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Congruence is the Key to Success – Will Polston

Everything is underpinned by congruence. This has been my key discovery as I’ve pursued a purposeful, inspired and energised life.

Being congruent means your actions and words  are in alignment with your true intentions.

Too often, this isn’t the case and leads to unhappiness and a lack of fulfilment and success without really understanding why.

In this incongruent state, it’s easy to get caught in what I call ‘The Rift’.

In the Rift, we experience feelings of significant stress, overwhelm, frustration, depression and anxiety.

It’s not a very pleasant place to be, yet it can be a powerful catalyst for change. Emotion is simply a signal to think or act differently – often both!

If you think differently, you will act differently.  If you act differently, you will get different results.

 

Clarity, Action, and Accountability

There are the three, simple but powerful, elements to my coaching approach.

Clarity

Firstly, I work with clients to help them achieve clarity in 20 different areas of life. This enables them to move forward and get further clarity on their ultimate goal.

It’s crucial to enable a client to envisage what their dream life would ideally look and feel like in the future: personally, professionally and financially.

I call this their North Star.

To my knowledge no-one has ever been to the North Star yet, for millennia, humans have used it as a guiding light.

The concept of the North Star in this context is exactly that: a guide. You don’t have to actually get there. I often encourage clients to set goals so big that they won’t achieve them within in their lifetime: goals that future generations can continue to develop when the time comes to hand over the torch.

An important point here is to ensure that clients understand they will get their fulfilment from the process of doing the work, rather than achieving the actual goal.

Action

This is where we ensure that micro-actions are being taken to achieve the macro goals and eradicate any excuses that limit this progress. This stage can’t be underestimated as action is what really moves the needle.

Accountability

In my experience, one of the main reasons people fail to take the action they need to is a lack of accountability.

We have been conditioned our whole lives to be accountable. When we’re young, we’re accountable to our parents; at school we’re accountable to our teachers; at work we’re accountable to our bosses but when we want to achieve things for ourselves, we’re accountable to who?

To ourselves but this doesn’t tend to work nearly as well.

Why? Because it’s just too easy to procrastinate, to make excuses that nobody hears and say things like “I can just do it next week” and to kick tasks down the road, often never to be completed.

Accountability works well in a coaching space between the coach and the client. Having someone to offer you accountability in the business space is highly effective. Learning to be accountable to yourself, too, is a key part of success.

(After all, what fully-grown adult wants to explain to another fully-grown adult why they haven’t done something they said they were going to do?)

As a result of using the Clarity, Action, and Accountability framework, clients find themselves transforming excuses into results and living purposeful, inspired, and energised lives that they love – in a surprisingly short space of time.

The Ripple Effect

I truly believe that by living congruently, you will achieve your full potential and benefit not only yourself but your business, friends, family, community, society, humanity and the universe – and this is what I call The Ripple Effect.

As a coach and business strategist, my ‘North Star’ mission is to empower one billion people to transform excuses into results and live a life they love.

No mean feat… but it’s my personal ‘Ripple Effect’ goal.

I realise this won’t be achievable for me within my lifetime or even over the next generation. However, thanks to technology, I do believe it’s possible to empower 10 million people within my lifetime and if those 10 million each impact another 10 people and those 10 people each go on to impact another 10 people, then that’s a significant impact made. In fact, it’s a billion.

I am a firm believer that with quality education, coaching and aligned partnerships, the world’s biggest problems can start to be solved and life-changing possibilities can be created.

If you wake up every day, are courageous, express yourself, embrace the day, be a source of joy and inspiration to others and surround yourself with positive, driven, like-minded people then you have the ability to have an impact, create a ripple and therefore multiple ripples in this universe.

Listen to the podcast!

 

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