When you come to a point of time in your life, when you feel that it is time for you to take that big step forward and you muster the courage to start your journey,  you need to be clear and decide what it is specifically that you want for your life.

It may be a personal journey with another person you want to spend your life with. Or perhaps deciding to get an education that will provide opportunities for your future work and career. Or it may be a dream or an aspiration to start your own business.

Once you reach this point, you are stepping onto your path, your journey to FULFILLMENT.

It may mean that your whole life will change and it is certainly going to be one of your life-defining events. My own personal experience is that the experience you learn and gain on your journey, step-by-step, is shaping you to what you will become. The big picture of life is more about what you become.  This is, in and of itself, very fulfilling.

When I was young I decided that I wanted to go and live in another country, which I believed was a land of milk and honey, and where I could have a more fulfilling life than in my mother country. I arrived with $20, my entire wealth.  I bought my first business at 20 years old, my first apartment house at 21 years old and rented beds.  I had two businesses and three houses by the time I was 24 years old.

As the years have rolled by, and I accomplish many things, life is more about what I have become, in my desire to help many people to have a better quality of life, than about what I have achieved.  I often wonder how this 18-year-old youth from humble beginnings did what he did as I look back.

I feel more fulfilled about those early achievements, than the bigger and better things, I accomplished in later life.

On life’s path there are many obstacles, ups and downs, sharp bends in the road, new things to challenge and a lot of hard work.  For me, they have brought tremendous fulfillment, as I have challenged myself to be the best I can be, with a daily mantra of ‘I’m going to do it better today, than I did it yesterday.'

How about you?  Are you ready to start your journey, step on your path?

Maybe you are already on your way?  Hang in there, don’t give up.  ‘Every day, in every way, you are getting better, better and better.’

With experience eventually comes wisdom. Believe in yourself, and my warmest wishes for you to have a fulfilling life.

One of the great diseases of mankind is loneliness.

I meet many people, whose life is empty, with some few acquaintances, often from work and some family members, who they cannot really communicate with.  It seems these people are in many cases, doomed to not much joy or love in their lives.

Some tips for overcoming loneliness, a subject many of us FEAR, yet is not much talked about.

It is most important to take small steps to meet people and make social contact.  This maybe scary, but you can do it.  Don’t focus on just one person in the beginning.

I talk to the cashiers at the supermarket checkout and with people in the store.  Ask questions, be curious, if you ask a question, you usually get an answer.  If you have a hobby, walking, movies, reading books, join a class for beginners.  Meeting new people is part of our learning.  So get involved with other people, they may be shy like you.  Step out of isolation.  Get to know yourself better, learn to love yourself, you are really a nice person and talk to yourself in the mirror.  Say I love you and your name.  Do this for 30 days and there will be a new, brighter you.
In the business world, life at the top can also be lonely and a reason people do not want the top job.

This is why the advent of the business coach has become popular.  (I personally have difficulty in understanding, how people who have nil or limited business experience, or who have never had leadership experience, can call themselves business coaches, but they do.)

These business coaches, can give an unbiased opinion and they are not emotionally involved in the day to day activities.
They need to be trusted.

CEO’s need to be focused on the organization’s vision, the big picture of future possibilities, they need to focus on the future, because that is where they will spend their lives, in time to come.  That is why the decisions they make ‘NOW’ will impact that future.  That is why CEO and organizations need to know where they are going.  CEO’s need to set the course and steer the ship to it’s planned destination.

Like the captain of a ship, another lonely job.  A great way for CEO’s to overcome loneliness is to develop an aligned team.
T    =    Together
E    =    Everyone
A    =    Achieves
M    =    More

Aligned, means everyone is going in the same direction, they speak a common language.

They work and have developed an environment of cooperation.  The organization is flexible in its behavior and not rigid.

They all know where the business is going.

These dynamics create TRUST and this dissipates the loneliness.

So don’t be a lonely leader, be like the person who develops the above organization.
You will have fun, a great deal of satisfaction and achieve some outstanding results.

Brian Martin is a former CEO of Levi’s Asia and Triumph International.

Fear doesn’t have to matter anymore, if we have a purpose a reason for our life, a reason for doing something.  

