AIM for Success!

AIM: Aspiration; Inspiration; and Motivation.
These are three key elements we need to fire up in order to improve our drive for success.

It all starts with Aspirations. We need to understand what people aspire too.

Whilst we might not know what their true individual aspirations are, e.g. they want to be a rock star, or heavyweight boxing champion, a model, rich etc.

One thing I am sure of, is that there are some common basic Aspirations shared by most of us. Our desire to be happy, healthy, loved, etc.

One of those basic Aspirations is to be valued, to feel that we have done a
good days work, that we have contributed. Once we understand and accept that then, we can look to start to fire their Aspiration by inspiring them.

We create Inspiration by creating a vision of success: what would success look like; what success would feel like; how they would feel when successful.

We inspire them by showing them how they can achieve this success: by providing them with a realistic plan; by providing them with right the tools and resources; by building the belief that they can achieve it.

With Inspiration creating the visions is easy, the hardest part is giving them belief that they can be successful. We need to overcome their doubts, lack of confidence, maybe even their previous track record of under achievement.

Once we have created the Inspiration; a compelling vision with strong belief that it can be achieved, then we need to start with Motivation.

Motivation comes through showing progress towards our goal; this increases the belief that success is possible, which then in turn increases Inspiration.

In addition to showing progress, we need to reward and recognise this progress, this then builds the feeling that we are valued, that we are doing a good job, which in turn then feeds our Aspirations.

If we can better understand the importance of Aspiration, Inspiration and Motivation, how they interact and influence each other, the impact they have on out teams, then we can look to better use them to achieve success.

We need to feed and fuel all three of these items.

Aspiration is the most important, without Aspiration you have nothing to motivate towards.
Inspiration is the most difficult to create.
Motivation is the easiest part, providing you have the both Aspiration and Inspiration.

In many cases we just focus on Motivation, which is good, but in order to achieve maximum potential we need to feed all three.

If we can do that, then we can improve our AIM for Success.