5 Keys to Mastering Anything

5 Keys to Mastering Anything

We recently interviewed Ciji Siddons, a Business Mentor, Success & Prosperity Speaker, Personal Development Trainer, and 7 figure business owner who has worked up the ranks in the personal wellness industry over the past decade - a real-life ‘bartender to millionaire’ story.

She is a powerhouse of energy, enthusiasm, and motivation - and here are her 5 top tips to mastering anything in life, and why being on a plateau is totally normal.

Ciji shared how she applied the simple but effective framework from Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard. It changed her whole approach to life and business, and she shared the application of this, and more to your own business.

1) Instruction

Ciji shares that in her industry of network marketing she has been lucky to have easy access to great teachers and mentors, but this approach can apply to anyone wanting to achieve more in life. Whether it’s free content you find on YouTube or highly paid coaches, you need to learn from people who have done the things you want to do. They can show you the pathway, the pitfalls, and the processes. It’s then down to you to forge your own path (and make your own failures along the way!)

No one does it alone.

2) Practice

Why in business do we quit so often and give up so quickly? We see sportspeople, train day in day out, shoot the hoops, kick the ball, play the game. That’s how they become better, every single day. Yet we often don’t even give ourselves a chance because we are not consistent, or persistent enough.

It usually comes down to fear whether we realize this or not. Fear of failing. Fear of looking silly. Fear of losing. Fear of what others will think and say.

When we get over this fear and do our thing anyway, that’s when we start to see results.

Text: why more are women turning to entrepreneurship

3) Surrender

“Eight years into this building this business, I feel messy all of the time. Every time I take on something new, it is very messy.”

Ciji mentions here how when we get comfortable at something, when we start to have little wins and successes, we then don’t want to go back to feeling new at something again, or feeling messy all over again. But it’s in this constant surrender to the new, the unknown, the unfamiliar, that we become the masters, the winners, and the success stories.

We have to keep surrendering to the new and the unknown to reach the places we want to go.

4) Intentionality

How intentional are you about your success? Do you know where you want to go? Visualizing your future, your goals, your dreams, and being intentional about achieving them is one of the most fundamental pieces of the business puzzle.

So many people have vague ideas about where they want to go and what they want to achieve in life. And what results do they have? Vague and mediocre! What you put out, you get back.

Do you ever see anyone successful who didn’t have a game plan or a vision for what they wanted to achieve? NO! It doesn’t mean they’ve figured out how they’re going to do it or all the details along the way, but they have a very clear intention that drives them to keep going.

5) Willingness to go to the edge

This is where things can get really uncomfortable and also where the magic happens! It means having the conversation with someone that intimidates you, or doing the three-way call that you’re nervous about or sharing your personal story; whatever it looks like for you, it's going to your personal edge and reminding yourself that every time you do it, you grow further. Even if you can't see it visually, something about you just grew in that moment.

Most people don’t and won’t do this, and that’s why people stay stuck for far too long.

These 5 things are not always linear and don’t always happen in the same order. But if you look at anyone successful, across any industry, you will see these 5 traits recurring time and again.

As a final tip, Ciji also shared how she believes that 99% of the time we are on a plateau and this is perfectly normal. We think that we're always supposed to be on a forward trajectory, a momentum, always go go go, aiming for #1 and growing. But sometimes the growing is in the plateau. In fact, most of the time it is. In a business sense, this might look like nurturing the existing clients you have instead of constantly chasing the next few. Get results for them first, and then move on when the time is right, not just in a constant battle for more.

So many great tips here for business owners, so go and listen to the whole episode here.