#045 Eight Steps to Conscious Success

Join me for the first episode of the Leading Beings Podcast since I went on Maternity Leave in 2021.

In this episode I dive into the concept of Conscious Success which I originally wrote about in this blog post https://www.leadingbeings.com/blog/conscious-success.  But more specifically I outline the eight steps you can take in create conscious success for yourself.

1. Understand what influences your idea of success
2. Unpack unhelpful beliefs and programming
3. Understand what’s really important - Values, meaning, purpose
4. Align your action to what’s important
5. Consider the impact of your action
6. Consider your progress holistically
7. Reduce negative and increase positive impacts
8. Enjoy the moment & the journey

Transcript

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[00:00:00] I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I record this podcast. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I'd also like to acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. This was, and always will be Aboriginal land. 

Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the Leading Beings podcast. I am saying welcome back. It's really kind of a welcome back to me because I've been on maternity leave. I had my first little guy, my only little guy in December of last year. And yeah, just getting back into the swing of things now.

[00:01:35] It's been really great. Getting to know my little human and having some time with him, but also just so excited to now be getting back into work back into the podcast, back into coaching and I'm so re-energized and ready to, I don't know, just do all the things. So if you haven't been here before and have not tuned into the Leading Beings podcast, then welcome. It's so lovely to have you here. 

[00:02:03] And if you are tuning back in again, thank you so much. I'm so grateful to have you and grateful that you have stuck around while I have been absent. It's going to be fun. Getting things started again, the podcast might look a little bit different. I am still feeling out what is going to work for me as I return to work. I'm always talking to my clients and to you about how it's really important that you design your work, whether it's a business or your leadership or your career around your life and make it work for you. And so for me, part of that, Really thinking about what's going to work for me with this podcast moving forward.

[00:02:45] And that might be maybe more episodes with me, maybe slightly fewer guest episodes. I probably won't be doing the alternating format that I've done in the past, but yeah, we'll just see where it leads and yeah, if you've got anything that you'd love to hear on here or any guests that you'd love to see or topics you'd like me to dig into, then please do reach out on Instagram, LinkedIn, email, Tik, TOK, all the places. And yeah, I'd love to support you with the content that I'm creating. 

[00:03:16]

[00:03:16] Okay, so let's get into today's episode. So I want to talk to you about something that's really dear to my heart. And it's the idea of conscious success. Now I wrote about conscious success a year or so ago now on my blog. If you want to have a read of that that blog it's Leading Beings dot com slash blog slash conscious dash success.

[00:03:38] This idea of conscious success. It is really important because a lot of my clients come to me when they are at a point in their career or their business or their their leadership journey where they've been going along a certain path and they hit a point and they're like, ah, It just doesn't feel right anymore.

[00:03:57] I'm not gaining this sense of meaning from it. I'm not enjoying it. I'm burnt out. You know, I'm not making the progress that I thought I was going to make. You know, there's a raft of different things or maybe it's just that, you know, it doesn't actually feel as meaningful as spending more time with their family or doing other things that they want.

[00:04:16] So yeah, this idea of conscious success came about, and I'm sure there's other people out there who talk about similar things. So just want to acknowledge that. But in my definition of conscious success, what it is to me is it's mindful progress towards that, which is truly meaningful, important, or fulfilling without causing harm.

[00:04:37] So. You can read my detailed explanation of that in the blog, but just to break it down briefly, firstly, what's truly meaningful, important or fulfilling. So this is about really tapping into what is meaningful, fulfilling, and important to you, and really getting clear on the things that matter the most.

[00:04:58] It's really easy to get caught up in other people's ideals society's ideals of what success looks like, but this is about working out what it is for you. 

[00:05:09] The second point is mindful progress. So the idea of mindful progress is that it's not just reaching for a destination and worrying about how are we going to feel when we get there, the magical there, which may never arrive.

[00:05:23] It's about making sure that we're actually enjoying the process and the journey of getting to wherever we're wanting to go to. So, that even if we were to not get there, that we would still feel that sense of meaning and enjoyment and purpose from it. The other idea with mindful progress is that it's also, we're feeling that in the moment.

