Episode Description

In this episode of The Samantha Leith Podcast we take a look at Success. With special guest Denise Duffield-Thomas in conversation about success, the Chill & Prosper way. Taken from episodes 31-35 of The Samantha Leith Show.

Show Notes

(singing).

Success is a word that so many of us aspire you, yet many of us never actually take the time to work out what it is, let alone do the work to get there. So let’s fix that now. Hi, I’m Samantha Leith. And this is my show. This month is all about creating that roadmap that you need and getting the tools required for success. Will it be easy? No. Will it be worth it? Hell to the yes. Success is doing what you want, when you want, where you want, with whom you want as much as you want. Tony Robbins said that, and for ages, I had it printed out and stuck on the wall by my desk. Did it help me? Well, it gave me a little extra motivation, but the reality is I didn’t know what I wanted to do or where or with whom.

You see, like many people, I’d bought into the success dream. My mind was swirling with visions of what fabulous people do that people I admired or somehow wanted to emulate. Then I woke up. It’s like when you realize you actually like mushrooms when for years you haven’t eaten them because someone once told you they were slimy fungus. The light goes on. What have you been missing? All those mushrooms for years. Success is like that. We’ve read a book or seen someone online and we think, yep, that’s it. That’s what I want. They look so happy.

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

That must be what success is. No, that time I had a picture of a private jet on my vision board, never going to happen. I couldn’t give a flying. All puns intended. Who flung dung about having a private plane being up in front on a commercial flight, however totally floats my boat. PS, if it is a boat, I actually need to be able to sail it. Where was I? Okay, back to success. Have you actually ever taken the time to really work out what it is for you? The real Googled interweb definition of success is the accomplishment of an aim or a purpose. Great. We’re done. I can stop recording now. We’re going. Come on, let go. No, no, I won’t because I wanna help you to figure out what the aim or the purpose is now to get all woowoo on you, but I really do believe that we’re all on this planet for something.

It may be huge in public like Branson or it may be less known like the unnamed teacher who once said that something that planted a seed for a future doctor we’re all important. Every individual and every definition of success is perfect for the person it belongs to. Success isn’t a one and done deal. It’s made up of components. Just like the rest of our magical lives, our dreams, our beliefs and our actions will probably have an overarching theme to create that big picture, but the different wheels of our life require different things. A definition of a success may be more mind based or it may take along more physical lines. Let’s take a look at some examples. Success is being happy and grateful, following your passions, conducting your life with integrity, it’s about the journey, not the destination, doing fulfilling work, achieving your goals, believing you can, loving and being loved back, not giving up, inner peace.

The problem with those definitions is, again, different strokes for different folks. What I think inner peace is will be probably different to your understanding of it, and I’m a hundred percent sure it doesn’t look anything like the inner peace of the monk I once met. So maybe success is being a certain weight or a fitness level. Owning five holiday homes, working three days a week, having your movie on Netflix, adopting six children, getting married, moving to Alaska, getting a medal for a sporting event, making every Nigel recipe or discovering the cure for Alzheimer’s. See, it’s confusing what the a ya meant to pick. Hang on. Could success be like a pick and mix at the movies? Amazing. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Or making up that perfect combo that you dig into for a touch of sweetness, a jolt of sour or an invigorating crunch.

Now I’m really hungry. Yes, I believe it is. Success is in my mind. Living a life where you dream, you believe, you act and you achieve. It never ends. We don’t tick a box and we are done. That’s the beauty of having a growth mindset. But’s we’ll chat about later. I guess it’s easy for me to be standing in front of the camera saying, dream, believe, act, and achieve, so stick with me. The ability to do these things should be taught to all of us from a really young age. For some kids growing up, they’re encouraged to dream and told things like you can do anything you put your mind to. Then they aren’t taught, actually actually work on the goal. Whoops. For others, they’re told to don’t think too big or be sensible, or maybe they’re expected to join the family business In chicken farming when they’ve voice had a dream that they wanted to be a product developer creating aids for people with disabilities.

DREAM BIG

Baba, dream big. My friends dream big. There’s work to do to define success for yourself. It’s like a vision board, but on steroids, I guess. Because success isn’t what happens next week or tomorrow. It’s all the glorious pieces falling into place. The work you do to achieve it, who you become while you are doing it, and the rewards for sticking to that path. Magic. First, you wanna dream. If you head on over to samanthaleith.com/freebies, I forget again, you’ll find the worksheet this month as well as the other worksheets that are gonna help you with these questions. Do it. Just do it, okay? Don’t just watch the video and think, sure Sam, I know what my dream is to open a restaurant because trust me, my friend, the work does not end there. Why do you wanna do what you want to do?

