The 10 Pillars Of A High Achiever

Through 15 years of working in the entertainment industry, I’ve learned that there will be many ups and downs in a dream pursuit. There will be obstacles, and good days, and opportunities, and rejections. The High Achiever (a.k.a. you!), needs a game plan through it all. The High Achiever needs to handle all of these moments intentionally and carefully, in a way that effectively keeps them on the path to success. That’s why I developed the 10 Pillars of the High Achiever. Here are the 10 pillars:

Pillar #1: Abundance Always

Hollywood loves to preach scarcity: there are never enough opportunities; succeeding is incredibly rare. That’s a cute story, but I’m not here for it. Successful people don’t believe in scarcity, they believe in abundance. The truth is, there are an abundance of opportunities available to you at any given time.

When you focus on a shortage of opportunities, you put a lot of pressure on anything that comes your way. That pressure creates anxiety and affects your performance. It creates an energy of desperation like, “Wow! I got an opportunity! I better not blow this because it may be the only shot I get.” Ick.

When you believe in abundance, it takes the pressure off of any single opportunity. It also leads to consistent strategic moves—moves that you wouldn’t take after a rejection if you believed another opportunity was never going to come. If you lost an opportunity and were completely crushed, you may never get back up. But there is always another opportunity available. Abundance creates motivation to keep going and keep trying.

Pillar #2: Decisions Come From Desire, Not Fear

Most people make fear-based decisions. But you’re not most people! Successful people make decisions that support their dreams, even if it feels scary.

For example, let’s say you have contact information for a person who could potentially help you with your dream. But you’re scared to contact them. You don’t want to bother them and you’re scared they won’t want to help. So you decide not to contact them. That is a decision made from fear.

The successful person may still have those fears, but they contact the person anyway because it could help their dream. This also happens on a grander scale, when it comes to taking a big leap, investing in yourself, or taking any kind of risk. If you’re consistently making decisions out of fear, that means you’re not taking any risks. And when you’re not taking any risks, you’re not reaping any rewards.

Whenever you make a decision, pause, and ask yourself: Am I making this decision out of fear? Or does this decision help my dream move forward?

Pillar #3: Obstacles Are Opportunities To Pivot

Successful people are solution-oriented rather than problem-oriented. Most people, when faced with an obstacle, focus on the problem. They focus on it so much, they can’t even see a solution. All they see is a dead end. The High Achiever believes in solutions. When they hit an obstacle, they shift into the energy of the solution. They don’t see a dead end, they see an opportunity to pivot.

Do you know about the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo? In the white space between the E and the x, is the shape of an arrow.

There is also a baking spoon in the lowercase e in Fed. I knew about the arrow, but when I heard about the spoon, my mind was blown. “Omg! It was there the whole time and I never noticed!” See where I’m going here? Solutions, or opportunities to pivot, are always there when you know to look for them. People who are problem-oriented never see those solutions, even if they are right there in front of them just like the arrow and the spoon.

Obstacles are inevitable. But so is your success (spoiler alert from Pillar #7!). Believe in ways to pivot, and you’ll see ways to pivot (Ross Geller style). In my experience, the obstacles have always led to something so much better.

Pillar #4: Events Are Neutral, We Decide What They Mean

The stories we tell ourselves dictate everything: how we feel, what actions we take, and the results we get. We’re really good at creating stories when something goes wrong (or when we’re rejected). The moment we are faced with a rejection, the conversation in our mind begins, “I’m not good enough. They didn’t like me. I’m not likable. I’m not talented. This is never going to happen. This won’t work. I guess I’m not meant for this.” Sound familiar?

I can tell you this for sure, we are all really freaking talented at bullshit. Am I right?! Those stories we tell ourselves are not the truth. But we are pretty convincing, so we believe them. The real truth is this: anything that goes “wrong” on your journey, or any time you’re rejected...those events are neutral. They are not good, they are not bad. We assign a meaning to them. We decide if it’s good or bad. We fill in the blanks with why we think it happened.

The High Achiever stops engaging in fictional storytelling. They don’t attach a negative meaning to a neutral event without facts and data to back it up. Events are neutral. You are the only one who gets to decide if you’re meant for this. It’s not up to fate, it’s a decision.

Pillar #5: How You View Your Past

It’s easy to use time as proof that you’re not going to make it. But time doesn’t dictate our potential. Only we can dictate that.

The High Achiever does not let the past determine their future. If you’ve had bad experiences in the past, it may lead you to believe that all future experiences will be the same. For example, if you've had bad experiences with agents, you may then assume that all agents are bad, and you may even stop looking for an agent. But your past doesn’t dictate your future. It’s like taking out all your previous dating baggage out on your new partner. Don’t let your past stop you from moving forward.

Pillar #6: How You View Your Present

The Present is where people get tripped up the most. It’s all about focusing on the process rather than the result. When you plant a seed, you don’t stare at it all day and yell, “FLOWER, WHERE ARE YOU?!” You water it and take care of it, and over time the flower blooms.

Give your present a little watering. Trust that success will come when you’re really good at the process.

Pillar #7: How You View Your Future

Speaking of trust, your Future is all about believing that your success is inevitable. When I’m working on a new big goal, I don’t have time to even consider that it won’t happen. That’s a waste of my energy. Believing that it won’t happen will delay my success.

