Ambition. Unleashed.
Ep.1 Redefining Ambition

Transcript

[Sara] Our mindset is one of the biggest determiners of our success and is perhaps the biggest determiner of whether or not we achieve our dreams and ambitions.

We believe your mindset has more power and more influence over your future than any:

• skills you might possess,
• competencies you may have developed,
• qualifications you may have earnt,
• achievements you may have gathered, or
• actions you may have taken.

Do you agree?

[pause]

Take a moment.

[pause]

Now tune into that little voice in your head. That running commentary – perhaps agreeing, perhaps disagreeing with what I’m saying right now, perhaps judging “what right do you have to talk about this to me” – that’s your mindset at work.

Notice the assessments it’s considering and the decisions it’s making:

• “Am I enjoying this podcast?”
• “Am I going to learn anything?”
• “Is this going to help me?”
• “Is it worth my time?”
• “Should I keep listening?”

[Wayne]  If your still listening, your mindset has judged and decided that this podcast is worth at least a few more moments of your time.

Notice how active your little voice is and how decisive it can be - every split second assessment and judgement it makes helps you make another decision.

Some listeners will have tuned out or turned off already – perhaps never to return to us - and ultimately killing the possibility of learning more about the perspectives we’ll bring.

Perhaps that doesn’t matter – we’ll never know.

But as humans we have the extraordinary power to “comprehend.” As far as we’re aware the human ability to comprehend - to think and understand something mentally - is far greater than any other living species.

And what makes the human ability to comprehend so extraordinary is our ability to interpret situations or scenarios - X means Y because of Z.

But interpretation is just that. Our interpretations are rarely facts, but a judgment call – an assumption we’ve made based on some meaning we’ve given a situation or scenario.

And that meaning we’ve given is very often extracted from our own personal context – our pre-existing notions, ideas and biases sourced from things like our upbringing, our values, our preferences and our past experiences.

[Sara] Now when we say mindset is the biggest determiner of our success and our future, what we’re not suggesting is that people are all the same and that we don’t all have different and unique skills, attributes, competencies and capabilities.

Equally, we’re not saying qualifications and experience aren’t really important components in personal and professional development.

But what we are saying is that if you have an ambition or dream that you want, then no missing qualification or experience should stop you from believing in it and committing to it. And no perceived barrier should be a reason not to at least try.

[Wayne] So much of what we say is not possible, may better described as not currently probable.

History’s greatest leaders, visionaries, innovators, and change-makers who have delivered the seemingly impossible have in fact delivered the seemingly improbable – it was certainly possible otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.

The key takeaway we want to share is just how important our mindset is to creating the capacity for, and being the foundation of, us taking action and identifying and achieving our life’s ambitions.

In each episode of this podcast we’re going to explore a different mindset shift and also hear from either thought leaders who are experts in - or from extraordinary individuals who have lived experience of - making this shift. 

[Sara] In each episode we’re going to explore a conventional way we as humans can find ourselves thinking.

We will then introduce and invite you to think in a more unconventional way - what we call breakthrough thinking.

Often this alternative, a transformational way of thinking is in tension with our conventional wisdom and status quo,  takes practice and a willingness to be uncomfortable to hone.

The mindset shifts we will explore together are designed to have you be able to make BT’s happen by design, like decodified. Breakthroughs being an increased in size of ambition perhaps, or the speed you want to achieve something in, innovation that you are willing to commit to, or creating a productive relationship or generating motivations from others. It can be any of those territories.

And despite these shifts being presented as shifts, we don’t want to be too binary here, and say conventional thinking is “bad” and breakthrough thinking & transformational thinking is “good.”

There is a great deal of fluidity between these and it’s perfectly reasonable and possible for us to think both conventionally and transformationally at the same time.

For example, in one of our later episodes we will explore how we can shift from “playing not to lose” to “playing to win.” We will explore how playing to win often requires taking many more risks, being uncomfortable and putting ourselves at stake. Which is fine, but it’s still okay and reasonable to at the same time feel concerned about dealing with life’s conventions like “paying the mortgage and providing for our dependents” and achieve life goals at a slower pace.

[Wayne] It is often fundamentally inhuman to think in a breakthrough way every moment of the day.  But what we’ve codified here is the way in which the worlds most extraordinary leaders, visionaries, transformers and innovators think in the particular moments when they have made breakthroughs happen. When it comes to our mindset we can’t change our feelings or what we think, but we can change how we think. And we invite you to give it a try with us.

Most people if asked to define an ambitious person – would say something like “a person who knows what they want and where they’re going”, perhaps with a big, hairy audacious goal in mind, probably motivated by money or notoriety. But we believe Ambition is less about knowing where you’re going, but the size of possibility you can see and would be willing to commit to for yourself. This podcast is certainly for the self-identified ambitious, but it's also for those that feel they would like to grow the size of their ambition.

This shifts we’re going to take you through over the next eight episodes are the essential foundations for helping you identify and achieve your biggest, boldest most breakthrough ambitions.

They will help you shift from:

• A mindset of limited possibility to unlimited possibility,
• A mindset that is committed to preserving your sense of identity to one that decouples you from your identity to make you less reactive and more creative,
• Potentially being a victim of circumstances – haven’t got enough time and resource etc, to a mindset that chooses agency despite the circumstances,
• Playing not to loose to playing to win,
• Predicting the future to declaring,
• Seeking certainty to curiously exploring,
• Managing problems to getting momentum from setbacks,
• And being a knower to becoming a constantly curious learner. 

[Sara] Through our work at Achieve Breakthrough - a specialist leadership development, workplace culture and organisational change consultancy - Wayne and I have developed, coached and consulted with executives, leaders and managers at all levels to bring about extraordinary, breakthrough results in the worlds biggest and most complex organisations.  

From the giants of the Pharmaceutical and Energy industry to multinational law, consumer goods and tech brands.

And we believe without a doubt that these are the essential shifts any ambitious person needs to make if they want to unleash their mindset for maximum success.

[Wayne] As experts in breakthrough leadership, you will hear us discussing and bringing to life the winning moves made by extraordinary leaders. But remember, you don’t need to be in a conventional leadership or management role or even work in a big organisation to benefit from this podcast. Personal leadership and mindset mastery is something any profile of ambitious – or like to be more ambitious - person benefits from honing.

[Sara] In the next episode we’re going to unpack why, how and what we can do to shift our thinking from a perspective that limits our sense of possibility to one that unlimits our sense of possibility. We’re going to discover the forces that cause even the most ambitious people to strive for what they think they can have versus what they really, truly want.

[Wayne] But let us tell you, all this takes work, but we’re here to guide you.

[Sara] So come on then Wayne, let’s get started.

Transcript

[Sara] Our mindset is one of the biggest determiners of our success and is perhaps the biggest determiner of whether or not we achieve our dreams and ambitions.

We believe your mindset has more power and more influence ...
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