A primary school teacher doesn’t usually become a teacher because they think, gee, there’s a lot of holidays. They probably want to help mold the future of a child like someone did for them. Or they could really like those dinny, tiny chairs and all that magical color. Maybe. When you are dreaming your life, it can be magic. Well, it is magic. I said that I didn’t really understand manifestation till about the last 10 years, even though I kind of always had the thoughts. I truly thought and said, if they can come up with a tech to fake something in a movie one day, it will be able to happen. In real life, my friends time travel may never actually be a reality, and I’m not interested if it is, but so many things have come to reality. Everything in this universe first has to be a thought.  It’s all created inside us before it can eventuate. From that idea you had from making a cake to, well, the way it took me two years to buy my dream home. First I dreamt it. I could see it in my mind. I could feel it.

What’s your big dream in this process? Don’t even begin to contemplate the how ugh. Chances are that will stop you in your tracks and it’ll stop the dream before it’s even started to take shape, and I don’t want that for you. What’s your vision? What’s your mission? What are your passions? The detailed exercises to go with all of these are in the worksheet, but for now, if you can just, when you stop the video and I’m right now, I want you to grab a piece of paper and go nuts. Dream big nuts. If you haven’t listened to or read the Reverend Martha Luther King’s Junior speech, I have a dream.

DREAM AND SPEECH

I really encourage you to do so. Whilst there’s so much work to be done. That dream and that speech changed so many things. There was so much power in his words and his visions. You too can create something powerful. Write your own. I have a dream speech. There’s no rules to this. Go wild. It’s different to a letter to yourself or a speech that someone will give at your funeral or hundredth birthday party. This speech gives energy to your dream right now. It’ll give you the gentle nudge or that kick in the butt you need when something happens and you need some additional motivation to take the action required to achieve the dream. You really wanna take your time with this. If you set aside a whole weekend like greenery, head to the mountains, or if you like me and you want a nice hotel, the waterview sensational bath, that’ll do the trick.

Okay, I’m romanticizing doing this, but why the hell not? It’s all about dreaming after all. I’m also a realist sometimes, eh? Sometimes, so maybe it’s time you carved outta space in your Google calendar, even 15 minutes a day to just go over a couple of the questions. Your life isn’t short, my friend, and there are no real shortcuts to success. So take the time, you need to do this [inaudible]. One of the keys to success, which I’ll go over in another episode, is about goal setting. So make doing this work a goal and I’m pointing my finger. Pick at eight, write it out in the affirmative and do it.

BELIEVE

I’m realizing, I say do it a lot. It’s really a shame. Nike beat me to the punch on that one. Next, it’s all about the believe phase. You have this big dream that you cemented in last week’s episode.

Bottom line though. Do you think you have what it takes to get what you want? I do. If you don’t think you can make it anywhere, I do, so borrow my belief in you while you need it. Borrow it for as long as you want. Your beliefs aren’t simply, yep, I can do it. It runs a lot deeper. Somewhere in the recesses of our mind, there may be a story that goes like, I need to be a size 10 to get work. Nobody enjoys their job. Working with family is what everybody should do. You’ll have to be a bitch to be famous. Rich people have to work really, really hard. You have to have something sensible to fall back on. Yep. They are some of the crazy beliefs that I’ve held over time. It’s those beliefs that had me doing accounting while singing five nights a week and never actually throwing myself into all of my dreams for so many years.

You can change those beliefs though, I promise. First you need to know what they are. Yeah, but it’s in the worksheet, but here are the basics for deep belief work. You want to take paper and ask yourself the following:

• I am.
• The world is
• Other people are

This month isn’t just about beliefs though. It’s coming, I promise. So for now, it’s more than okay to stick with asking. Just I am. Then write freely as many things that come up. I’m funny. I’m bad with money. I’m dumb. I’m smart. I’m right. I’m a disaster. I only meant for, how does that belief make you feel? When did you first have the belief? Who has influenced this belief? Will this belief help you achieve any of those dreams that we talked about earlier? Then we need to turn those beliefs around baby. What would a better belief be?

