Chapter 14

Approach Greatness

If you’re like most people, you aspire to greatness. You don’t just want a good career, you want one that provides tremendous satisfaction and financial rewards. You don’t want to settle for an okay relationship, you want one that is enormously fulfilling. It may be that greatness, like perfection, is impossible to achieve. Approaching greatness, however, is a fair goal and one that coaching facilitates.

Approaching greatness means being the best you can be. It is hard work. There are obstacles. There must be accountability and humility. It is usually impossible to achieve it without assistance from others, including a coach. It’s much easier to settle for being pretty good or average. Yet an astonishing number of people seek greatness in various areas of their lives. I suspect that you have these aspirations or you wouldn’t have picked up this book; you would have been content to remain in therapy and not achieve your most ambitious goals. Perhaps your motivation involves the challenging times in which we live. As the economy toughens, violent conflicts between countries continue, and global warming accelerates, you become aware of the precariousness of existence and become focused on doing the best you can in the time you have. You may become fed up with the materialistic tendencies and trends out there and seek to simplify your life. Or you may seek a spiritual connection as the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. Whatever the motivation, you are driven to excel in one or many spheres to counteract the problems and challenges that arise.

Seeking greatness comes in many forms. You have to define what exactly it is for yourself, and your definition will probably be quite different from that of anyone else. As discussed, you need to examine your life in all eleven spheres and see what strengths and weaknesses you wish to optimize. This examination starts you on the road to greatness.