10 Steps to Success - Step 7 Enroll Support

By dougnau on Feb 2, 2008 in Life Coaching, Success, Support, Wellness Coaching

Step 7 Enroll Support

If you’ve found this article, but have not yet read the introduction 10 Steps to Success, I highly encourage you to do so before continuing. This is part of a series of articles that read in order will give you valuable insight as to how to become successful with anything you envision.

Fine Tuning Action

If you’ve embraced steps 1-6 of the 10 steps to success, you now find yourself in a place of conscious and meaningful action. You are making your ideas a reality and you are being successful as you are on the path toward achieving your goals in the physical world. So what else needs to be done - this all seems clear.

Often people begin taking action but then a challenge arises that stops them in their tracks. Ask yourself if you’ve ever had a goal that you began working towards and did not complete. If its never happened to you, please let me know your secret! We are human beings and everyone has some things they’ve begun that have not come to fruition - some more important than others. If you’ve read this far, I suspect that the goal you’ve got in mind is extremely important and that you are looking for every strategy available to move beyond the point that has stopped you before.

The remaining steps to success are designed to carry you through the challenges of action and to build a foundation of creating more and more success in your life. We begin with enrolling support.

The Fall of the Lone Ranger

For many years of my life (in fact - for the vast majority of it), I had an unwavering mind set that I needed to do things on my own. It was somehow my personal responsibility to achieve my goals without the support of others. That I had something to prove, and it was so wonderful to be able to say that I was able to do things on my own. I could take on any project and the best person to do it right was me - because I had control and I knew what I could do. I am capable and intelligent, I didn’t need outside help!

This is the mind set of someone that is thinking small - and in retrospect I was thinking very small. On Christmas eve 2003, the day I was diagnosed with leukemia, my eyes opened up to a bigger picture of life. I saw for the first time that my recovery was a journey that I would undoubtedly need to lead, however it did not make sense to be the captain of this ship (my body) without a crew to support me.

My eyes also opened up to the fact that people wanted to be of support. Not only did they express interest, but that deep inside they felt good to help and that accepting their support was equivalent to giving a small gift of myself back to them. This was a perspective I personally had never embraced before.

Since that day I’ve experienced that people want to give support not only in times of crisis, but also in times of plenty. This concept not only applies to our health and wellness, but it also applies to all of our life goals - those goals which fill us with purpose and passion. It is a joy for people to be engaged in what has meaning and value to others as they have the opportunity to experience it themselves. Sharing that joy and gratitude is really the gift of asking for support.

Forms of Support

Support comes in many forms and varieties. Support can come from people in a physical sense (ie: can you help me lift the table), it can be of a intellectual sense (ie: help me understand how something works), or from a spiritual sense (ie: a friend to listen to me when I need a shoulder to cry on). These are forms of support we commonly consider.

Support can also come in the form of paid services or systems. In running a business, will a computer support me in getting my work done? What software can I use to help manage my time? What mentorship or coaching do I need that is outside my sphere of influence or my field of expertise that can help me produce extraordinary results? Can I outsource certain services such that I have a better outcome (ie: hiring someone to job search for me!).

Accepting Support

Its important to recognize that receiving support always takes some energy on your part. This however is much smaller than that which would be required if you were to do things on your own. The energy output may be as simple as being willing to say yes when someone offers (which can be a big thing for many people), or may be as complicated as researching and paying for the most appropriate support to hire. Either way, acquiring support requires some energy to enroll it. If no energy has been expended, then support has not been properly accepted.

This energy may be in the form of sharing a smile, saying thank you (and meaning it), making the effort to ask for support, or researching and spending money. The key is that the energy you spend, regardless of the form must come from the place of gratitude. Genuine gratitude is seen and felt, and is what makes providing support a pure joy.

Those that accept support without gratitude (even if money is exchanged for services), are setting themselves up for lack in the future. Practicing gratitude through the support process simply sets a foundation for ongoing and continued success and sets the stage for more support being available in the future. It also establishes your capacity to provide support to others - which allows you to experience the wonderful feeling in sharing in the joy of others.

The Power of Support

Support generates a myriad of outcomes. The following list provides some examples of how enrolling support fine tunes your capacity to accomplish success:

Support creates efficiencies that one could not possibly glean on their own
Support can provide exponential results (ie: 1+1= 4 or 10 or 100!)
Support provides accountability
Support provides knowledge
Support provides a sense that ‘all is well’
The act of engaging in support demonstrates to yourself that you are willing to make your ideas a reality

If you’ve struggled to attain your goals up until now, ask yourself what support if any do I need to achieve my goals? If its not a person is it a system? Have I been hesitant to ask for support? How can my asking for support be a benefit to others? How have I been selling myself short by not allowing support into my life & how has this deprived others? How could I use support to make my dreams goals come true? If I am not seeing a way to attain the support I need, how could I go about the process of finding a way?

Be Well