Take it easy here. You can’t go from, I’m a freaking idiot to I’m a legend in one breath. You can however go from, I’m always gonna be stuck here to, I’m working on changing my life. It’s a bit like the mirror exercise I’ve covered before going from I hate my body to I’m a sexy beast is never gonna happen. So we go to, I love my eyes and we build from there. This work doesn’t actually end here either. As you go about building success for yourself, you’ll get reminders, kicks in the butt, you know that kind of thing of those long held beliefs that you’ll need to combat. Say one of your beliefs was selling as so sleazy and the belief you are working on is, I help people get what they need and you have a proposal that you’ve worked your butt off on and it gets rejected.

Not just the proposal. You think the prospective client didn’t even like you. You are devastated. There’ll be gold and them their hills I promise. How did the proposal not give them what they need? Where did you see hints that they did like you? What examples do you have of giving someone what they actually need? Who in your life really does show you how much they like you? These questions are obviously unique to that situation, but you get the drift when a belief is being tested out. You wanna search for examples of where the belief is true. You are good with money. There are some friendly bosses, single dads can find love again. You may start noticing beliefs that people around you have. We’re like sponges absorbing everything, so pay attention to what you are taking on from others.

WHAT ARE THE BELIEFS THAT YOU NEED FOR SUCCESS?

Speaking of taking on things from other people around you, what are the beliefs that you need for success?

Huh? Different question. Your version of success. I would bet money crypto actually, if I understood it at all, that Elon Musk needs some different beliefs to most of us because of what his dream is. Yep. That’s me subtly tying it all back together. You’ve got your big dream. It’s written out, it’s colored up, it’s canvased to the max. What do you need to believe to do it? That’s the million dollar question and we can look to others for inspiration with this. It’s all around us. Chunk it down. Yep. Worksheet. Is there a person in the world who’s achieved something similar to what your dream is or even part of it? This is where your virtual advisory board is amazing. For me, Nigella emulates so many things, but that’s just an example. Ah, Nigella. Then what are the key elements to what your dream is? Is there maybe an education piece or a location in common or a monetary amount, a business idea?

Is there a person or people that have nailed that bit before you? I’m guessing you don’t actually have these people on speed dial, so where you can grab books, listen to podcasts, read interviews, anything you can get your hands on that’ll help you see the deliberate beliefs that these people have had in order to achieve their dreams. Keep notes on what you find. No deadline needed. This is not a goal. I’m always coming across something and I make a note in a master Google doc that I keep coz maybe there’s a nugget I need that’s gonna be perfect in a particular moment. You know what? There’s nothing new in this world. There’s a belief that Sarah Blakely had, for example, that failure was a good thing. Instilled in her as her father asked her every day, what did you fail at today? This belief made it okay for her to try and fail, get up again, throw everything at it, and finally succeed with Spanx and I’ve gotta tell you, every time I wanna smoother line under an outfit, I’m really grateful that she had that belief.

CORE BELIEFS

Here are a few core beliefs that some go-getters have you might wanna take some on. They’re in control of their success. Failure is to be embraced. There is always more money and opportunities. I have everything I need already. Things happen at the right time. You wanna attach the beliefs that you feel you need in order to achieve success to the different parts of your vision. So in the worksheet, I know I’m really predictable. There’s space for you to write the goals that are attached to your bigger version of success and space for you to add the belief that you think you need for that particular goal. Go try it on, write it in your journal. Beliefs are often also tied into our identity and you can go back to the March episodes to do more of the identity work. I suck at exercise, for example, can quickly be changed to I am fit.

Every time you step into the gym or pop on your trainers, don’t get overboard and think you can have 10 new beliefs overnight. Next week you’ll be at the Oscars getting an award, but refer to those beliefs often. I grew up thinking in my bones that failure was a terrible thing. I don’t regret anything in my life. However, I wonder what might have been different had I taken that extra chance even if I could have failed. These days I take more chances and it’s amazing, but sometimes that old belief creeps up and bites me in the butt. So what do I do about it? What can you do about it? You need to remember why changing the belief is important to you. So go back to the work in the worksheet or your journal and step back into your new belief. Step back into your new belief.