[00:05:45] So in the present moment, when we're doing a thing, we are enjoying it, we are feeling good. We are feeling like we're making an impact, doing something maybe. 

[00:05:56] And then the final point, it can relate to mindful progress as well, but it's without causing harm. So, we want to do good in the world. We want to make a difference.

[00:06:07] Not everyone needs to necessarily, you know, go and start a charity or do something like that. But what is important is that when we are making this mindful progress towards the things that are truly meaningful to us is that we're not also causing harm in the process and that could be causing harm to others or the world or whatever it might be, but it could also be causing harm to ourselves.

[00:06:31] I see a lot of people out there that are chasing some version of success in their professional life, at the expense of something else in their personal life. So we don't want to cause harm whether it be to us or, or someone else. But like I said, if you want to read more about that, just hop onto the blog and you can have a read.

[00:06:51] But today, what I'd like to do with you is to really break down some steps that you can take. If you want to start moving more towards conscious success. You might already be working quite consciously and that's amazing. These steps will still help you go even deeper than. 

[00:07:10] So the eight steps to conscious success.

[00:07:12] Number one, the first thing that's really important is understand what is actually influencing your idea of success. So when I say influencing your idea of success, that could be; parents, it could be friends. It could be the schooling that you had the country you grew up in. It could be wider societal constructs like capitalism, for example, that are having an influence on how you view success.

[00:07:39] So what I encourage you to do is to sit down with a piece of paper, or in front of a computer, and ask yourself the question, how did I construct my idea of what success looks like? Now within that you will have things that are positive and you might have things that are negative as well as probably some things that are neutral.

[00:08:03] And so, start to really pull that apart and break down where all those influences came from. So, you know, I talked about things like the wider societal construct. So something like internalizing capitalism might be something that you have done. And when I say internalizing capitalism, this is this idea that capitalism is so ingrained in our society that we begin to take on the concepts of capitalism without really even realizing it. So for example, that we need to grow more and more and more and more and more bigger, bigger, bigger, better, better, better. And that we're on this ladder of achieving more growth and more growth and more growth.

[00:08:46] That's something that capitalism has baked into us in a sense. And it's really hard to deconstruct that and pull our identities around success away from that. But once you can identify it and know that it's there, you can start to work with it more, you know. 

[00:09:03] More personal examples. You know, ones I hear all the time are kind of how our parents' journeys have influenced us. And it might be what you observed. Just kind of from the background. So for example, my dad is an own business owner, so that has definitely influenced how I see success. And one of the things that permeated into me and my version of success from watching him is this idea of freedom and freedom of choosing how you go about your work and what you do.

[00:09:35] Yes. You have to work hard. Sometimes you have to knuckle down and do what's needed to get things done in your own business, but it also offers this great sense of freedom. So that was a positive that I took away from observing my dad in his business. But equally, you know, your parents might have instilled in you, this idea that success means climbing the corporate ladder or success means that you have to have a degree in medicine or law, or that success means you are actually living in a commune and you don't take anything from the planet or something like that. They might be positive, they might be negative. And. I'm not kind of making a judgment on what is positive or negative . But what I'm saying is that you need to look at these things and go, ah, are they actually mine? Are they my ideas? Or are they ideas about success that have come from elsewhere? 

[00:10:34] So this kind of leads us into step two. Step one is that two are very closely linked. First. We have to understand what those influences are. Step one. And then step two, what you want to do is unpack any unhelpful beliefs or programming that you've come up with from those influences. So, you know, some of those might be positive.

[00:10:54] You might really relate to those ideas. But if they're negative, if they aren't yours, you need to really get in and work out what they are. So the first step to that is looking at those different influences and saying, well, the idea of success that I have got from this person, this construct, this societal something or other. Is it mine or is it actually somebody else's? And the ones where you maybe feel like they're not your own, ask yourself well, What exactly is that belief? What is that belief that I've inherited? And do I want it, do I want it to be a part of my version of success? And if not, what actually do I want to replace that with instead? So let's take that example of internalized capitalism. If I don't want to believe and chase a notion of success, that's about growth for growth's sake, grow, grow, grow all the time without necessarily having a reason why, what do I want to replace that with? 