Over the years in organizations, I have seen again and again people not understanding what the purpose is of the task they are involved in.  People go to endless meetings and don’t even know why they are there.  

I encourage you to develop the practice of having a purpose, a reason for what it is you are doing.  This will considerably increase your confidence and directly it’s a stepping stone towards you achieving the outcomes for your success.  Remember each step you take, will move you closer to your dream, aspiration, vision.

We all want to be the best that we can, we all want to do a good job, we all want to please our boss, and we all want recognition.  If we know what we are doing, and why we are doing it, it gives our work and our life meaning and substance and propels us towards our outcomes.

Purpose and Outcomes:

When we define our purpose, our reason for whatever it is we are doing, we build our self confidence.  

We also need to be clear about the outcome, the results that we want to create.  This is linked into intention, because our intentions are a powerful force that comes from within.  

Just by declaring ‘my intention is …’ helps you to get clear about what it is you want and increases your self confidence.  

If you know your outcome, what your intention is to achieve, with each step your vision, aspiration, dream becomes clearer.  With each step you take towards success, you can feel it, you can smell it, and you get hungry to have it.  This is where loving what you do and doing what you love, starts to kick in and give you power that drives you forward.

To Know Success, You Have To Know Failure

Along your path to success, remember that every failure, adversity and unpleasant experiences are often a blessing in disguise.

One of the most powerful sayings that I have heard and one that has helped me so many times, when I have slipped and fallen is ‘God’s way of giving you a gift, is wrapped inside a problem’ I have come to believe this and it makes me more resolute in recognizing that, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’!

I am sure you have heard the story of Thomas Edison and his 10,000 attempts to make the light bulb.  There is a similar story about Henry Ford, he would not give in and sent his engineers repeatedly back to the workshop again and again and again.  Through his commitment, to the making of the motor car and his recognizing that to fail, was an opportunity in disguise, we owe the first motor car to his ‘never give up’ attitude.  Both of these men had much in common, as do today’s entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in spite of his immense wealth, as one of the richest people in the world, still lives moderately and chooses to give billions of dollars of his fortune, away to those less fortunate.

I was delighted to see him interviewed on CNN, where he said he dances to work.

You can see that in enrolling people to help you reach your destination, you yourself are the limiting factor. It’s your ability that counts, your ability to formulate and articulate a compelling vision, your ability to enrol others to assist, and your ability to lead others to accomplish the outcomes you want. Nobody else can do that for you – it’s your responsibility, and it’s your opportunity!

After several decades of working in corporations and devoting a large part of my life to teaching leadership, I think the most important attribute a leader has to have is ‘authenticity’. If you are not authentic, then you will easily be discovered and found out, by your employees, your customers, the people you interact with in your life. As the world becomes more and more complex, genuineness (genuineness is more and more difficult to find) being yourself I believe is really important.

Over the years, as I have grown and developed there would have been times in my earlier days, when I was full of my own self-importance, both for the job I had and the compensation packages I was able to earn in my various positions.

Fortunately, I have a great love for people which I think has stood me in good stead. The other point that I realised early in my career, was that if I was to be a good and authentic leader, then I needed to serve other people and make them successful. In fact as a CEO I passionately believed that my responsibility was to help my employees, particularly the managers who reported to me, to be successful. Because if they were successful, then guess what? So was I.

In this blog I want to talk again about success. How to make the jobs that you're running successful, and these are what I call the “4E’s”. If you have these 4 E’s” then the ultimate chance of you being successful is guaranteed.

As we go through this exercise, ask yourself the following questions does my project have these 4 E’s?

Energized

The leaders, the managers, the employees need to be energized.
 
Energizing Others

Are we energizing our employees, our customers, our suppliers, our workmates?

Edge

Do we have the ability to give “yes” “no” answers to make decisions? Trillions of dollars are lost in the US through indecision, procrastination. Is this happening in your organization? Is this happening in your project team? It is better to make the wrong decision, than have no decision at all. Nobody feels their mistake like the person who makes it, and they will quickly put it right once they realize they have made a mistake.
 
Execute

Deliver your results on time. Deliver against the plan.

“ Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire”