Individuality & Success

Have you ever felt stuck doing something that you don’t enjoy doing; doing something just for the sake of paying your bills; doing something that you are trained to do but not passionate about; and living a life your parents, friends and society wants you to live, doing something where you either don’t know how much impact you are creating in the world or you are creating no impact at all? Have you ever felt that there is a side of you that is hidden away from the world, a side that is suffocating inside you because you don’t know how to express that side of yours or you are afraid of what others will think if they found out about that? If yes, then this article is for you. In this article I am going to share a 4-Step method that is a distillation of studying the most successful professionals in various domains. This method summarizes the relationship between your individuality and your success.

We all know the process of a seed sprouting into a sapling to finally become a full-blown tree. Say, you sowed an apple & a mango seed. You took care of them and in a few years, you have trees with fruits.

Both seeds have access to the same soil and minerals, the same water & wind, the same sunlight and the exact same environment. Then what made one an apple tree and the other one a mango tree? The obvious answer is, the seeds. And you are right, it is because of the seed and what the seeds contain within. The seed has within it what I call – POTENTIAL.

Potential of what? Potential to become a full-blown mango or apple tree. This potential is not about being one more apple or mango tree, but to become the best apple or mango tree it can become. And the potential is not one tree, the actual potential is one apple / mango tree which can turn into hundreds of trees which then can turn into thousands and millions of trees over time. So, can we agree that the potential hidden within a seed is virtually unlimited?

My view is, maybe we can call the potential within each seed unlimited, but each of these seeds has a restriction. The restriction is that an apple seed can only become an apple tree and a mango seed can only become a mango tree.

The twist with us humans is that, each one of us is like a seed and we all have the same POTENTIAL within us. But our POTENTIAL is literally limitless, infinite, because unlike the seeds, we have an option to choose, to decide, what we want to become. And that makes all the difference. The key lesson here is, people keep blaming the environment for their failures, for what they couldn’t achieve, whereas the fact is,

what we can become as an individual is mostly dependent on our Potential, Passion, Practice and Expression.

Twins coming out of the same womb, raised in the same family, going to the same school and college still become two individuals with their unique personalities. Hundreds of people reading a bestselling book will interpret it in hundred different ways. And 60 students going through the same course, taught by the same professor will not have the exact same outcome.

The point is,

we have unlimited potential within us and each one of us is unique. So, even though the world might seem crowded, the world still needs us to express our individuality. This is the way to your success.

Let us discuss a few scenarios.

First scenario - say you have a script, and you are given access to a very successful director and a team to make multiple versions of the same movie with all the funding. And you are asked to do the same movie with four different actors – let’s say Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Al Pacino, and Bradley Cooper. Do you think it will be the exact same outcome with each of these actors?

Second scenario - let’s say we have four batsmen – Virender Shehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, and Rahul Dravid. Do you think if we give them the same ball, bowled by the same bowler with same exact speed and length it would produce the exact same result?

Third scenario - let’s say you are planning an event and you want to hire a keynote speaker to deliver a keynote on Individuality and Success. You reached out to Tony Robins, Robins Sharma, Ed Mylett, Simon Sinek and me ?? Do you think each of these will deliver the exact same Keynote?

Allow me now to help you understand the relationship between individuality and success using the three examples we just discussed.

Step 1 - Potential

Each case starts with a complete and unshakable faith in yourself –

“I have the POTENTIAL to achieve anything I set my mind to”.  

Step 2 – Passion

Once you believe in your potential, the next question is about clarity of passion – what do you want to do, or what do you love to do? What is that one thing that makes you happy, joyful and fulfilled? What is that one thing you could do till the day you die even though you are not getting paid. In the first example including Amitabh, Shahrukh, Al Pacino & Bradley Cooper, each of them chose to be actors. In the second example including Shehwag, Sachin, Virat & Dravid, each of them chose to become cricketers and in the final example including Tony, Robin Sharma, Ed, Simon and me, we all chose to be coaches and keynote speakers. So, ask yourself – what you are passionate about, what you want to do?

Step 3 – Practice

Once you have found your passion, the next step is practicing & perfecting your passion as a skill. We know Amitabh, Shahrukh, Pacino & Bradley each have practiced & perfected their trade over decades. Shehwag, Sachin, Virat & Dravid have all gone through years of training to master their trade. And in the same way Tony, Robin, Ed, Simon & me have spent years in mastering and perfecting our skills. The key differentiator here is the hunger / desire to do more of it, over the years, again and again, failing at it and continuously learning and improving yourself to become the absolute best, the world class at your craft.

And one of the best ways to become a master in your trade, is to identify those who have already become successful in your trade and then replicate their model. If possible, get them to mentor you. Alternatively, find a Coach who has been studying your trade, the success stories in your trade and have distilled all that wisdom into simple, practical, effective models and frameworks that help you reproduce similar success.

e.g. if you are a salesman working in a company and you make 50K/month as salary. You set a goal to make five times that money in a year. There are two options available to you. First, work hard and learn more about your job, give your best and grow traditionally. This way you will achieve your goal but, it might take you 6-8 years to grow 5 times. Alternatively, you can find out a person inside your company or your industry who is making 5 times or 10 times your money and ask him to mentor you. This way you can learn from their mistakes, their experience and achieve your goals much sooner, may be within 2-3 years.

Ste p 4 – Express Your Individuality

Starting with believing in your potential, finding your passion, practicing & perfecting your craft, leads to the last step, which is to Express your individuality, in a way that inspires and transforms others and makes the world a better place.

Now it is time to ask yourself,

• Do you completely believe that you have the potential to achieve anything you set your mind to?
• Have you found your Passion?
• Have you Practiced & perfected your craft and are you still hungry to do more of it?
• Finally, have you started expressing yourself to the world?

Let me end this article with this quote from Mark Twain,

Till next time, Take Care & Be Limitless.