[00:12:02] So for me, it might be. You know, growth from a personal perspective is positive, but I don't necessarily need to grow my wealth beyond a certain point because actually with more wealth comes more responsibility and more risk and more whatever. That's just an example, but that might be how you start to look at unpacking something and really starting to frame what your own idea of that should look like.

[00:12:30] And yeah, really start to kind of dig into what about that belief may be serving you and, or what about that belief may not be serving you. So particularly around, what's not serving you , really go into the nitty gritty about it and look at how that might actually be impacting your behaviors and the things that you're reaching towards.

[00:12:54] Maybe for example, you're in a certain industry and like, let's take the coaching industry for example. And you see out there that success for a coach means charging $10,000 for a coaching program. But for you. You go, actually, I've been chasing this idea of charging $10,000 as a coach, or getting to a point where I'm charging $10,000 as a coach.

[00:13:19] But if I sit with myself and go, well, is that actually what I want to do? You might say, no, I don't believe in charging that much. And I want my coaching to be accessible to somebody. So really unpack what those beliefs are, where they've come from, how they're influencing and what you would like to replace that belief with instead.

[00:13:39] That again, ties really nicely into point three. So understand what is really important to you understand what's really important to you now there's some different ways that you can do this, but the things that I think are really helpful to dig into when you're considering what's important to you are values.

[00:14:00] What are your values? Meaning, what's meaningful to you? And purpose. What is. The purpose of what you do and why you show up in life and work? Now I've talked before about purpose and not getting too hung up on what your purpose is, but in this context, it is really good to know kind of why you're here, why you're doing what you doing.

[00:14:23] Values, I think that the starting point for this. And making sure that you are working and living in alignment with your values, that is going to be a great starting point for making sure you're doing what is really important for you. Now there's so many different ways that you can dig into values.

[00:14:41] One of the really, really simple ways is to just look at a big list of values and go through them, circle the ones that jump out and then kind of refine them down to a short list of three to seven values. If you would like to get your hands on a nice big fat values list head over to my website, LeadingBeings.Com and go to slash values. And you will be able to download a really nice big fat list of values. So really dig into what's important and think about what's important to you, not just from a work perspective and from an achievement perspective, but think about things like health and family and who you're being. That's one of the things that I love working with my clients on is don't just think about what you want to get or what you want to do. Think about who you want to be. 

[00:15:35] All right. Point four. So once you've worked out, what's really important. What are those influences? What are the unhelpful beliefs and you've unpacked all of those, the next thing you want to do is align your action to what's important. Now that might sound really really obvious, but often it's a really hard thing to do. Particularly when we do have things really deeply ingrained in us that we've been influenced by or told we should or shouldn't be doing.

[00:16:04] So if you work out that freedom is really important to you. Like it is to me, for example. And you are working in a corporate job. That means you have absolutely no autonomy, absolutely no freedom. Then you got to do something about that. You have to make a change because if you don't align the action of what you're doing towards what's really important, then you are going to be stuck in a situation where you're not fulfilled, and you're not feeling all the good feels about your work and your life.

[00:16:35] So with aligned action, it's about adding things in that are going to mean you're doing more of the things that are important to you and taking things out of the things that are not aligned.

[00:16:49] Now, obviously this is not something that you necessarily have to do immediately. And some things might take a long time to kind of recalibrate, but start thinking about it. And if you want to just kind of have a small exercise for what you can do with this. Start by looking at your list of what's important and write down what are the things that feel currently aligned and what are the things that currently feel misaligned? And the misaligned things over time, you want to start to reduce or remove those things and the things that feel aligned. You want to really boost those and add to those. And you can also ask the question, well, what else can I do that would make me feel more aligned with these? 

[00:17:36] All right. So I'm actually going to talk about points five and six together because they're kind of interrelated in many ways. So point five is considered the impact of your action and point six is consider your progress holistically.

