The 7 Key Decisions that Successful Women Make

I have always been intrigued by what successful people do differently whenever I've heard people say oh well you know that's really really hard or most people don't succeed at this or that that never deterred me I was always curious okay if 95 percent are struggling at this what are the five percent doing who are succeeding [Applause] [Music] welcome to the first episode of the successful women think differently podcast I'm Valerie Burton and I'm so so excited that you are with me you know we're going to talk today about what distinguishes the most successful women those who achieve their Vision rooted in their purpose conquer goals that might feel really difficult but tap into their sense of purpose and their gifts and their talents and the things that are really important to them what distinguishes that woman from the average person from someone who has similar gifts similar talents perhaps similar resources and background but somehow finds themselves falling short of similar goals we've all seen it before where you look at two people and you think wow this person isn't much more talented they might not even be more talented and yet I see them succeeding at higher levels there is one thing that distinguishes them and that's what we're going to talk about today but first in this episode in this very first episode I'm going to share a little bit of my background with you because I want to get you to get to know me uh I'm excited you're listening but I know you want to know who am I listening to and why is this her topic we're also going to talk about how I define success when I talk about successful what am I talking about and we're going to talk about how you might want to create your own definition or maybe even adapt the one that I use and of course we're going to talk about what's what separates successful women from others so be sure to stick around to the end because I'm going to talk about some very key decisions that really highlight that distinction so let's dive in I have always been intrigued by what successful people do differently whenever I've heard people say oh well you know that's really really hard or most people don't succeed at this or that that never deterred me I was always curious okay if 95 percent are struggling at this what are the five percent doing who are succeeding um I grew up in a military family I was born on a on an Air Force Base in North Florida we lived in West Germany when I was growing up moved to Colorado when I was in the fifth grade and and really still considered Denver to be where I grew up but I spent all my Summers down south where my parents are from in South Carolina and now I live in Atlanta along the way I also lived in California where I finished Community College before transferring to Florida State University then I lived in Dallas then Maryland just outside of DC and I have been in Atlanta for the last 13 years you know I um I've had a lot of experiences not just of success a lot of failure I spent my first year of college as a Cadet at the U.S Air Force Academy and that was a tough experience for me I spent the entire year on academic probation before figuring out this isn't this isn't my path that was um that was hard um I because I had failed there and failing as um I had made my parents so proud my dad the first time I uh when I let him know I had gotten into the academy was the first time I ever heard my dad cry um and so deciding to leave was was hard and I found myself overcompensating I don't know about you but um for a lot of people definitely myself included when you fail at something you can feel like you have something to prove even if nobody else is paying attention and that's what I did I rushed through college I went to three colleges in three states in three years and graduated at 20. but when you're overcompensating when you get to your Finish Line It's never enough you'll just keep pushing it out and that's what I did I went to grad school and I rushed through that too and woohoo at 21 I had a master's degree in journalism and I had just started to enjoy my journey um but I picked that up and and headed straight into my career moved to Dallas where I was in public relations started my own PR firm at 24 years old and within a few years though I realized like I'm good at this I'm a communicator but this isn't my passion and I wanted to know what I was here for um and I just started praying about it and it took a couple of years when I had an epiphany one day in a Barnes and Noble store during a journalism convention in Seattle and the Epiphany that I was that I was to inspire people women especially to live more fulfilling lives that I would do it through writing and speaking I was 26 years old uh when it happened what had happened was I was um I was running my business and I found that I was just not wanting to do the work like when you have your own company and it's going well and people want to give you you know have you do proposals for new business and you're like oh more business I didn't want more business because it wasn't the business that I wanted to be in and I knew that wasn't a good place but when I had that Epiphany in that bookstore um and I knew it was God it wasn't an audible voice I just sensed it it felt like the Holy Spirit saying this is what you are here for you're here to inspire people there are so many people like you who don't enjoy what they do who have no idea what they are here for and every single one of you is here for a reason and so it was pivotal I remember the exact day and when I had that Epiphany I remember running back to my hotel room and writing it down and within three weeks I started writing my first book uh it felt like the words were just flowing from the tip of my pen um as I wrote I actually wrote the first book all long hand believe it or not I still have the yellow uh yellow legal pads that I wrote my first book on I self-published