You get my drift? If you believe you have to starve yourself to lose weight, you’ll probably go up and down and be miserable. If your belief changed to be more like I know nourishing my body and moving it makes me feel great, you are more likely to achieve and sustain that goal. These things may take time. After all, most of these beliefs have been with us for a long, long time. That’s okay. It’s an evolution.

THE HABITS YOU NEED FOR SUCCESS

I know I talk about habits a lot, blah, blah. Samantha, here we go again, there’s no reason people, if you wanna be successful, whatever version you decide, you need habits that will support you to get there. Coincidentally, the habits you need for success are similar to the habits you need for greater confidence. Imagine that. I know I ask a lot. Sometimes it’s good for you. What I want you to do is work out the habits you need to support your version of success.

If success includes running marathons, well you need a well-tuned exercise habit. You can go back to the November 21 episodes to see about success habits, but here’s some quick stuff we’ll go through. Something cues us triggering a craving that motivates a response, which gives us a reward, which then satiates the craving, which then becomes attached to the Q and around and around we go.BQ, craving, response, reward Q, craving, response, reward. When going for success, forming habits to support. Its vital. So take some time out to work out what they are. What is the habit you will need to achieve the success you want? What’s the benefit of this habit? Who do you need to be to make this habit stick? What do you need to believe to stay with it? What will you do to help support yourself in this new habit? When we start, who will hold you accountable?

Be prepared, and okay with failure here, people, it’ll happen. Even Richard Branson has probably hit the snooze button on his alarm clock some days it’s okay because one of the common themes with inspirational people is I get back up when I get knocked down. Was that a song? Can’t remember? I think so. Anyway, that can be you two, my friend. So what are these? Some of these themes that I’m speaking of, some might call them rules, but that makes my stomach clench and I feel like I’m gonna get into trouble if I stuff one of them up. I don’t want you to feel like that. So I call them themes. Here we go. Here we go, here we go, here we go. Here we go. Cultivate a growth mindset. Move your body. Dress for success. Visualize everything you want. Take responsibility, be grateful. Keep educating yourself.

Get great with time management and productivity. Embrace failure. Sleep. Come on, unplug. Surround yourself with positive people. Do not complain. Do the hard things first. Learn to deal with rejection and negativity. Be a boundary boss or babe, insert cute title here. Network. Get up early, focus on the right things. Make decisions quickly. Take time for self-care and relaxation. Have hobbies. Know what makes you happy and make time for those things. Journal, meditate, set goals. Have a playlist to motivate you. Be interested in others. Make space for focus, thinking and creativity. Pivot quickly. Take risks, manage your feelings. Keep your standards as high as my heels. I’ve actually done a list of 52 that you can grab in the freebie section, but I’ll get you started. It’s not like you need to wake up every day and tick off those 52 things and your habits and and, and, and, and.

Because guess what? You wouldn’t actually have time to do the work that you need to do to be successful. So do not get carried away. But you need to promise me that you’ll keep thinking about these positive themes and working on your habits. Before you know it, you’ll be wearing them all like a second skin. These themes and habits will in turn have created and supported new beliefs that will help you on the road to success. See, it’s all fitting together like a glove.

SUCCESS MAP

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Samantha, Mary. Oh my god, now you know my middle name. Anyway, happy birthday to me. Yes, how exciting. An episode is actually released today on my birthday. So as something special, if you head to samanthaleith.com/success map, enter your details there before the end of the month cuz you know, gotta end of the end of the month.

I’m gonna give 10 people a one-on-one hour with me to create their very own success map. So you start the next financial year with a bit of a where’s bang? So it’s like my birthday, your birthday, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, and then we can all create the extraordinary success that we want with our very own map.

You’ve probably heard about a growth mindset. For the purposes of this, I’m gonna use it interchangeably with success mindset. The psychologist, Carol Dwike from Stanford University has done amazing work in this area and it’s really important for you to understand and work on your growth mindset to be successful. Go read a book. A fixed mindset. In this mindset, people believe that their intelligence is fixed and static. A growth mindset. Well, in this mindset, people believe that intelligence and talents can be improved throughout effort and learning.

GROWTH MINDSET

I really love this quote from Carol Anne. Yep. I’m saying that as though she’s my buddy, but no, we no idea. But anyway, there’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you are dealt with and have to live with. Always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush. When you are secretly worried, it’s a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand that you are dealt is just a starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief. Your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Love it with a growth mindset. Okay, here’s goes you embrace lifelong learning. Believe intelligence can be improved. Put in more effort to learn. Believe effort leads to mastery. Believe failures are just temporary setbacks. View feedback as a source of information. You willingly embrace challenges, view other success as a source of inspiration and view feedback as an opportunity to learn.

