My friends, in life, you’re either progressing, or you’re going backward.
Even if you think you’re standing still, you’re not.
Life doesn’t stand still, and I don’t want you to.
I want you to embrace your potential and step into your greatness.
Don’t you want that too? Of course, you do!
Today, I’m here to help as we talk about the progress catalyst and how to improve your life and business.
Welcome back to the blog! My name’s Kenny Chapman.
Let’s get into how we can make ourselves progress!
What Is The Progress Catalyst?
I’m super pumped today to be talking to you today about the progress catalyst.
It’s critical that we acknowledge, honor, and really understand how powerful progress is to the success of our lives.
And I don’t mean the success of just a financial measurement or a certain level of emotional stability.
While those things are certainly important in life, what I’m talking about is a little bit of a deeper level.
It’s where you get down to certain measurements that create the happiness that you have in your life.
Joy And Happiness Aren’t The Same
I was recently doing a webinar training for a group of clients, and I was talking about joy and happiness.
Let me tell you: the joy and happiness in my world that I live in, they’re not the same thing.
You might be challenged by what you read here today.
You know, Webster says that they’re similar, but I want you to challenge that.
I just want you to think about something for a minute:
I believe that I can operate overall in a state of joy and be filled with joy in my life, but not be super happy in a given moment.
What do I mean by that?
Well, I’m a joyful person.
I operate with joy.
I operate with bliss,
And I believe in operating with ease, joy, bliss, and glory in my life.
But that doesn’t mean that I just, you know, dance through the daisies all day or sit in the Lotus position on top of a mountain with a sun shining on my back all day long, right?
That’s not what we’re talking about.
What we’re talking about is that joy has kind of an overall operating system for me.
I am grateful to be alive.
I’m grateful to have the opportunity to play the game of life however long I get to play it on this planet.
Thank You 2020!
I’m grateful for the lessons that I was taught in 2020 from the COVID era and the pandemic and the behaviors that I learned of how people operate during stressful times and during challenging times.
I told you I was challenging your mentality, right?
Who in their right mind would be grateful for that dumpster fire of a year?
Even when things are at their darkest and most challenging, we can still find something to learn, some way to improve, and some way to make (there’s the word) progress.
I got to see it show up in myself, my emotions, those around me, those closest to me, I’m grateful for all those things.
Therefore I was very joyful through 2020.
That doesn’t mean that there weren’t challenges or fears or uncertainties.
There was even unhappiness.
To my mind, joy is a state of action, a mode of being, or a choice mentality.
Happiness is the satisfaction or bliss from life and purpose.
Happiness And Progress
I believe that progress is directly tied to happiness.
I believe that the more progress that we have, the happier we can become.
When I say progress, it doesn’t mean that I’m just marching down the field of life, and I’m constantly accomplishing.
I’m constantly driving.
Here at Leadership In A Nutshell, we’re sharing time together because we’re trying to make sense out of this driven mind that you and I have been blessed with, but sometimes it can feel like a curse because my mind’s always running.
I’m always thinking about what’s next.
Therefore, I need good rituals, good routines.
I need to meditate to slow my mind down.
I need to journal to get out of my subconscious and really understand consciously what the programs are that I’ve been running for a long period of time.
Today, I want to really just challenge you to think at a deeper level.
The Progress Catalyst Tool And How To Improve Your Life
I want to give you this lesson I learned and have been using and sharing with people all over, starting with my time and the people over at Blue Collar Success Group.
I taught it in an acceleration event that we did back when live events were allowed.
This is a tool that we use called the progress catalyst.
If you want this tool, feel free to shoot me an email at kenny@kennychapman.com.
I’d be happy to get you a copy of this tool, but basically, I’m going to give you the questions that exist in this tool anyway today.
Read, re-read, and write them down.
Let’s progress together!
Humans Need Progress
I believe Tony Robbins said it right when he said that there are certain needs of humans.
I believe that one of those needs is progress.
Evolution is a part of what it means to be alive, to be human.
Don’t get mad at me for this; I’m not necessarily talking about the scientific discussion of evolution.
When I say evolution, I mean constantly evolving as a person, as a mind, as a being on the planet, and understanding what it means to be the next version of yourself that you were put here to be.
Progress.
All progress begins with telling the truth.
I don’t know where that first came up or where I first heard that, but I know in my life, when I’m not telling myself the truth, I can’t fix anything.
I can’t change anything or write any wrongs or improve upon any inefficiencies.
If I’m telling myself a story that’s not true, it’s going to be hard to make progress.
Today, as I share the progress catalyst, I’m just going to share a few different questions with you.
Write these down as we go through this.
Here are the questions to ask yourself.