it but I had a vision I knew I wanted a big publisher to pick it up that was the goal and that was the goal I reached and so that Epiphany was in 1999 amazingly I published the book within a few months wrote it in like two and a half months published it in a month started selling it had my eye on a big publisher and had that opportunity come about about seven months later when Random House bought the rights to that first book and released their own version of it in 2001 and since then I've been on fire I've written 13 books um I went back to grad school a second time when I discovered that you know all the writing and speaking I was doing in the inspiration I had discovered the field of coaching and I began wondering is there an academic foundation for this like is there science to back up the study of human flourishing and What Makes Us successful what helps us to be happier and to be more fulfilled and that's when I discovered applied positive psychology so I went back to school uh and uh earned a graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and began training personal and executive coaches in positive psychology-based coaching and started my company the coaching and positive psychology Institute in 2009 and we have trained coaches in every state in the U.S and at this point I think we're at 26 countries around the world um along the way I've had the opportunity to speak for hundreds of organizations all over the world I think I've spoken at this point on four continents um in just about every state and had the opportunity along the way to do a lot of media never became a journalist but certainly have had lots of opportunities on The Today Show and cable networks and major magazines and most recently over this last couple of years I've had the opportunity to serve as the coaching Mentor for Maxwell leadership that is John Maxwell's Maxwell leadership certified team with team members who are trainers and consultants and coaches and speakers in about 150 countries all over and so this has been an amazing journey professionally not always easy by any stretch as a matter of fact when I started out writing and speaking and you know I had been in public relations had my PR firm I sold my business when I had that Epiphany like this is what I'm going to do now and I thought in six months I'd be booked solid it was probably seven years before I was booked the way I thought that I would be but I I never regretted taking that leap of faith when you know there's something that you're meant to do the fear is always there but you never regret taking a bet on yourself and that's what I did but there have been a lot of disappointments and Dreams Deferred along the way um I dealt early on in my work with my mom's brain aneurysm one evening while we were talking on the phone a marriage that ended in divorce with no kids at age 36 when I had always pictured myself like okay I'm a gen xer and grew up on The Cosby Show and thought I would be clear Huxtable I really did I thought I was gonna be a lawyer with five kids um and there I was at 36. Divorced with no kids um wondering if the vision I had of a happy marriage and family would ever come together um and I knew between coaching and the positive psychology principles that I practice and my faith as a believer that I couldn't give up on my vision just as I took that leap of faith for um moving forward in a career that I knew was based on my purpose I knew that if in my heart this was my true desire I believed I could have the desires of my heart but it was hard it was a lot of tears and a lot of wondering am I being silly to actually believe that I can have this Vision that I really want um but I decided I'd rather feel silly and I'd rather risk disappointment then give up on the dream and so I believed it could be realized and it was in fact it was my it was my writing my career that brought me to my amazing husband he found my book that is the same name as this podcast successful women think differently you saw it on a rack at the Atlanta airport and he was like oh my gosh that's Val Val that I went to middle and high school with Val that I'm Facebook friends with and he tagged me in a selfie um and just wrote should I get this book and uh quite a few of our high school friends were like sure get it maybe you could be a successful woman too Jeff if you try hard enough uh but we figured out that although we grew up just outside of Denver that we were both living in metro Atlanta and we had lunch and the rest is history we married in 2013. and um my husband's a pilot and uh when we married I immediately became bonus mom to Sophie and Addie who were six and nine at the time and um and we immediately were like okay let's let's have a child and there came more disappointment um it just didn't it just didn't happen the way that we thought it would we tried we tried IVF we had miscarriage but we both had always had a um a desire in our heart that we would eventually adopt in fact we had planned that even as we were planning to have biological children and so we adopted our son when I was 42. uh he's in third grade now and we are a five-person blended multi-racial family and you know what I've learned through all this is a lot of times you have a vision and you think you know exactly how things are going to unfold but they don't always unfold exactly the way that you thought they would and yet they can still unfold beautifully I think that's the key to success in fact it's how I Define uh success that it's a Harmony of purpose resilience and joy and so here I am south of Atlanta on a 50 plus acre horse ranch with a dog and I'm not an animal person and now two cows that wandered onto my property maybe I'll tell you about that sometime [Laughter] a place that we got because it just fulfilled some dreams of our own um and what I know is that if you'll be bold enough and courageous enough to know number one that you have a purpose that success is possible for