[00:17:52] So considering the impact of action means that we're thinking about not just the thing we do or the thing that we're trying to achieve, but what are the flow on effects of doing that? Whether it be for us or whether it be for the people around us, for the planet, whatever it might be considering our progress holistically is making sure that, when we're looking at the progress we're making on one side, are we actually having a negative impact on the other side. So, great example of that might be that, we're doing really great stuff in our business and we're building our business, but actually it's at the expense of our health. So if we look at success, we're looking at our progress in terms of how is our business going or our leadership or our career going, but also how is that impacting our family? How are our other relationships going? Like our friendships and our wider family relationships? How is our health, how are we going in terms of enriching ourselves creatively or through hobbies or whatever it might be.

[00:18:52] So are we looking at that whole picture of success? And what are those impacts that we're having negative or positively through looking at that holistic picture as well. 

[00:19:06] Once we've got that sense of how it's all flowing together. Then point seven is to look at what the negative impacts are and look at how we can reduce those. And also look at how we can increase the positive impacts that we're having. So when I talk about a negative impact, like I said, Look at health, for example. So let's say you're working in a really busy startup. You're doing great things in that startup, but you're burning the candle at both ends. You're not getting any sleep. You're finding that you're sick all the time. So what do you need to do to reduce that negative impact on your health that's coming out of your business? You have to look at the whole package holistically. 

[00:19:50] Just like there might be negative or positive impacts on you that could be negative or positive impacts on the world. So another example, let's say you're starting a business and you know, something that's really important to you is being sustainable and ethical in your business. And you've put a lot of effort into making sure you're doing that. And then you go and open a bank account for your business with a large bank that is investing in fossil fuels.

[00:20:17] So you need to look at the whole picture and then you need to look at that negative or positive impact you're having. And let's say it is your banking and you realize, oh no, I've just invested in a really unethical bank. You do something to change that, and you put your banking into a responsible bank. That's doing good things for the environment and good things ethically. 

[00:20:41] So the final point is that you want to enjoy the moment and the journey. So as you're going through and you're doing the things that are important to you, you're doing, what's fulfilling, you've unpacked all these beliefs you're taking action. You're having a positive impact. You're reducing those negative impacts. We also want you to be enjoying all the steps along the way we want you to be enjoying each moment. So it's not good enough if you're just looking at the end point and going, oh yeah, I might enjoy. You know, when I finally gotten the business to this point, or I'm going to enjoy it when I finally can take this many days of holidays or I'm finally going to enjoy it, when I feel like I've had this impact on the world .

[00:21:29] What I really would like to encourage you to do is think about how am I enjoying it as I'm going? Do I feel fulfilled from the moments, the bits of work in between? Obviously we can't all enjoy everything. That would be impossible, but generally, are we enjoying it as we're trying to get there?

[00:21:47] If you want to become an author, but the process of writing you actually hate writing, then maybe ask yourself, do I really want to be an author? If I don't actually enjoy the process that gets me to the final product. So yeah, enjoy the journey, but also enjoy the moment.

[00:22:07] Try and be present in the moment, trying to enjoy the little things as your going through that journey. 

[00:22:14] So that's the eight steps to conscious success. I'm just going to sum those up again. So number one, understand what influences your idea of success. Number two, unpack unhelpful beliefs and programming. Number three, understand what's really important. So values, meaning purpose, et cetera. Number four, align your action to what's important. Number five and number six. Consider the impact of your action and consider your progress holistically. Number seven, reduce negative impacts and build on positive impacts and number eight, enjoy the moment and the journey.

[00:22:52] So that's conscious success and moving towards it. Did you find it helpful? Were there any things in there where you're like, whoa, I've really got to work on that one. Are there any things in there where you're like, yeah, I've really got that. I feel like I'm doing really well with that. This is not something that you can do overnight. This is something that takes time. It takes effort, but it's definitely worth it. And it's what is going to move you towards a work-life that's more fulfilling, that's having a greater impact. And that is truly conscious of yourself, the people around you and the world around you as well, which is what I am so passionate about us all doing. So, yeah, maybe go sit down with this episode with an hour or half an hour, 15 minutes, one day, just jot down some ideas. You don't have to do it in great depth, but use it to get you kickstarted on making sure that you are creating conscious success for yourself. 

[00:23:53] Thank you very much for listening. If you got something out of this episode, please hit me up. I'd love to hear from you. Did any ahas go off in your mind? Hit me up on Instagram, LinkedIn. . Shoot me an email if you like, and I will see you in the next episode.