Moment 22 - How To Turn Your Ambition Into Action: Jamil Qureshi

00:03If someone has an ambition to be something, if they have the ambition to be, you know, a sports star, I know you've worked with a lot of athletes and you've worked with business people or they want to start a business, what you tend to see and what I tend to see in my inbox is a lot of people with intention, but there seems to be something preventing that intention from turning into action or like behaviour. Into an achievement. Yeah. Yeah, and I think turning ambition into achievement is the key because most people will have good intentions.

00:32Most people will be wishing and hoping to be better. But there's a big difference between wishing and hoping and believing and executing upon it. So I think that the people who genuinely execute on it probably want it more for a start. And that's the key. No one's ever wandered around the bottom of a mountain and then simply found themselves at the top. It does take that determination, the resilience. it does take the ability to execute upon ideas to drive success.

00:58So I think the key is the desire, which is fueled by having a purpose, a mission, a vision towards what that end goal should look like. A lot of people can't quite, they say one thing. They say that their purpose is to go to the gym, for example. We all say one thing and do the other. Yeah, and why is that? Because it's sometimes hard to distinguish with someone whether that's their real sort of desire or whether they're kind of like virtue signaling to themselves that they want to be something or you know they want to start that business or become an entrepreneur be you know get a six-pack but then their actions show that quite a different story so i always wonder that with my some of my friends i always think are they do they actually want that or are they just it's very easy to say that this is what i'm after and much harder to do it and i think one of the reasons why is because um we have to invest we self-invest so we probably all know these um kids at school who are great footballers at 14 15 you think you know what they're going to make it they're just brilliant they're going to make it um or great track athletes at 12 you know and you just think they're special but they don't make it and the reason why

02:08they don't make it is they don't self-invest so the people who make it are the ones who um will get up on a rainy friday morning get up on a rainy saturday morning to go and practice whilst their mates are in bed the ones who will practice on a friday night when their mates are out drinking and so talent is not enough i tell you need talent plus teachability so talent plus the ability to be open-minded agile in our thinking to commit to practice and turn that practice into something which develops our talent even further so there's lots of people with talent in business lots of people with talent and sport um but i guess that we need to be open-minded enough to invest in how we practice our talent to become successful so you know there's no there's no substitute for practice you know i get lots of golfers who say to me that yeah can you make me better yeah and you know the number one golfer in the world will practice more than any any amateur you know and you know there lies the truth but you know we need to we need to apply ourselves in a particular manner and so we need to be practical about how we exercise our talent and you create good feedback loops to understand what we're doing gain better personal introspection

03:19and self-awareness to allow us to use our talents differently how do you give someone that purpose though like i'm trying to think like so we know we know practice is like so incredibly important to master something but my i guess my question is um how would you give someone that motivation because i i i guess you you can't give someone purpose a lot of us spend so much of our lives trying to to motivate people right to motivate friends families you know siblings whatever it might be and i'm wondering if there's a thing we can do as like loving friends or whatever to to give someone that kick yeah so i mean a couple of points i guess on that in regard to discovering purpose um it can't be done for someone so i always say purpose is never achieved it's attained on a daily basis so the mistake that people make with purpose is they confuse it with an end goal so here's my purpose and they have this vision statement of what they're seeking to you know um achieve or create whatever it might be and get practical and tangible about it but purpose isn't that purpose is achieved on a daily basis that um sorry purpose is never achieved it's attained on a daily basis and this is why tiger woods keeps working this is why

04:30warren buffett keeps working it's why richard branson keeps working it's because it's never achieved it's attained on a daily basis so i think that you know we need to find something which is purposeful to us and then we need to lose ourselves to it on a regular basis so once we start to become more purpose-driven and express ourselves in a particular way i would say being a good colleague being a good business leader being a good sports person is not seeking to impress it's about seeking to express and be ourselves in the context of our work so once people can find that within themselves then I think they can direct their energy and their focus in a particular way and become much more purpose-driven in how they go about their daily activities but you can't give someone that purpose it has to be theirs and I think life is about timing I think some people find that very late some people find that very early and it makes no difference we're all individuals in regard to helping other people make change we're almost too quick to go towards behaviors so we tell people to be different all the time tell our team members you should be more collaborative guys and guys you need to be more innovative and tell our children to keep their

05:40rooms tidy so we're constantly talking to people about behaviors say to our friends that you should give up smoking or be healthier whatever it might be the only way in which you change actions is by changing thoughts so we think and then we feel and then we act that's how we work so if you're constantly working on actions we're telling people to be different and this is why new year's resolutions fail from tomorrow i'll be different start doing this i'm going to stop doing that we start talking about actions and behaviors um we need to go back to the um to the precursor of all our actions which is our thoughts so the only way in which you genuinely drive commitment rather than compliance when it comes to change in your team in your friends you know in yourself is by changing the words and pictures in your head or their head to drive different feelings and own different actions there's um uh there's a little tip which i sometimes i give leaders and i said leaders never say to your team you're going to make a change you say to your team you're going to make a change they won't like it um say to your team i'd like to try an experiment they'll all they'll all be on board with it and um we'll give that a go that's okay so even just a difference

06:46in language to allow someone to think differently or make them feel differently and hopefully therefore choose to act in a different manner and how how would i get someone to change their thoughts yeah so anyone in mind you know um i think um i think the best way is gamification um what holds people in place is what they believe to be true and then so um so people will sit around a boardroom table and they'll discuss strategy and they'll say you know look you know we can do this but we can't do that and they'll have a viewpoint on budgets on consumer buying behaviours, on compliance and governance. And that's what holds us in place. So what we need to do is break free of some of the parameters that we think are in the way. So if we've got people around the boardroom table and say, look, guys, that's just this strategy piece that we're going to talk about. Let's imagine we've got an unlimited marketing budget for it. If we had an unlimited marketing budget for it, I know we haven't, but if we had, what would we be doing?

07:44How would we be doing it? You know, if we had no marketing budget, what would we be doing? now what we're doing here is that we are helping people to move outside of the mental tram lines that we all operate under and under habitual thinking so let's ask some what if questions can you imagine that you know a life if you weren't smoking what would it look like what would you be doing today if you weren't smoking what would you spend your money on that you save on cigarettes just play the game of what if so let's break free of some of the things which are holding people in place by um not by conflict not by arguing and and debate in a confrontational manner but finding some common ground and working from there and a common ground is let's play a game