#1 Where Am I Experiencing The Most Progress Right Now?
In your life, if I want to be a catalyst to my progress, I need to ask: where am I experiencing the most progress right now?
Go ahead and write that down.
You are always making progress, even if you don’t think you are.
Here’s a hint if you’re lost when looking at yourself:
Where do you feel the most “pain” or struggle?
This challenging feeling may be telling you that you’re pushing or need to push yourself in this area.
#2 What Makes This Important?
Why is it important to have this progress?
What’s important about moving the needle forward here?
Get personal and real on an individual level about this progress you’re making or feeling pushed to make.
You should also look at your primary purpose to give you motivation.
#3 What Is Supporting The Progress?
What is the support that I have?
What is supporting the progress of me moving forward?
Look at what you have and what you need.
#4 Maximize Your Momentum
Then I go into maximizing momentum.
So we have progress.
We want to continue to get it.
And the more progress we get, we actually start building momentum.
If I think about maximizing momentum, then I’m able to ask questions like how can I create more of this progress that’s being supported and is important to me?
When you think about momentum maximization, you’re thinking: how can I create even more progress?
#5 What’s Something I Need To Do To Create More Progress?
Then last, and certainly not least:
Are there any additional actions that I could take?
What’s something that I need to do now in order to create even more progress?
Are there any key individuals involved or any people that would be able to help me accomplish what I want to accomplish with this?
Look at these questions, and you’ll begin to see what path you need to take and what people you need to help you.
It’s simple but harsh. It takes honesty and reflection, but it will absolutely change your life, my friends.
Progress Equals Happiness
It’s super important to take a look at this from a progress standpoint and realize that progress equals happiness.
If I want to fuel my happiness, then I want to fuel my progress.
I’ve talked about the unique advantage of the growth mindset.
One of the things that we know from a growth mindset is that it focuses on the power, belief, and mentality of progress.
I make progress when I fail.
Let that land for a moment.
My friend, I actually make progress when I fail.
I didn’t just figure out something from nothing.
It took failure and action, and learning.
Watch Out For Progress And Life Suckers
Now, one of the big points of progress in understanding what’s sucking the life out of me too.
One of the things that we do with clients is to have them look at where they’re getting the life sucked out of you.
What is creating a drain on your time, on your energy, on your momentum, on your progress? Then we kind of flip-flop this exercise and ask the same questions from a different standpoint.
What is really not serving me right now?
Where am I feeling the most drain, or what’s sucking the life out of me the most right now?
It can be relationships, tasks, work, financial situations, or anything.
Where am I feeling and experiencing the most drained?
What is this costing me?
Maybe your biggest drain is communicating with your teenager. A lot of people struggle with that.
How is that cost showing up? What does it cost in the long run?
I’m not suggesting ditching your kid. That’s ridiculous.
But if you look at these places, you’ll see things that need a change because they’re making you stop your progress in other areas.
Or maybe it’s a place you can make some progress and then leverage that progress for the rest of your life.
On a side note, you may also find it helpful to look at gap management and how to move toward your goals.
Look At Your Struggles
Financial struggles are one of these life suckers too.
You may say:
Man, I’m just drained every time I think about my financial situation.
I’m frustrated.
I’m annoyed with it.
What is that costing me in terms of stress affecting my health?
What does it cost me when it comes to sleep?
And what does it cost me with my close relationships, and how I make every decision based on money?
Identify any blockers.
Think about what blockers are holding you back from fixing this.
What are the blockers that are stopping you from operating?
I know I’ve had different times in my career, different businesses that I’ve built where certain tasks or activities just turned into a drain.
It took time, but I stopped myself and asked:
What am I doing?
Why am I still doing this?
Identify yours and figure it out.
Get it out of your way and make it better, so it goes back to progress from telling the truth.
That’s all you’re doing.
You’re just telling yourself the truth around something.
A Small Exercise
I remember my own personal coach gave me an exercise around certain speaking events.
I was doing certain client work that I was doing, and it was draining me.
He told me to make a list.
Why is this happening? How do I feel? What needs to happen to make this better?
Well, heck, I’d have to reevaluate my schedule.
I’d have to off-board some clients. I’d have to do some different things in different ways.
Now we get to the action.
List three things you could do right now to stop this drain, to eliminate the suck of energy or Zen or whatever.
Do those things, watch the sucking drain away, and the progress bring you happiness.
Final Thoughts
How do you improve your life and business?
Become your own progress catalyst.
Reflect and ask yourself where you need or are progressing, figure out why it’s important to you, look at what supports you, maximize your momentum with action, and look at what you need to keep going.
Get rid of the things that suck away your life and progress and make your life move.
Step into your greatness, my friends.