We have often asked ourselves: How to thrive in life (and business)?! How the heck can you do that purposefully?
“Thriving” has both a subjective and objective meaning.
Your idea and feeling of thriving are going to be different than mine.
Thriving touches on various life aspects: mainly physical, mental, social, economic, and cognitive.
It means going beyond success. When you are thriving, you are touching aspects of your daily life, habits, your relationships, your personality, and this goes up to the ecosystem you live and operate in. (1)
The ONE big integral part of a thriving life—is well-being.
Well-being—a higher state of being
Well-being goes beyond and above nutrition, movement, and mindfulness.
Well-being is a much higher state of BEING – in our modern world we often tend to “simplify” well-being with suggestions like:
- x things you can do to reach a higher well-being
- y foods you can eat to feel so and so
- X steps you should take to be so and so
etc.
To deeper understand what makes up a thriving life, we’ve dug into the characteristics and focused on what truly thriving personalities have developed, talked about—and especially lived.
Here’s the “7-C-Framework” thriving people use:
1/ Competence
It requires a strong commitment to become excellent in your field.
Aim to belong to the top 1% of people in your industry/business.
Excellence is a journey—not a state.
Give your best every time and strive for doing even better tomorrow.
Set competence as your goal—you can become anything you want.
How do we strive for competence?
For us, competence means striving for excellence. It requires lifelong learning and keeping an adventurous open mind.
2/ Concentration
Fact: there is never enough time to do everything.
Concentrate on the top items on your list. Get your priority straight.
Most people start with the small things. That’s not how thriving people act.
Sit down and develop general principles. Get that “big picture” of what you want to accomplish and keep that in mind.
How we build up concentration to thrive in life & business?
We have learned to listen to our intuition and especially, apply some good noise-canceling to those who want to tear us down. We strive for a supporting community, not a destructive environment.
We have learned “how to learn” from our setbacks. When something doesn’t go as wished or expected, we ask ourselves “What’s the most valuable lesson I can draw from this experience?”.
3/ Creativity
We are all geniuses—potentially.
The smartest people are curious. Be curious. Ask questions like a child.
Most people do what they are doing until they hit a wall. Something bad needs to happen before they start to change (most don’t even change then).
Think about it. Everything is in constant change. Even the food we eat, the cars we drive, and any kind of products we use—everything will be different in a few years.
How we train our creativity:
We strive to do 10% of what we do repeatedly in a different way.
We look for chances to create. Writing – cooking – creating new movements… that’s us.
4/ Consideration
The quality of your relationship with other people will have a huge impact on how you thrive in life and business.
Develop people skills. Depending on your field take courses, hire coaches, listen to podcasts, and most important: read, read, read.
How we leverage consideration:
We proactively reach out to people who are experts in the areas we want to develop, or who can point out the path we are on.
We have a “Go-Giver Approach”. We’ve learned that by giving and being supportive, you attract the right people and energy. The kind of energy led by gratitude and appreciation is the most sustainable one.
5/ Commitment
There is no thriving life without a big commitment to yourself and to what you want to achieve.
Commit to growing and evolving. Pick what you love and go for it.
How we thrive through commitment:
We set the goals we want to achieve and commit to doing the daily work to get there
We hold each other accountable. We are “lucky” because we are on this journey together, both personally and business-wise.
If you don’t have a close one/partner, look for an external accountability partner. Track each other’s progress and sustain engagement through jour fixe meetings. Show up for one another.
6/ Courage
You are capable of mastering your fears.
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
Face your fears. Break through your barriers. Cut the rope that’s dragging you down.
Move forward. The more we seek security, the less we have it. Security is an illusion.
How do we develop the courage to face our fears and have a thriving life?
Excitement can be misinterpreted as fear. We look for ways to transform fear into opportunity.
Fear of failure paralyzes. Making mistakes is free education.
Fear of failure is an inhibitor that can be countered by exercising courage.
- Ketty has just left her manager role to start a business
- Markus quit his job 6 years ago to go on a year-long trip around the world
We both chose to be guided by inspiration and intention rather than fear of uncertainty.
7/ Confidence
Self-doubt is crippling. To move forward you need self-confidence.
But how do you develop confidence? Simple. You do certain things over and over again.
Self-confidence is one of the fundamentals of a successful thriving life.
How we develop confidence:
We persist until we succeed. Sow the seed of self-belief in your subconscious mind. This seed will be the seed for your flourishing mindset.
For us it all started with a choice – we chose to prioritize our own growth to serve others the best way we can.
Sustainably successful people prioritize themselves – they prioritize their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy.
Because you can’t give what you don’t have.
Well-being isn’t passive. It’s active. Let’s call it “well-doing”.
Plus: Whenever you’re ready to shift to “well-doing” for your well-being to
optimize your energy
build strength and
thrive in life,
apply for our free Strategy Call.
- Thriving in Life by Margaret L. Kern, Jessie Sun