you even though it might not unfold exactly as you want you will be delighted at the things that can enter and come into your life and so this idea of how successful women think differently is huge and I'm excited to just share with you on this journey podcast a podcast the different ways that successful women think differently in different circumstances but in this first episode we're just going to talk about seven key decisions that every successful woman makes and when I say success I am talking about women who are rooted in purpose who are resilient understand how to bounce back again and again how to navigate challenges and even opportunities and have a joy joy that doesn't go away doesn't mean it's this kind of surface happiness but a way to just be grateful for the life that's in front of you so let's talk about what those seven key decisions look like I want you to imagine just for a moment two women Angela and Michelle I actually write about them in the very beginning of successful women think differently and they illustrate so well that oftentimes you can have two people two women similar backgrounds and even similar goals but they don't end up at the same place so Angela Michelle grew up together um their favorite pastime was decorating each other's rooms they were constantly moving furniture around painting doing things that just fulfilled their their creativity they both had a great creative Spirit um and they lost touch After High School both had gone off to college Michelle was actually the better student she ended up going to law school and was successful by most people's standards as a lawyer she's married she has twin girls but when they saw each other at their high school reunion Michelle felt a bit wistful because Angela had followed her passion Angela was doing interior designer design for a major home builder she seemed fulfilled in her relationships she just followed her path very organically um and Michelle couldn't tell whether that was easy or not but what she knew was that both of them had at one point wanted that same path but Michelle had taken what felt like a safer path um she often was concerned about what everyone else thought and law was something that her family had wanted her to do and now she felt stuck um she felt stuck in some ways and how she was showing up in her relationships as she was giving way too much for to her work and wanting to give more uh to her family um and the reunion was kind of a place that made her just kind of stop and pause it's also a really great illustration of something you know we often think that it's about knowing what steps to take um when it comes to success whatever your vision is let me just look at what so-and-so did but it really isn't just that because you can have someone with more intelligence that could have more resources they could have more connections but if when it's time to take the right steps or ask for the right help or make a move that's the opposite of what your family thinks or what you think everybody else wants for you if you aren't willing to do the hard thing in that moment knowing what steps to take doesn't really matter the truth of the matter is the most successful women actually think differently in the face of making decisions as they are faced with obstacles um as they are faced with opportunities and doubts pop up they make their decisions differently they actually say something different to themselves which is exactly what Angela had done along the way but there are specifically seven key decisions and these are key decisions I want to share with you today I want you to walk away with them I want you to think about what these look like for you in your life right now because you can have all the right steps you can study what someone else has done that has the goal has reached the goal that you want to reach um but if you don't study what they've said to themselves as they've made very difficult decisions or they were setting a goal or they were bouncing back from a failure or dealing with an adversity then you haven't really tapped into what it is that caused that level of success so there are seven key decisions or you can call them principles in everyday life that are absolutely key the first is the most successful women don't downsize their dreams and you probably know what I mean by that but it's the it's the English teacher that didn't actually want to teach they actually wanted to write but they wouldn't admit that was the real goal because they felt like I don't I don't know how to have what it is that I want so I'm going to downsize the dream now if you're the English teacher and that was your dream that's different but oftentimes we'll downsize it I did that for myself when I first started out went to journalism school I wanted to be a TV anchor and a news reporter but I never sent one tape to a newsroom I think about that and I don't believe ultimately that that's what my calling was supposed to be but I think about the fact that I had all the tools at my disposal and I downsized the dream and went into PR instead which Never Satisfied me what's the dream that you've buried is it time to dust It Off the most successful women don't downsize their dreams number two they focus on Solutions not problems we live in a world that bombards us with problems and problems are easy to talk about because you know negativity it's contagious sometimes it's juicy right and so it's easy to just talk over and over about what the problem is but the most successful women when faced with problems ask what's the solution to this problem because when we talk too much about a problem the problem becomes our focus and we lose sight of the vision because we're staring at the obstacle to the vision the solution is the vision the problem is the obstacle you've got to be clear yes I need to know what the problem is but I need to know what the problem is because that's the first step to being able to solve it not