The Fundamental Breakthroughs for Growth
This post shares stories to help you achieve the emotional breakthroughs you need to fully harness the most powerful growth fundamentals and achieve all new levels of growth in business and life!
The fundamentals in this post are those which create the most growth in life – meaning you can use them to create more of anything you desire, whether it be more time, more money, more energy, more health, and/or more enjoyment.
Back in 2014, I, like most, was aware of the fundamentals for growth, things like values and beliefs, but I wasn’t able to appreciate and use them like I can now. I only became emotionally invested in and eventually passionate about each of them in turn as I used them more and learned through many hours of trial and error the potential they each had to create growth in my life.
In life, there are two primary ways to learn what others have learned. Firstly, you can learn directly what they have learned through any tools they have created for this purpose, such as books, articles or podcasts they have created. Alternatively, you can ‘reinvent the wheel’ so to speak, by investing a great deal of time and effort into trying to replicate exactly what they have done, step by step.
If what you’re learning is something completely new to science, the later method of trial, experimentation, and error is the only option. However, in all other cases the quickest and easiest way to learn is by using the tools that others have created precisely for this purpose.
In the case of the emotional importance each of these fundamentals have for me now, which makes it incredibly easy and enjoyable to leverage them, one tool transfers this emotional quality better than any other, and that is story. Just think about the power watching, reading or listening to a story has to create an emotional response in you!
Therefore in the case of each fundamental, this post shares the story of how it became important to me. In each case that importance built over a period of time, until one day I had a breakthrough aha moment or emotional epiphany.
Learning these stories will help you to achieve your own epiphanies quicker, which will kickstart, shorten, accelerate and enrich your journey of growth in each of these fundamental areas for maximum growth in life. Thus maximising your overall performance and enjoyment in life!
Contents
- Values – Champion the important things in life 🦸♀️
- Practice – Practice is the key
- Realities – How to turn your dreams into realities ✨
- Belief – A lot can happen in a year!
- Principles – Master the fundamentals, master life! 🧘
- Plans – Plan out your win
- People – Embrace the support of others to realise the incredible 👫
- The journey – How to make the incredible simple, easy and fun 🙂
Values – Champion the important things in life 🦸♀️
I imagine that like the vast majority of growth minded individuals in our society, you're in a role, business, financial position and/or career / life path that is not yet fully aligned with who you are and how you want to live.
Back in 2014, my career path and I were very much out of alignment. A few years earlier, I’d pursued a gruelling investment banking career path that led me to sacrifice my freedoms, hobbies and relationships, and was so bad for my sleep and general health, that I eventually ended up in the emergency department with a severe case of anxiety!
It was the wake up call I needed though, because in the depths of despair and burnout, I decided to once and for all commit to making the important things in my life, my values, the important things in my life.
No more sacrificing the intrinsic things that truly made me happy, for extrinsic things like money, prestige or status that society had conditioned me to believe would make me happy but ultimately didn't.
I didn’t know what I’d do next career wise at that point, but I still felt like a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. And I knew that whichever career path I took forward, I’d be far richer in health, fitness, freedom, relationships and love for it!
In the years since, I’ve built great clarity around my values, and brought my career and life into incredible alignment with them, and my life is infinitely richer for the journey my values continue to take me on!
I hope sharing my values journey helps you to champion true innate values like freedom, joy and love in your life, so that you come to create an abundance of wonders like these that are at the very core of what it is to be human and to truly be alive!
Here's to becoming the champions of our values!
Practice – Practice is the key
When I burned out as an investment banker in 2014, and decided to make the building of my life around my core values the primary guiding force of my life, I first turned to the tool I was most familiar with – knowledge.
For the next couple of years, I devoured every book, podcast and seminar on personal growth that I could find, but as time went on, I found that I wasn’t improving core values like my health, fitness and relationships very quickly despite all the time and energy I was investing into improving these things.
One day late in 2017, it dawned on me that while I’d accumulated great knowledge in these areas of life, I hadn’t been putting that knowledge into practice in any consistent or meaningful way. After all, you can read all the books on exercise you like, but if you don’t put your exercise shoes on and actually do it, you won’t improve your fitness.
Soon after, I decided to commit to three simple daily practices around taking regular breaks throughout the day, exercising and meditating, and to see what happened.
I used my new 2018 diary to hold myself accountable to doing these practices each day, and despite finding it very hard to be consistent with my practices early on, I found that I felt better about myself and my life each time I did them, and soon, little improvements in each of the three areas started to accumulate.
I also found that the more I practiced, the easier it got, and the better I got at it, which meant that by late 2018, I was able to practice as many as 70 practices per day with less effort than the first 3!
My experience taught me the truth in the words of the famous British statistician E. F. Schumacher:
‘An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.’
Keep in mind, that practice and the discipline, consistency, skill and habits it creates, are essential if you want to create the positive change you seek in your career and life!