With a fixed mindset however, you believe intelligence and talent are static. You avoid challenges to avoid failure. You’ve ignore feedback from others, feel threatened by the success of others. You hide your flaws, so as you’re not judged by others, you believe putting an effort is worthless. You view feedback as personal criticism and you give up easily. Can you see how one clearly leads you on a path of greatest success than the other? In really simple terms, a fixed mindset paints you into a corner of your life and a growth mindset opens up pathways of opportunities. Much of the work in developing success habits and themes and new beliefs ties into this growth mindset. So I’m not gonna go back over it. There’s an exercise that I’d love for you to do and add it into your daily habits, okay?

At the end of the day, ask yourself the following, what did I fail at today? What did I learn today? What did I do great today? What can I do better tomorrow? Starting to observe these things and reflect on them will increase your growth mindset. And guess what? Increase your chances of success. Here’s a bonus tip. Start using the word yet. I know it sounds simple and a bit corny, but it’s mighty. I haven’t achieved what I want yet.

Nobody has a crystal ball. If they say they know something is gonna succeed, they may feel it in their bones, but they can’t actually know it. We simply need to look at some of the really big businesses that have risen to great heights and fallen to the earth. When something Fs up, here’s what you want to do. First things first, you allowed a little pity party. You are human after all. Then you wanna ask yourself some questions and yeah, yeah, may do it with wine or chocolate if you want. You wanna take a bird’s eye view of the situation and look at what went wrong. Actually, it may have gone right, but you just don’t know it yet.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

This may be a big picture idea, but where you can, I’d get detailed. It’s all part of the learning process. What did you actually want to happen? Did you do everything you could to make it happen? Hmm, that’s a tough one. As we so often don’t wanna admit that we actually didn’t do everything we needed to do to get there. Yeah, that’s personal responsibility people and yep, you need that to be successful. What could you have done differently? Where have you succeeded in something before? Yep, you need a boost, so dig into that file. You keep all the good stuff. What have you learned from this experience? Do you want to try for this again? Now, forgive yourself. Let it go and if you want to go again, work out what steps you need to take, make a plan and start. It’s really important that you do this quickly because that bounce ability will do you wonders.

Then reach out to your support or accountability people and get with them and help you on this. Remember, failure’s a good thing. Now, if we’re gonna talk about failure, we need to mention celebration coz I like to celebration. You wanna celebrate every step along the way of your success. Every achievement, big or small, keep a box or a file of those wins and share them. Do not be afraid to be proud of these things. More importantly, celebrate the successes of those around you. Grab a cake. Yes, this one happens to be a french cake called success, and take it over to a friend who’s just done something they were working towards. This is good karma people, and you need to be happy for other success in order to be successful yourself. And if and doubt, champagne usually works.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?

Now, my friends, I toast to you and your future success. Let me know via the interwebs what your success plan looks like, and I’ll celebrate along the way with you. I can’t talk about success without reminding you about goals, so just quickly, your most important goals must be tied to the vision of success you’ve just created. Your goals must mean something to you. Your goals, well, I like the smart method. Your goals must be flexible because crap happens. Your goals have gotta be challenging, exciting and change you in the process, and your goal has gotta be in alignment with your values, vision, mission, passion, feelings, all of those things. Okay? Your goals must help you balance your wheel of life. And your goals need support and accountability when you’ve done your goals, yeah, but it’s in the worksheet. You can go back over it. Take the goals you wanna work on. Maybe I wouldn’t do any more than two current, two longer term, maybe three current, and what are the five actions you can take every single day to achieve those goals?

Work it out for each goal and then some of ’em might cross over so you don’t need to double up, which is a great thing. Then build those action steps into your calendar and your daily habits. Bag we go around the loop.

Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes. Grab the worksheets and let a friend who you know is wanting something more know about this video. It may be the thing they need right now to help them be extraordinary.

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Produced by Rebecca Saunders and Pyrmont Studios

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Feeling Good
Songwriters: Anthony Newley / Leslie Bricusse
© Tratore, Universal Music Publishing Group

🎙️
Produced by Samantha Leith / Michael Allen
Vocals by Samantha Leith