What’s in it for me? Achieve your goals and realize your full potential with a simple framework.
How do some people lead inspiring, meaningful, and impactful lives while many others don’t?
One man’s obsession with this question has led him on a personal journey from injured pro athlete to sought-after business coach, public speaker, and podcast host.
In setting out to discover what, exactly, those who are living their purpose say about their own experiences, author Lewis Howes developed a straightforward and practical framework for living a life of purpose and meaning.
This blink explores practical advice and inspiring motivation from those who achieved greatness in pursuing their life’s goals and inspiring others.
If you’re eager to do the same, read on.
Greatness 101: living with purpose
While greatness might be associated most often with conquerors and kings, what it means to be great isn’t one-size-fits-all.
The definition of greatness will be different for everyone, in fact, because there’s so many different things in this world to be great at, and so many ways to be great at them.
But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t common ground, and common habits, among individuals that achieve greatness across all spheres of life.
What makes someone a great parent, leader, artist, athlete, or spouse, is not about achieving some external benchmark.
Greatness is about living up to your own ideals, accomplishing your personal goals, and fulfilling your own life’s purpose.
It's about living your full potential, and doing it with the mindful awareness that brings your full presence to the journey along the way.
So the first step on the road to greatness is an inward one: cultivating the vision for what living your full potential might look like.
This isn’t the familiar question, “What do you want to do with your life?
” It’s deeper than that.
To achieve greatness you have to ask yourself who you dream of being, what it is that you are passionate about, how you want to live, and what legacy you’d like to leave behind when your life’s journey ends.
And while vision starts with a dream, it doesn’t end there.
What makes a vision powerful is when it's coupled with an actual plan.
So, cultivating your own vision has to be as specific, and personal, as possible.
A great way to get clear on what living your full potential might look like is to start by imagining one perfect day.
How would you start your day, if you were living your dream?
Would you begin spending time with your loved ones?
In meditation?
Perhaps exercising for physical health, or grounding yourself in nature?
Your ideal day might include honing your craft, growing your business or motivating others through your leadership.
Writing out an ideal schedule can give you important insight into your priorities and how you want to spend your time.
Be sure to include details like how many hours you spend on work, on hobbies or interests, and connecting with friends and family.
These are important clues to what you truly value, and how you’d like to spend your most valuable resource: your time.
Holding this vision firmly in mind, it's time to tackle the obstacles.
Fundamentals of Greatness: overcoming obstacles with a champion’s mindset
When you’ve imagined your ideal day, and let it guide you toward your vision for how you’d like to live, write it down as specifically as you can.
Formulate it into a single sentence, in fact, and create a certificate of achievement for yourself as if you’ve already accomplished it.
For instance, it might read a “distinguished professor of literature” or “New York Times best-selling author,” as you start your English major.
Or perhaps “Entrepreneur of the Decade,” as you formulate your business plan.
Maybe it says “multi-platinum recording artist” and hangs in your practice room.
Whatever your goal, aiming high is the point – because no one achieves greatness without it.
It might seem like there are a thousand obstacles standing between where you are right now, and what it says on that certificate.
So it's good to understand that no one achieves greatness without overcoming obstacles.
In fact, those who have left the most inspiring legacies have often overcome the most.
That’s because greatness isn’t just about talent and vision, it’s about cultivating the character that can overcome adversity.
The difference between those who succeed despite the obstacles, and those who don’t, comes down to action.
Champions break down the brick wall that blocks them from their dream brick by brick, until they can move forward.
Take Kyle Maynard, an inspiring athlete who, by the age of just 30, had been a championship wrestler, weight lifter, mixed martial artist, and mountain climber who scaled Mount Kilimanjaro.
Each of these goals might seem lofty on their own, however in Kyle’s case, they are all the more astonishing when one considers the obstacles he had to overcome.
That’s because Kyle was born with congenital limb amputations from a rare birth defect.
His arms and legs couldn’t grow normally due to blood clots when Kyle was developing, and so they never grew.
Kyle stands at just three feet, eight inches tall — and had to climb Kilimanjaro on his elbows.
When he was young, he cried every night thinking he’d never be able to get a job, or live on his own.
His life felt over before it started.
But Kyle intuitively understood that his attitude wasn’t sustainable.
He joined the football team, and at just eleven years old made his first tackle.
Something inside him recognized at this moment that anything was possible.
Instead of wishing that his circumstances were different, he was acting.
And with every action he took the obstacles in front of him began to dissolve.
So a champion’s mindset turns adversity into challenges to be overcome, and takes them on one by one.
A champion recognizes that the biggest obstacles are often internal – the self talk that says “I can’t” before you even begin.
A champion answers that negative voice with positivity and action, and each action carries them further toward their goals.
Advanced Greatness: Pulling out all the stops
With your vision defined and your champion’s mindset, it’s time to set a course of action.
No matter where you are along the journey to your goal, two things will help you go further, faster.
The first is cultivating a sense of urgency, sometimes called hustle, to pursue your goals with energy and focus.
The second is developing the daily habits that will assure progress every single day.
Remember, though, that a sense of urgency isn’t about feeling anxious – it’s about pursuing every opportunity that comes your way, and creating opportunities when none arise on their own.
Consider the example of Christian Howes, the jazz violinist and Berklee College Associate Professor who was named the top rising star in jazz violin by DownBeat Magazine’s “Critics’ Poll” in 2011.
Decades before, as a young college student open to experimenting with drugs, he wound up getting caught and sent to prison.
Instead of spending his sentence resentful at his bad luck, or angry at the system, when Christian was released early for good behavior he immediately began to hustle.