Cheers,
Cam
PS: Between 2018-2020 all I taught was practice through an online Practice Masterclass that I run, and I’ve now helped over 200 talented people globally to create remarkable growth in their businesses and lives. If you’d like to learn more about the incredible power of practice, schedule a free Journey Call, where I’ll show you how practice can solve every problem and realise every opportunity you have in life!
Realities – How to turn your dreams into realities ✨
From an early age I liked to dream big and I aspired to many great things, like becoming an astronaut one day.
But for most of my life, I lacked the skill needed to turn my dreams into realities, which led to a great deal of frustration, suffering, and pain, as well as low self-confidence and self-belief.
Although I didn’t realise it at the time, a documentary I came across while studying my MBA at London Business School, started me on the journey of developing the skills I needed to deliver on my bigger aspirations.
The documentary was on the life and work of Robert Moses, who’s known as the ‘master builder’ of the 20th century for the roadways, bridges, parks, housing and other public facilities he built during America’s great depression – especially around New York City.
Robert wasn’t always the great creator he eventually became though. He was instead a dreamer who struggled greatly in the early years of his career, until very fortunately, he received mentorship from a family friend, Belle Moskowitz – considered by many to be the most powerful woman in the United States at that time.
In working with Robert, Belle noted that he lacked an appreciation for the realities associated with his projects, and the skill and persistence that would be needed to realise them.
Belle took Robert aside, and explained to him that to realise his grand plans for New York City and America, Robert would have to pair his great vision with a great attention to detail and focus on execution.
Robert took the feedback on board and made a commitment to becoming a great doer, which started him on his journey to greatness.
Keep in mind, especially if you tend to be somewhat of a dreamer like myself and Robert, that you must cultivate your eye for details and execution focus if you want to see your dreams come true!
Belief – A lot can happen in a year!
This photo of a young me with my parents, serves as a constant reminder to me of the remarkable power of belief.
I had a rocky start to school. Part way through year one my family moved to San Francisco which was awesome. However, when I returned to year two in Perth, Western Australia a year later, I’d missed about 6months of school.
So I struggled through and literally had to mime the recorder in class music practice and productions. Naturally, no one at school believed much in me, so the next year, I went into a year two/three split class, and then the teacher that year, with the support of the principal, wanted to keep me down in year three for another year 😬
Believing in me despite what everyone was telling them, my parents, with the financial support of the mother of my Dad’s first wife ❤️ sent me to year four at a private boys school. Through year four and five, I continued to struggle along at the bottom of the class.
However, in year six my teacher was a Mrs Lawrence 🙌🏼 I vividly remember her remarking how beautiful my handwriting was – a shock to me I can tell you! But she put my writing on the wall for everyone to see, and it made me feel pretty good that someone else, other than my family, believed in me, my skills and my potential.
Later that year, Mrs Lawrence created a challenge for the class where for every kilometre someone ran, a piece of string would be used to mark hundreds of kilometres travelled around a map of Australia she’d put up. I had no known running prowess, but soon my Mum was dropping me off halfway home from school so I could run the few kilometres home 🏃🏼♂️
Putting in the work and seeing the results, finally helped me to start truly believing in myself 🙂 And just the very next year, I became one of four house leaders for the primary school, I won the school cross-country and I finished top of two classes to win the science prize with a near perfect score!
The photo is of the year seven rewards ceremony. It reminds me to believe in myself. And it reminds me just how much can happen in a year if we put in the work.
However, most importantly, it reminds me to always show belief in others, especially when others aren’t, so that their belief in themselves can grow, flourish and carry them towards their dreams and desires.
Principles – Master the fundamentals, master life! 🧘
Elon Musk has been an inspiration for me for many years.
Perhaps the quality I admire most in Elon is his ability to master new subjects and industries very quickly.
He made his first millions co-founding Paypal, the payments business, before going on to dominate industry after industry, in electric cars, consumer solar panels, and space transportation.
Elon has outlined on many occasions, that his ability to master new areas quickly comes down to his ability to identify and leverage the first principles or fundamentals truths underlying his area of study:
‘Boil things down to the most fundamental truths, then reason up from there!’ – Elon Musk
The fundamentals are not the basics, they can be complex and they are often overlooked by others – wherein lies Elon’s competitive advantage. While others are hacking at the leaves and maybe the branches, he’s chopping down the trunks and pulling up the roots.
The fundamentals are the underlying truths, rules, powers or forces controlling any aspect of life. Which means yes they control industries, but also that they control all the other important aspects of life, like our health, fitness, relationships and finances.
Through more than 10,000 hours of research, personal practice and coaching others in business and life, I’ve determined that there are 10 fundamental drivers of growth in business and life. It’s clear they’re fundamentals, because they’ve each been around since the dawn of modern man, and they’re each applicable in every area of business and life.
Leveraging the fundamentals will help you to effortlessly overcome information overload and create the sort of levels of clarity and impact Elon Musk has, in every area of business and life!