Our actions are completely tied to our thoughts. When you believe your success is inevitable, you take risks. You make the ask. You keep going in the face of rejection. You get ideas that you wouldn’t have gotten if you were focused on the “statistics” or the “reality of the situation.” Successful people operate from the place of believing they will succeed. Success is a decision.

Pillar #8: Respond Instead of React

Just like Pillar #2 tells you not to make decisions based on fear, Pillar #8 doesn’t want you to make decisions from an emotional state.

When a rejection or obstacle happens, it’s important that you allow yourself to feel the feelings that come up. Let yourself cry. You’re not a robot, so it’s OK to be human and feel the emotions that come along with a situation. In fact, it’s healthy to let them out. I’m totally a crier. I cry all the time. I fully practice Pillar #4, and I don’t let myself stay there, in those negative stories. But I do let myself release it. What I don’t do, though, is make decisions from that state.

It’s easy to want to make rash decisions about your next steps when you’re feeling emotional. But that often leads to making decisions out of fear. You can have your reaction. But don’t respond until you’ve calmed down and can make decisions that support your dream (i.e. don’t decide to give up on your dreams when you’re midway through a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, sniffling through tears).

P.S. The more you do this work, the shorter the time it will take to feel inspired again. Instead of feeling sad for a month, you’ll feel sad for a day. Growth has its benefits!

Pillar #9: You Are CEO, This Is Your Business

This one might sound a little weird, but hear me out. Think about your dream right now. What is it? In order for it to come true, you have to think about it as something tangible, rather than a fluffy concept. When you think about your dream as a business, as something more serious in terms of tangibility, it’s going to manifest that way.

Think of the different aspects a business has: marketing, accounting, sales, and creation. While not every one of those will apply to every dream, they are still concepts that can help you move out of hobby mode and into reality mode.

Every business has 3 types of costs:

1. Startup
2. Maintenance
3. Uplevel

Startup costs cover any investments required to get your dream off the ground. This might include equipment, training, or even moving to a specific city. A photographer may need to invest in a camera, a doctor needs to invest in education, and a director might move to Los Angeles to get connected with a community. Maintenance costs cover maintaining your dream. For example, a realtor may have to renew their license every four years. Or an actor may have to get their hair colored every few months. Uplevel costs cover investments that help you move up to a new level. Like a teacher getting their Masters to qualify for a higher level position, or an entrepreneur hiring a publicist to help them reach a larger audience.

I know money can be a scary thing, but it’s also an important part of making your dream into reality. Thinking of your dream as a business is going to make all the difference. You are the CEO of your dream so it’s time you took charge of it and steered it into the direction of fully realized.

Pillar #10: The Ruthless Bouncer

These pillars will put you on the path to success. I know they sound great in theory, but what about when real life happens?

The hardest part is not letting other people’s words break this wall down. Because the Negative Nancys are out there and they will voice their doubts in very convincing ways. That’s why you need to be ruthless about what you allow into your mind and energy. These pillars set you up for success and the moment you slip back into Nancy’s limiting beliefs, your success is delayed.

Here’s how your subconscious mind works: whatever is stored in there, your mind thinks is the absolute truth (kinda like those people who argue on the internet and aren’t capable of seeing any other side...they insist their opinion is right and everyone else is wrong). Let’s go back to the FedEx example. If your subconscious mind only sees the orange and purple letters, it believes that is the truth and nothing else exists. It doesn’t matter that the arrow and spoon do exist in the white space—if your mind only believes in the letters, it will only see the letters (until you show it proof). So the information stored in your subconscious will always be reflected back to you in your physical world. You’ll see whatever is stored in there.

You will always find what you’re looking for because your mind is wired to find proof that matches the “truth” inside it. Just like the FedEx logo, if you’ve stored “I’m not good enough” in your subconscious, it will be reflected back to you in your life. You’ll constantly have experiences that prove this to be true, that you’re not good enough. And it won’t just be random experiences that fall in your lap and confirm you’re not good enough. Your mind will actually lead you to create those moments.

The good news is that it works this way no matter what is in there. So if you believe that you are good enough, you’ll seek out experiences that prove that true. Can you see the importance of what is stored in your subconscious mind? It plays a significant role in your actions and the results you see. That’s why you need to be ruthless about what you allow in there.

Picture this: your subconscious mind is a club—an exclusive club with a bouncer at the door. There is music pumping and people (a.k.a. your thoughts) dancing, having a grand old time. It’s no wonder that everyone wants to get in there! But, alas, there is that huge bouncer standing outside the club, deciding who gets in. Guess who that bouncer is? It’s your conscious mind!

How does your conscious mind decide who gets into the hopping Subconscious Club? It’s all based on truth. Let’s play this out: Let’s say you’re hanging out with Nancy and Nancy says to you, “That dream you’re trying to go after is really hard. It probably won’t happen.” Oh Nancy, always with encouraging words, right?! Well, at that moment, you have a choice. You can choose to believe what Nancy said, or you can choose to reject it as truth. That’s your Conscious Bouncer dude, deciding if this statement gets to come into the party. If you decide what Nancy said is true, then it’s in! Past the ropes, no cover needed, in it goes! If you decide it’s not true, then it’s not getting in the club and you just won this round of Your Dream vs. Disbelievers. Wooooooo!

As you can see, your mindset is everything. Your beliefs are everything. Now that you have these 10 pillars, it’s imperative that you become ruthless about what else you allow in. You can do this. You are amazing. Your success is inevitable. Anything less is not comin’ in da club.

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