On May 27th, I wrote, “This extended season of testing has me fighting to keep confident, living by faith and encouraged. It feels like my efforts are powerless in creating new business. I’m struggling…just seems like dead ends.”
How often have you felt like that?
I’ve coached so many times about the work that Pain does in The Four Stages of Change Leading to a Breakthrough. Now, “Pain” was doing its work in me.
Review all my journal entries starting in May, and you’d see my loss of mojo and energy. I had to own the truth: it wasn’t the economy. It was my lack of sales efforts … ugh.
Fear taunted me during my most vulnerable moment, “It would be easier to have a ‘job’.”
I wasn’t taking the next level medicine I tell others to take. Future success as a business owner was so close, but I couldn’t get there on my own. I was desperate for a breakthrough.
My desire for change arrived.
What was I thinking?
I needed to exit my Comfort Zone, and enter the Safety Zone.
Darren Hardy reminded me that 90% of any business’ success was due to sales and only 10% on services.
“Stop selling. Start helping,” he urged me.
Immediately, I aligned “sales” with one of my primary functions: connecting. I love making connections. Sales became any activity that connected me with leaders to create space for them to think about their people development needs. Then, to ask: “How can I help?”
Reflecting on the truth in my Story allowed me to realize I was living below my potential, paralyzed by fear. My desire for change allowed me to change my behavior.
What did I do?
Last week I wrote about three things that must happen to exit a Comfort Zone and enter a Safety Zone for a breakthrough.
- Celebration – high fives on your success, you got here. Well done. But what got you here won’t get you there.
- Promise – After a while, you can get comfortable which leads to status quo. But you’ve got more to offer, and it’s time. While here is to be celebrated there is greater still.
- Pain – Pain is your friend. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” To get there something must end, or you are stuck here.
To push through fear holding us captive here in “Stuckville” requires celebration, promise, pain, and the ability to see a Safety Zone. You step into the Safety Zone when you see the risk but go for it.
Last week, I posted a video blog about my trip to Austin, Texas and Wizard Academy to produce a video with SunPop Studios. It was one part of my Story of stepping into the Safety Zone — you see the risk, but go for it.
Here is the result:
What about YOUR performance breakthrough?
If you want to discover the hidden reward of a breakthrough, there’s one more part to the Story.
Breakthroughs don’t happen by accident. You need help, someone who’s been there before, to recognize what it takes to get from here to there.
DISCLAIMER: you’re free to stop reading right now.
- You know everything you need to wander through the forest of pain on your own until you find your way out to breakthrough.
- You know that you need a person to help you get there.
I’m about to tell you how 12 people reading this blog can get to breakthrough, in one morning, for $150. The effects are indeed revolutionary.
But I want you to know that you’re free to find someone else or do this yourself.
If you’re still reading, here’s what Steve and Next Level are offering. It’s not even the hidden reward that I’ve talked about.
Four critical secrets accompany every breakthrough. Four life-changing principles prepare world-changers for that moment they feel the pain, glimpse the direction and step into their purpose and destiny.
I want to help you get “there” in your Next Level Journey.
Join me. Learn the four secrets at:
Next Level’s “Performance Breakthrough”
September 23, 2015 | 8:00 am — 12:00 pm
The Mayo Hotel — Tulsa
$150 per person
Be one of the twelve. Get on the path to your future success, performance, productivity, influence, and joy.
Get the full information and register.
The hidden reward is: when you ask someone to help you, when you join a group committed to breakthrough together, you now have a guide and allies. They’ll see roadblocks you can’t. They’ll catch you when you fall. You’ll make world-changing revolutions together that you could never make on your own.
It’s happened over and over throughout history (Early 20th century Paris Art Salons, Jesus and the 12 disciples, late 70’s Silicon Valley garages). It’s the secret of team-based coaching.
I want you to taste it.
Here’s to your next level,
Steve
Image Credit: 
NEC Corporation of America via Compfight
Video: Are You Equipped for the Next Level? from Steve Laswell on Vimeo.