To get his music career off the ground, he spent every day networking, hustling for gigs, and even playing for free whenever and wherever anyone would let him.
At his performances he eagerly chatted up the audience, promoted his recordings, and hustled for more business.
He turned that feeling of having lost time in prison into the energetic zeal that drove him forward to create a career for himself.
Now he teaches others how to hustle for their musical careers as a university professor and on YouTube.
A key to cultivating urgency without anxiety is breaking things down into a daily routine that takes the guesswork out of achieving your goals.
If you’re pursuing a musical career like Christian, for instance, your daily schedule might include practicing your instrument, exercising to keep your body strong, devoting time to networking, sending press kits or demo recordings, hitting up venues, or going to gigs.
Whatever your goal, create a routine of daily habits that break down the obstacles in front of you through consistent, focused attention.
If you strive for greatness in your family life, it might mean dedicating daily meal times to family check-ins, and setting aside hours to have fun together or enjoy hobbies on the weekends.
If your vision is entrepreneurial, investing time each day to networking with professional groups or business connections can make all the difference.
The important thing is to keep at it each day, each week, each month – focusing your champion’s mindset in taking on those habits so you can love the hustle and dedication for what it delivers: results.
Mastering Greatness: Building and serving
Think back to Kyle Maynard, the mountain-climber and accomplished athlete from an earlier chapter.
He overcame severe physical challenges on the road to becoming a champion athlete, and has another excellent lesson to impart.
That’s because when Kyle launched his climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, he didn’t do it for himself – he did it to raise money for the wounded veterans he greatly admired.
His climb was followed by ESPN, and won media awards, because he was climbing for an inspirational cause.
And that cause carried him forward when things seemed impossible.
So before the daily habits feel stale, it’s good to connect your vision with something bigger than yourself.
If business is your passion, for instance, consider how you might advance others along their journey.
If writing, design, or media is your passion, supporting causes you believe in through your art can be a rewarding first rung on the ladder of success.
The key is to let your passion for something greater than yourself give you the motivation to continue when things get tough.
Gratitude can be a powerful antidote to despair, so focusing on the good you can do at any moment will keep your spirits up and help you feel less alone in the struggle.
Not feeling alone is more important than you think, too.
For no one achieves greatness alone.
Everyone needs a team to succeed, and building your own supportive tribe is a vital step in your journey.
What keeps a hustle from becoming a grind?
It’s the friends you make along the way.
That’s not just an old chestnut, it’s actually life-changing wisdom.
Surrounding yourself with greatness is vital for sustaining your efforts in the long-term.
Making yourself accountable to others, like coaches, mentors and peers, and openly sharing your goals and process not only inspires others, but keeps your own journey on track.
So if writing that first novel feels like climbing a mountain, joining a writing group will not only get you going, it will inspire you, encourage you, and provide a ready-made supportive community to keep you motivated.
Surrounding yourself with greatness is part of building your dream team: creating an inner circle of allies who support you and your success.
So taking an inventory of your relationships, examining who leaves you feeling energized, and who leaves you drained or frustrated, can be vital.
Fostering those relationships that energize you, and letting go of the ones that don’t, fosters an environment of achievement around you.
The Genius of Greatness: Vulnerability and connection
One that makes success feel inevitable.
While vulnerability may not be the first thing that springs to mind when you consider greatness, it's actually a secret strength in the lives of many who have achieved it.
Keeping a kind of beginner’s mind in the presence of greatness means staying open to learning from the experience of others.
Since the road to greatness is a marathon, not a sprint, it will require adjustments and changes along the way.
Staying open helps you respond faster and more flexibly.
That’s because ego can be a roadblock on the journey to success.
Getting too invested in one way of doing things, or insisting that your way is the only way, can lead to a fall.
When author Lewis Howes began The School of Greatness podcast, he had already faced a number of failures along the road to success, and felt pretty confident in himself.
Then one day he faced a conflict on the court during a pickup basketball game, and he lost it – he met violence with violence in a rageful outburst.
Instead of burying these difficult feelings, he chose to face them.
He turned his telescope inward, as it were, to find the roots of his violent reaction.
He shared the story with his brother, and realized that he had unresolved childhood trauma from a sexual assault by a babysitter.
His feelings of being dehumanized on the basketball court had been a powerful trigger, and revealed something he’d suppressed.
Though it was difficult, he embraced the emotions he felt and processed them.
Suddenly feedback from his podcast audience was complimenting his openness and presence during interviews with his guests.
Embracing his vulnerability had helped him connect more deeply with others, and it was a breakthrough for his show.
Ultimately, he took the extraordinary step of sharing this experience with his podcast audience, hoping it might help others feel empowered to do the same.
Instead of public shame at the revelation, he was met with an overwhelming outpouring of love and support.
It was a powerful lesson about the debilitating effects of shame, and how ditching your ego and embracing vulnerability can actually advance your success.
There’s no shame, no matter what rung of the success ladder you’re on, either.
What’s important is that you're climbing.
So, embracing vulnerability can help you connect more deeply with others along their own journey to greatness, and foster the strong relationships you need to succeed.
It has another benefit, too: it inspires others to be vulnerable and open, and connect more deeply, too.
Meaning person by person, it fosters a more compassionate, connected world.
Truly, a great result by any measure.
Final Summary
Achieving greatness means living your full potential with presence and passion.
This requires both a clear vision and a plan toward specific goals.
But by embracing your adversities as challenges, tackling them through daily habits with a champion's mindset, building a supportive community around you and connecting with causes greater than yourself, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.
Embracing your vulnerability and staying open to change will make every step of the journey feel worthwhile, too.