Building a Legacy: It's only too late if you never start
Written by Greg Langston
By discovering your unique strengths, determining your core values, and directing your future with ambitious lifetime goals, you can achieve amazing success. But be warned-if you don't like change, you will like irrelevance even less.
So far, Steve Jobs has made a fairly sizable ding. He has achieved success (to the tune of over a billion dollars) through continuous innovation and sticking to his unique talents.
Whether your are about to start your career or already working your way up the ranks, you want to give yourself every possible advantage. You have a lot of decisions before you, no matter where you are in life. It is up to you to determine which path in life you will take - but how can you avoid walking down the wrong paths over and over again until you find the best one?
What are your unique strengths? If you don't determine the where, how, when, and why of what makes you truly unique, making that ding in the universe won't happen. What if you knew the Distinct Natural Abilities™ that would give you the edge? What if you knew your core values? What if you had a detailed plan for the rest of your life? What dramatic dreams could you achieve?
Professionals say:
o I have to continue the path I have already started.
o I don't know what my unique strengths are.
o How do I measure my success?
o How can I prepare for an uncertain future?
o With all of the changes coming, how can I gain the advantage?
What are you going to do?
According to Tom Peters, white collar employment as we've known it is dead. Add that to the fact that an average career consists of ten different jobs in five different companies from three different industries. Regardless of your success, you obviously still have a lot of decisions before you. How can you build a lasting legacy? How can you find success now and in the future? There are serious changes coming, so how will you survive and thrive? While many may find Tom Peter's quotes a little scary, it also offers valuable insight on how to deal with the challenges of the future.
How to put yourself on the road to success, and stay there!
Gaining the advantage requires balance, uniqueness, a clearly defined path, and values that support your goals.
Balance:
There are elements of success that are the building blocks of professional and personal life. The Success Elements™ principle is founded on the four elements of Health, Wealth, Wisdom, and Relationships. By achieving balance in all of the Success Elements™, you can be assured that your success will transcend both work life and personal life.
Uniqueness:
It is not enough to be unique. All of us are unique. The first building block of success requires knowing precisely what your Distinct Natural Abilities™ are. Whether you use our system or another, you need a process to determine what your distinct abilities are. An innovator and brainstormer? An organizer? A researcher? Gifted at coming up with new ideas or gifted at bringing ideas across the finish line? By knowing your unique strengths, you can avoid needless trial and error.
Clearly Defined Path:
All of us, regardless of age, wish to build a legacy that outlasts us. But how can you develop that legacy? Every study on goal-setting has shown the same thing: people who make tangible goals achieve more than those who do not. The resources to help you determine short, medium, and long-term goals are out there. The key is to make the goals tangible, challenging, measurable, and, most of all, based on your Distinct Natural Abilities™.
Values:
A core set of values provides the fuel for success. Determining your core values will not only help you achieve success, but it will make the success deeper and richer. The ability to communicate exactly what your values are will help you strengthen occupational and personal relationships and give you direction in your daily challenges.
Bringing It All Together
The tools necessary for future success will revolve around Distinct Natural Abilities™, clearly defined goals, balance in all areas of life, and core values. Not only will you get the financial and time-saving benefit of reducing costly trial and error, but you will be on the path that is best suited to what makes you truly unique.
Think about how you spend many Saturdays: shopping at the mall, seeing a movie, chatting on the phone, playing a round of golf. These activities all have their value, as well as their time and place. However, compare the time spent and the value received from those activities to a day spent discovering where your path to success is hiding.
Greg Langston is the President of The Langston Group, which offers a comprehensive 100 Day Leadership and Success system called the Integrated Helix System™. The Integrated Helix System™ helps individuals discover their unique strengths (Distinct Natural Abilities™), core values, and lifetime goals, all with a focus on maximizing potential and work-life balance. The Langston Group's Integrated Helix System™ is offered to executives, coaches, professionals and students. The Langston Group also offers the Wisdom Project, where you can read their collection of the best of the web, updated daily. You can find articles on Health, Wealth, Wisdom, and Relationships-plus a host of articles on technology, interviews with top CEO's, and the most thought-provoking, leading-edge ideas around.When Greg Langston began his career in the international business arena almost 30 years ago, he had two objectives:
1) Become a successful global leader and
2) Maximize the potential of all those he came into contact with.
While running operations in excess of $1.2 Billion and 8,000 employees, he learned that without a process and technology, these two goals often worked against each other. He created to provide Life, Personal and Business coaches and Executives with a proven Roadmap which will help their clients Discover, Determine and Direct their futures while driving an excellent return on investment (ROI).
Greg Langston is the founder and President of The Langston Group and www.100DaystoSuccess.com Greg has been described as a focused visionary leader, a creative strategist, and a gifter presenter. A student of excellence, he runs several businesses and serves as a teacher to life and business coaches as well as executives around the globe.
