full circle as a Certified Workplace Behavioral Analyst. I currently have over 10,000 hours invested in this field, so according to Malcolm Gladwell, I must be a Workplace Behavior Expert by now… ;)

What also came full circle was Matt evolving all of his experience into becoming the Peak Performance expert that he is today. We sat down for a conversation to chat about people living their D.R.E.A.M.s…

 

Nast: How did you get into the peak performance business?

Levy: The opening line of one of my keynote speeches is, “How many people have had a near-death experience?” The audience sits up and pays attention! I ask them as an entrée into a personal story.  See, Dave, I had a literal near-death experience in 2014 (diagnosed with Burkitt’s Lymphoma, the most aggressive of all cancers and was given 90 days to live…and glad to have proved the doctors wrong!).

Like many people who have a near-death experience, it changed my outlook forever, and that outlook now fuels my coaching, speaking and training business, Matthew Levy Enterprises.

While I was ill, I thought a lot about what I missed out on in life and in my career. I procrastinated too much, I spent too long paralyzed by the fear of failure and I struggled when faced with adversity.

 

Nast: What is your background?

Levy: I had built a career working in HR for Fortune 500 companies, and I knew how many professionals whose careers had decelerated, who were going through the motions, how many of them were checking the box and mailing it in… For them, life was just days on a calendar ticking by one after the other after the other.

When I was dying, I thought to myself, if I make it through this alive, I am going to embrace and push through my fear, deal with adversity head on and pursue my dreams.

I decided right then and there to dedicate my work to inspiring, motivating and coaching executives to achieve big goals in their work and in their lives, to be fully engaged in the way they serve others and generate success for themselves.  

 

Nast: There is no doubt that employee engagement levels could be higher. Do you have any suggestions for how leaders and individual contributors can address disengagement?

Levy: Yes, I teach the D.R.E.A.M. Action Planning process. The D stands for Devotion. Then we have Resolve, Energy, Attitude and Mastery.

 

Nast: Interesting – can you explain more?

Levy: Sure, Dave. Here’s a brief overview of the five-step process.

D - Devoted to something bigger than yourself

When you determine your unique calling (and don’t tell me you don’t have a calling because we all have one; you just may not have discovered it yet) things in life and work just click and you build immense amounts of resiliency to bounce back from adversity.

Examples: “My grandmother died of breast cancer; I want to develop a cure.” “I have diabetes; I want to start a non-profit for children with diabetes.” “People are isolated, and I want them to be better connected. I’m going to create a new networking organization.” “A friend helped me through a troubled time; I am going to write a book to help others through their tough times.”

Figuring out what is most important to you can take some work! You may think that a calling is determined as a child, or from a one-time bolt of lightning. But that usually isn’t the case. Normally you have a clue – maybe even lurking in the pages of your favorite children’s book - but like a spark, it takes time and the right conditions to fan that spark into a raging fire.

R- Resolute goal setting

Resolute means unwavering. You need to set specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable and time bound goals. Vague goals do you no good. Specific goals hold you accountable. 

In fact, you are 42% more likely to attain a goal by writing it down. The majority of us have vague goals in our heads but nothing concrete on paper. It’s no wonder that so many people have big things that you want to accomplish “one day” but then “one day” never seems to arrive. There are seven days in a week and someday isn’t one of them!

A research study was done to examine the importance of goal setting. The study showed that people were THREE times more likely to exercise when they wrote down where, when and how they would exercise. 

What is the bottom line? What pulls the desire out of you isn’t your level of motivation; it’s your plan for implementation!

E - Maximize your Energy

What are the people, places and things that give you energy? And importantly, who are the people, places and things that drain us of energy? In order to accomplish big goals, you need to have water in your cup to fill up someone else’s cup. But if your cup is empty, you have nothing to give. 

Energy drainers are constantly sapping your vital and limited energy. You need to be aware of this concept and create a plan for limiting if not removing these people, places and things. You need to be intentional about this. 

Other factors contribute to your energy levels. Are you injecting any fun and playfulness in your life? It’s so easy to become a “hamster on a wheel” day after day working hard in life but not feeling like you are getting anywhere. Being purposeful about fun and play can be rejuvenating. 

Do you wake up every day feeling rested and ready to go? The statistics suggest that isn’t likely. You are probably sleep deprived. You may have subscribed to the old adage that “sleep is overrated” but this myth has been debunked many times over. You have to re-prioritize to get the rest you need to be effective.

A - Evaluate and adjust your Attitude

Everyday can feel like an uphill battle. Our attitude gets tested. Adversity mounts. Things don’t go as planned. Your attitude either propels you forward or drives you backwards when faced with headwinds in life. 

As Victor Frankl, the famed neurologist and psychiatrist and concentration camp inmate, once said, there is a space between stimulus and response. The key to life is what you do with that space. Do you accept the stimulus and deal with it? Or do you reject it and feel like a victim?

M - Mastery; adopt a virtuoso mindset

A virtuoso is many times associated with the best musicians in the world. They are known for relentless practice. The good news is that in most facets of life, you don’t have to practice for 10,000 hours to master something. 

In fact, Brian Tracy famously stated that “you read one book per week, 50 books per year, that will make you one of the best educated, smartest, most capable and highest paid people in your field.” You need to apply a virtuoso mindset not only to technical skills but also to so called soft skills such as interpersonal skills, influencing skills, communication skills and writing skills to name a few.

Dave, there you have it. If readers start to focus on these five steps, they will be able to achieve anything. 

 Nast: This really is a simple and easy to follow framework but it can’t be that easy, can it?

Levy: Dave, no way, you are correct, it isn’t that easy. If things in life were as easy as reading an article, we would all be billionaires and have abs of steel, true?!

 

Nast: So, what do you recommend?

Levy: Dave, we all need further support. No one can do everything themselves. Whether it is a friend, a mentor, an advisor or a coach, we all need someone that can see things we can’t see ourselves, who will push us out of our comfort zone and who won’t buy into our self-doubts and limiting beliefs.

In addition, I have a bunch of free resources that can help those who want to do some more self-study including a blog, podcast, toolkit, worksheets and a virtual instructor led webinar. I also offer group coaching for those who like learning in a peer network environment. If your readers like inspirational quotes as much as I do, I encourage them to sign up to receive one hand-selected quote from me each Monday morning.

 

Nast: Great stuff. I am sure our readers will benefit from your content. Do you have anything else in the works?

Levy: Dave, thanks for asking. Yes, I’m working on a new body of work centered around “11 Personal Leadership Lessons Learned from a Near Death Experience.” More to come soon…

 

Nast: Alright, sounds intriguing for sure. Thanks, Matt, for joining us and sharing some of your ideas. 

About Matt Levy:

Matthew Levy, principal of Matthew Levy Enterprises, LLC, helps organizations increase employee engagement and retention of their emerging leaders and helps other high achievers reach big goals in life and work through speaking, training and coaching using his trademarked D.R.E.A.M.? Action Plan. Prior to founding MLE, Matt was a senior HR leader at Johnson & Johnson, Amgen and Merck. Join Matt’s Courage Connection mailing list today! You can also find Matt at MatthewLevy.me, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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About the Author:

David B. Nast owns Nast Partners based in the Greater Philadelphia area. He is a Certified Workplace Behavioral Analyst and an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach and a with over 25 years of experience in Human Capital Management, Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Talent Management, Training, Career Management, and Executive Search. He has coached thousands of CEOs, Business Owners and Executives.

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