Plans – Plan out your win 🏅
As someone who identifies with being a dreamer and visionary, planning has always come naturally to me. I’ve always loved the sense of clarity that comes from good planning in business and life.
However, because of my natural propensity towards planning, I used to feel a sense of guilt associated with over-planning and under-doing – which drove me to pull back from my planning efforts.
However, it wasn’t until I used consistent practice to take my execution skills to a level that was comparable with my ability to envision my future, that I realised I was greatly under-utilising planning rather than over-utilising it!
It makes sense though. In my case, while I was good at envisioning where I wanted to go, my plans were pretty useless because I wasn’t good at making progress on them. Similarly, plans are pretty useless if you’re good at making progress, but aren’t good at getting clear on where you want to go in the first place.
However, if through practice you develop strong visioning and execution skills, you then need strong planning skills to break your vision down into a logical sequence that you can execute on.
This led me to develop a method of planning that completely translates a 10 year vision right down to the level of the tasks and practices that you’re doing each day! This way, you know that what you’re doing today is the absolute best use of your most valuable resources in life, your time and energy!
People – Embrace the support of others to realise the incredible 👫
To this point, I’ve outlined a number of the fundamentals for crafting an incredible career and life.
However, there’s one fundamental which while being the most obvious, is also the most challenging to leverage, because of the fear our egos hold around it.
This fundamental for success in business and life, is people. People who can support, help and enable your journey, and who in turn you can support with theirs.
In business and sport, we’re used to working with others to achieve common goals. But collaboration gets a lot more complicated and difficult when our goals are ‘personal’ in nature, perhaps around our relationships, mental health or career path.
The stigma is that it is weak to ask for support in life, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
When I burned out as an investment banker, my ego was too strong, and I too weak to ask for help and support, and I suffered greatly for it.
Similarly, when I left my first startup to start sharing my business and life learnings, I was stronger and my ego was weaker, but I still viewed getting coaching and support in life negatively. So, I pursued a path where I was mostly teaching, rather than coaching.
However, as I continued to practice and acquire greater and greater skill in areas like fitness, health, and relationships, I grew stronger and stronger physically and emotionally. And, as I did, I found my ego got weaker and weaker, to the point where I became more and more open to seeking out coaching and support for myself.
In 2018, I finally participated in my first group coaching programme and added a coaching aspect to the practice masterclass I was teaching. However, by 2020, I’d graduated to my own first full time 1:1 coach and to offering standalone coaching services myself.
Not since the breakthrough I’d had around daily practice, had I experienced such a surge in my personal and professional growth. After all, two minds are better than one.
My coaching journey has enabled me to now fully understand why Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt both have said that, ‘everyone needs a coach.’
But coaching is just one way you can leverage the power of people to craft an incredible journey in business and life. If you’d like to learn about other ways, including one proven to 9x your performance, book in a free Journey Call call with me.
‘Everyone needs a coach. Every famous athlete, every famous performer has someone who’s a coach. Someone who can watch what they’re doing and say, is that what you really meant, do you really do that. They can give you that perspective. One thing people are never good at is seeing themselves how other people see them. A coach really really helps.’ – Eric Schmidt
The journey – How to make the incredible simple, easy and fun 🙂
I hope you’ve been enjoying these stories I’ve been sharing around fundamentals of growth in business and life, such as values, practice, vision, planning and people!
Coupling the learning from my own journey, with fervent research and my work supporting 200 talented professionals worldwide to craft incredible careers and lives, I’ve determined that there are 10 of these fundamentals for creating incredible growth.
Over time, I’ve worked these fundamentals into a very intuitive, four pillar journey framework, that makes it simple, easy and fun to incorporate them into your own career and life so that you realise incredible enjoyment, performance and results!
There’s great power in combining the fundamentals in this way, because when you use the fundamentals in concert, they support, enable and amplify each other – carrying you ever onwards and upwards in life!
Good visioning helps you get clear on your values. Clarity on your values helps you find the right people to journey through life with. The right people help you to execute on bold life plans, and so on.
To cut to the chase, the framework, and the coaching, training, tools, and systems I’ve developed around it, can and will help you to consistently achieve all new levels of growth in every area of business and life.
If you are interested in realising your potential, take the next step by booking in a free Journey Call with me.
It’s a risk-free first step which may start you on the journey of a lifetime!
If not now, when?
If not now, when? If not me, who?
The best time to start compounding skill development around the fundamentals for business and life was 20 years ago, the next best time is always now.
Similarly, don’t delay in getting someone in your corner in life. By all means investigate other coaches, but investigate me by registering for your free Journey Call, and then aim to add your first coach to your life team within the next week.
Coaching and coaches need to be experienced to be understood and appreciated.
And, you need to start building out your life team before you can perfect it.
I hope to talk soon!
Sunny days,
Cam