because I want to over focus on that problem number three they choose to be authentic they just choose to be themselves and they trust that that will be enough who you are is enough for what you are meant to accomplish believe that four they choose courage over fear this is huge because as you've probably noticed in your own life what typically Keeps Us stuck is some type of fear whether it's your fear of failure your fear of what someone else is going to think your fear of rejection whatever the case fear pops up when we're out of our comfort zone and so the most successful women always choose courage over fear they see the fear and they go okay I see you and this probably means I'm out of my comfort zone which probably means I'm on the right path because I'm stretching and I'm growing number five they choose relationships wisely and they nurture them intentionally success means not going it alone there is no extra badge of honor for doing it all by yourself and in fact there's no fun in doing it all by yourself we don't learn and grow doing it all by ourselves and we fool ourselves to think that we can do it all by ourselves we don't need to be Superwoman and so being intentional about your relationships one of my just favorite pieces of positive psychology research is around the fact that happiness is contagious and so just having one happy person in your network of friends boosts your happiness significantly and so that means sometimes um pruning some of those toxic friendships it means limiting sometimes our conversation with people who are not encouraging uh to us or just aren't trying to move in a better Direction um but also nurturing the good relationships or nurturing the ones that are so important to you but in our current culture can be easy to miss right easy to miss the difference between meaningful stuff and the false urgencies that are constantly causing calling for your attention number six the most successful women actively seek feedback and use it to grow now this one can be hard because if you're like me and your core fear is rejection or disapproval you might not want all the feedback that you need you know what I'm saying sometimes we get feedback and it's not constructive feedback you know you can get destructive feedback where people say things in ways that don't feel good but those who are most successful look for the grain of truth even in the negative feedback because what they're looking for is how can I get better how can I get to the goal how can I improve what feedback are you seeking and are you using it to grow and how might you use it to grow and then number seven and I've hit on this multiple times in this podcast but they know their purpose and they take daily action towards their Vision you are here for a purpose and your purpose answers this question how is someone's life better when they cross paths with you there is a way that this world is better because you're here there are gifts you have talents you have there are experiences that you have that are met to make a difference for the people who cross paths with you and even the people you don't actually see every single day you never know when you're operating in your purpose just how much that purpose is going to have a butterfly effect in the world but your job is to figure out what that purpose is mine is inspiring others to live more fulfilling lives yours might be around teaching or entertaining or connecting people or solving problems or making you know complicated things seem easy to figure out for people you know what it is for you but if you're going to be successful purposes at the core I've I've coached some people that have succeeded on levels that are Beyond Comprehension for most sometimes even for myself and I've been amazed to see people succeed at levels that our world says are phenomenal they've made multi-multi-millions of dollars started multiple companies and lean over and say to me I don't think I found my purpose yet and when that's the case there's always a hole there's always this feeling that my work is not done yet I want to get to the end of my life and here well done my good and faithful servant I want to know mission was accomplished what is your mission if you answer that question what's my mission how are people's lives better when they cross paths with me and then you get about the business of doing it success will follow so that's it those are the seven key decisions I so appreciate you joining me for this first episode of the successful women think differently podcast I want you if nothing else that you take away walk away coaching yourself with that question how are people's lives better when they cross paths with you whatever it is I guarantee you when you do it you're gonna feel even more alive you're gonna feel that sense of joy and you will be able to persevere even when things don't go perfectly because you know that you're living on purpose and think about those seven key decisions are you willing to adapt them as your own which one stands out like is there one that was your favorite or one that really kind of convicts you to think um yeah I need that shift that would make a difference for me so you can make that commitment to the seven key decisions just click the link in the show notes go to valerieburton.com forward slash seven decisions and you can download them and I have them as an agreement so you can sign that agreement to yourself post it where you will be reminded of those seven key decisions on a regular basis and just kind of see it as a pledge and a commitment to True success that Harmony of purpose and resilience and joy thank you so much for joining me for this first episode of the successful women think differently podcast I cannot wait to see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Valorie Burton

Views: 24,866

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Id: X4q57jToQZo

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2023