How do you hone your high achiever ninja?

Business and success coach Kelly Chandler looks at what a high achiever is and how to fine-tune for success

Firstly, let’s start by dispelling a myth – it’s not only six, seven and eight-figure business owners or leaders who can call themselves high achievers.

While sales revenue, turnover and impressive profit levels might indicate a high achiever, it runs much deeper than that. High achievers set goals, have big ambitions, dream big, set high standards for themselves and their teams and are very focused on making progress and acting. This often presents not just in business but in all aspects of their wider life. And yes, they get frustrated by others who seem to drift, who don’t challenge the status quo and who don’t press on!

Let’s assume you’d like to become more of a high achiever or perhaps you’d like to hone your high achiever ninja skills to reach your life and business goals because high achievers are like that.

Here are five ways that high achievers stand out by harnessing their feelings to achieve their big goals in business and life...

1. NURTURE A GROWTH MINDSET

Have you heard of fixed and growth mindsets? Essentially, those with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence is static, and this tends to present in them avoiding challenges, giving up easily, seeing effort as fruitless and being threatened by the success of others. Those with a growth mindset on the other hand believe that knowledge and intelligence can be learned whatever the stage or however the perceived difficulty, leading to a desire to constantly learn and improve, yet with an expectation of bumps along the way. They embrace challenges, persist despite setbacks, and see effort and persistence as the path to success and mastery. Very importantly, they are willing to learn from others and from their mistakes (and they do expect to make mistakes along the way). These are your lifelong learners who are inspired by the success of others and make it their business to soak up knowledge wherever they can. High achievers have a growth mindset all the time. All my high-achiever private coaching clients are passionately curious — there isn’t a week that goes by when we’re not exchanging a podcast, book, feature or learning.

2. CAN MOVE TO FUTURE STATES

High achievers can move to future states, have a strong connection to their goal and importantly can move forward clearly to truly believe, see and feel that goal and outcome happening. They can put aside present-moment concerns or fears and move to that future state to help them overcome hurdles or get to where they want to go. They know that their feelings of desire for their future state are stronger than their feelings of fear or limitations in their present.

Consider this — you need a brand photo shoot for your clinic to let your clients into your world, your imagery is out of date and not screaming ‘you’. However, you’re nervous about putting out new imagery, you don’t like going in front of the camera, and you’re nervous about presenting yourself for the world to see and critique. That could be a blocker for procrastinating or not going ahead at all. A high achiever might feel those things (they aren’t immune) but will be able to take themselves to the point when their new imagery is created, they are getting amazing feedback, opportunities, and new clients. They can move into that future state of pride and confidence and take the steps to make it happen despite nerves, perhaps not knowing the process, not loving being in front of the camera or being unsure that the financial investment in a great brand shoot will reap the rewards.

3. LISTEN TO THEIR GUT

Did you know that we have three ‘brains’ in our body – the heart brain, the head brain and the enteric nervous system or gut brain? The head brain is the one that gets all the attention, and we tend to put our belief and trust in it to give us the right sensible answers (and society generally teaches us this) but the enteric gut brain has a great deal of power. High achievers are in tune with and listen to their gut or their intuition to help them reach their goals. That intuition might be a voice, a feeling, or a movement or sensation in their stomach or gut. You know that feeling you get when you are putting pricing or a quotation together for a potential client and your gut is telling you that it should be higher, that you may be undercharging for the job? High achievers listen to that feeling and go with what their gut brain is telling them, rather than stick to the comfort of the safe existing pricing. High achievers get to avoid the level of immense frustration of working with that client at a lower price and everything that can entail, sometimes for months.

4. RUN AN ETERNAL FEEDBACK LOOP

In line with having a growth mindset, high achievers are constantly running a feedback loop with the actions they take and the cause-and-effect equation. They see everything as a chance to seek feedback, to build up their data and knowledge. They will try something on for size and see how that makes them feel — perhaps they want to feel that again, perhaps they don’t, so they will build that all into their internal feedback system and plan their next (usually bold) steps from there. My high-achieving private coaching clients very often get the question ‘And what did you learn from that?’ from me when they take brave moves into the unknown – that’s where the magic happens.

5. BE PERSISTENT AND CONSISTENT

These two are difficult for all but high achievers to live by — continuing to take the steps, even when nobody seems to be paying attention, when times are tough, you’re unsure, you’re getting a negative or when you just don’t feel like it. The ‘never giving up’ mantra is over-used but high achievers are dedicated to it and are persistent with their actions towards their goals. They take feedback and adapt, but continuing to take consistent action, no matter how small, is at their core and is non-negotiable.

DOES THE HIGH ACHIEVER TAG FIT YOU LIKE A GLOVE; DO YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON DEVELOPING SOME AREAS THAT AREN’T SO STRONG FOR YOU RIGHT NOW?

It’s quite usual for us to need to do some inner work on nurturing our high-achiever ninja. As a success coach, I focus on working with clients on overcoming limiting beliefs to create their next-level business and life. Together, we create consistent healthy routines, tackle blocks and hurdles, and uncover and put to one side beliefs that no longer serve us around money, confidence, success, achievement, and a lot more besides.

And the best bit? Our brains have neuroplasticity which means that they can reorganise themselves by forming new neural pathways throughout life. The neurons or nerve calls in our brains adjust their activities in response to new situations or changes. Being a high achiever is available to us all then, we just have to decide and make the commitment and consistent investment in ourselves to change.

KELLY CHANDLER

Kelly Chandler is a business coach and confidante, an accredited master coach, master practitioner of neuro-linguistic programming and master hypnotherapist. A diversified business owner and a multi-revenue stream entrepreneur of almost 20 years, she understands the challenges of business and the power of doing the deep, sometimes unconscious work of being ready and able to grow sustainably and embrace opportunity. Email kelly@kelly-chandler.com and quote Aesthetic Medicine to claim a special gifted offer. www.kelly-chandler.com