As a business coach, I often start working with clients because they want help dealing with their business problems. They need systems, tools, strategies, and tactics to help their business grow. But often, the business problems are people issues in disguise, and therefore, they begin to realise that they also require personal growth and development—that is to say, self-mastery. In this article, I share some personal mastery strategies that, when adopted, have led to stunning results.
1. Do Self Development Daily
In simple terms, success is a product of a three-step formula. Better awareness leads to better choices, which leads to better results. Let me give you an example. Say you want to upgrade your health. You want to have more energy and vitality. So, you start studying what the healthiest people on the planet do. You start listening to the podcasts of people who are talking about nutritional hacking. You start reading books on how to hydrate better, cut out certain foods, and ensure you get the proper sleep.
All of that learning is going to give you better awareness. With that new awareness, guess what you can do as a human being? You can start making better choices every day. You can exercise better, you can eat better, you can hydrate better, and you can sleep better. With those better daily choices, you are going to see better daily results.
It is those small daily, seemingly insignificant improvements that, when done consistently over time, lead to stunning results. In other words, it’s not so much what you do once a year that is going to cause you to lead your field.
Your days are your life in miniature, and what you’re doing today is predicting your future!
Often, people think, well, the little things I do today aren’t going to make a difference, but it’s those little things that you do today, those micro wins or 1% wins. They stack over time into massive results.
It is the same for all areas of your life. If I want to achieve dominance in your sector, I would start reading about the titans of business, listen to the right podcasts, pull out your journal and deconstruct what you’re doing when you are winning. That awareness will allow you to make better choices, which will lead to better results.
2. Make Time for Recovery
Rest is not a luxury. Rest is a necessity. The most productive people in the world have one thing in common. They rest a lot. They’re almost like sprinters vs marathon runners. They work intensely, with incredible focus and deep commitment, and then they pull back and recover. I remember watching a documentary about Mike Tyson. When he was at the top of his game, he was a minimalist. He only did three things. 1. Trained. 2. Ate. 3. Slept.
We live in a world where we’re told we have to hustle and grind continually. However, my observations of the top performers is that they have periods of intense work and performance followed by a deep period of recovery. If all you do is work, you deplete yourself of energy, creativity, focus and willpower. So, you want to work hard when you work and then you want to rest intelligently.
3. Set Your Daily 5
A productivity tool that I learned from one of my mentors and have found very useful is the Daily Five. Each day, set five granular goals or micro wins you promise you will get done before the day ends. It’s not what you do once in a while that will get you great, but what you do every day.
Examples of easy things that you might include are:
- Do twenty push-ups after you brush your teeth.
- Spend the first hour of your workday on Project X. That new product launch or that business improvement this quarter that’s going to take your business to another level.
- Send a handwritten note to a staff member who has helped your company’s progress.
- Watch a learning video that will help optimize your top skill.
- Have a family meal free of technology
- Write three things you’re grateful for before you go to bed.
Here’s the point. Five granular wins each day become one hundred and fifty in just a month and eighteen hundred improvements in just one year. That’s absolutely certain to become the most productive and successful twelve months of your life.
4. Start a ‘Stop Doing’ List
Most of us have a ‘To Do’ List. When I was a CEO of multiple businesses, I actually ran my entire life by one. Everything was written down and I lived off this list like a military sergeant major. It wasn’t much fun, but I did get a lot done.
The to-do list that so many of us keep often contains our work commitments, meetings, shopping items, and social events. That’s good. Keep it going if it serves you well. But something else that may serve you well is a list of things you choose to stop doing.
Your list might include the decision to:
- Stop accepting every social invitation that comes your way because you have a deep-seated addiction to being liked.
- Stop stressing about problems that are not real and worrying about things that will probably never happen. Remember the words of Dale Carnegie, “Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
- Stop complaining about how impossible that project you’re working on in and start getting the work done.
- Stop spending prime hours of your days engaging in superficial distractions and digital diversions.
- Stop scrolling when it’s time to be creating and stop chit chatting when it’s time to be producing.
5. Protect Your Positivity
We live in a messy world. As humans we also have a negativity bias built in that was designed to protect us from the sabre tooth tigers and neighbouring tribes that wanted to kill us. You have to bulletproof your positivity. Here’s two examples of tactics:
- Avoid the news. The job of the news is to terrify you and addict you. Most of it is the same repeated stories with different names or locations attached. Drop the news. You will stay in a state of flow more often. That will increase your creativity, productivity, performance and lifestyle. You will feel better. You’re better off getting a more objective view of events and trends from a source like ‘The Economist’ than a 12-minute TV news cycle.
- Detox your Ecosystem. You can change the world. You can be around mood hoovers. You can’t do both. You can’t have toxic people in your life. You might say, well this toxic person is my brother, sister, relative, whatever. Well love them from afar or practice selective association but don’t spend time everyday chatting or physically being with people who bring you down. It will dramatically affect your positivity. Your ecosystem or environment is not only the people. Look at your workplace, look at your home, look at your car, look at the places you inhabit. Mess creates stress. You need to be a minimalist. You want to have clear spaces, bright spaces inspiring spaces. When you look at your entire ecosystem, clear out the negativity, toxicity and the messes. What you’ll find is you have more energy and cognitive bandwidth which will free up your energy and creativity.
6. Install Your Keystone Habit
According to Duke University research, 60% of the activities we do every day that we think are conscious decisions are actually habits. So, we are run more than we think by our habits vs what we think is free will and our own decisions. Therefore, if we want world-class performance, we must install world-class habits.
If you look at your health, happiness, financial life, and work performance, I would predict that 60% of your successes or weaknesses in those areas don’t come down to the world, our excuses, or circumstances. It comes down to our habits.
So, think about this idea of a keystone habit. A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of a masonry arch. It is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allowing the arch or vault to bear weight. Self-regulation researchers will tell you that a keystone habit is one habit that, when you commit to it, will lift every other habit. It provides an upward spiral of success.
For example, getting up an hour earlier, spending 20 minutes on a treadmill then 20 minutes writing in a journal doing some reflective practice, then 20 minutes doing some reading or online learning – getting your morning right. Because “the way you start your day dramatically sets up the way your day unfolds”.
Conclusion
Personal mastery is not just an abstract concept but a practical, daily practice that can transform both your personal life and your business success. Business owners can achieve remarkable results by focusing on consistent self-development, making time for recovery, setting and achieving daily goals, and creating habits that drive elite performance. The strategies shared here emphasise the importance of small, consistent actions, rest and recovery, and a positive environment, all of which are crucial for long-term success. Ultimately, mastering oneself is the foundation upon which business mastery is built. By investing in your personal growth, you set the stage for not just surviving but thriving in your business endeavours.
If you would like some help taking your personal and business growth to the next level, you’re ready for a business coach. Book a 15-minute call to see if coaching is right for you here: www.TimeWithShane.com
