Ep. 022: How to Begin Your Personal Transformation in 2017 — with John Benzick

Do you seek new growth opportunities?  Are you frustrated with seeing only incremental change, at best, in your personal or professional life? In this episode, John Benzick introduces the topic of “leverage points,” and how they can help revolutionize your productivity, satisfaction and achievement.  He offers a simple 5-minute assignment to help you envision radical growth possibilities for you in the New Year. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Episode Transcript: Greetings Product Launch Rebels, Happy New Year, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. I am your host, John Benzick, the founder of VS, the website that helps you double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Today is a short but hopefully impactful podcast episode. I have a simple message that may transform your entrepreneurial — and maybe even personal — results this year. And that message is about identifying and then leveraging your number one strength to an audience that will reward you for it. It’s the beginning of the new year, and I don’t know about you, but I often get quiet around this time of year, because I think of my past year and how I can improve in the new year. I just think that life is amazing, and I don’t want to waste another year by not being self-aware or not pursuing things that are meaningful and purposeful, or to miss out on life’s opportunities. In fact, I don’t want to waste one minute of my life, and I’m sure you don’t either. So at the beginning of each new year, I think about the things that are bothering me in both my professional and personal aspects, and I develop plans on how to overcome those struggles. And the funny thing is, those struggles seem to re-occur over and over from year to year. They happen so many times, in fact, that I’ve often thought about giving up on my quest to overcome these weaknesses or burdens. But about 5 years ago, on that topic, I asked some friends if they ever abandon their goals for the year, and nearly all of them said that they do abandon them and no longer set goals for the year. And that really struck me. I felt sad that my friends gave up on their goals. So now, ever since then, I think to myself, you know, I’m not going to give up on my struggles, the things that are holding me back, I’m going to continue working on these things that are bothering me, through heck or high water. Even if I continue to fall short of my expectations on them. And actually, what has quietly inspired me to do this, really, is my Christian belief system. And I believe that God wants me to keep working on the things that I struggle with, even though I might fall short in doing so. And I don’t think that he wants me to give up (because he doesn’t give up on me), so I’ve chosen to not give up, despite my seemingly chronic weaknesses or issues that consistently hold me back. In fact, I love stories of not just incremental improvements that people make in their own lives, but the transformational stories of people’s lives. I just think that that takes so much courage and commitment to experience something like that, something that I probably will never experience, but secretly and quietly hope to. And I think each of us, whether we’re conscious of it or not, strives for some sort of personal transformation. There’s a great book that I read a couple years ago called Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks by August Turak, and it suggested that idea, that every person aims for some sort of transformation, to be connected to a mission that’s bigger than themselves. And I sort of bought into that idea. It really impacted me. So if you’re a growth-oriented person, do you seek incremental growth