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

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. It’s fair to say that most people possess ambition, yet almost all of those people fail to turn it into the required action to achieve. So it begs the question, why do we fail to act upon our ambitions? I put this question to the World Leading Psychologist and High Performance Coach Jamil Qureshi. Not only is his answer incredibly compelling, but it could be the key to unlocking your full potential. Episode 61 - https://g2ul0.app.link/3m9ExluWnjb Jamil: https://twitter.com/jamil_qureshi?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamil-qureshi-494661a/?originalSubdomain=uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  If 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.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Into an achievement.

• 0:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that, you know, turning ambition into achievement is the key because, you know, most people will have good intentions, most 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. So I think the key is the desire, which is fuelled by having a purpose, a mission, a vision towards what that end goal should look like.

• 1:07Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people can't quite, they say one thing, they say that their, their purpose is to go to the gym, for example.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  We all say one thing and do the other.

• 1:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and why, 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 signalling 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 wondered that with my, some of my friends, I always think, are they, do they actually want that, or are they just?

• 1:43Speaker 01

  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 we have to invest, we self-invest. So we probably all know these kids at school who are great footballers at 14, 15, and you think, you know what, they're going to make it, they're just brilliant, they're going to make it. Or great track athletes at 12, and you know, and you just think, they're special, but they don't make it. And the reason why they don't make it is they don't sell. Invest. So the people who make it are the ones who will get up on a rainy Friday morning, get up on a rainy Saturday morning to go and practise whilst their mates are in bed. The ones who will practise on a Friday night when their mates are out drinking.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  And so talent is not enough. I tell them you need talent plus teachability. So talent plus the ability to be open minded, agile in our thinking, to commit to practise and turn that practise into something which develops our talent even further. So there's lots of people with talent in business, lots of people with talent in sport. But I guess that we need to be open minded enough to invest in how we practise our talent to become successful. So, you know, there's no, there's no substitute for practise. I get lots of golfers who say to me that, yeah, can you make me better? And, you know, the number one golfer in the world will practise more than any amateur. You know, and, you know, their lies are truths, but, you know, we need to, we need to apply ourselves in a particular manner.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  And so we need to be practical about how we exercise our talent. You create good feedback loops to understand what we're doing. We gain better personal introspection and self-awareness to allow us to use our talents differently.

• 3:23Steven Bartlett?

  How do you give someone that purpose though? Like, I'm trying to think like, so we know, we know practise is like so incredibly important to master something. But my, I guess my question is, how, 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.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean, a couple of points, I guess, on that. In regard to discovering purpose, it can't be done for someone. So I always said, 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 have this vision statement of what they're seeking to, you know, 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, some purpose is never achieved, it's attained on a daily basis. And this is why Tiger Woods keeps working. This is why Warren Buffett keeps working. It's why Richard Branson keeps working. It's because it's a never achieved, it's attained on a daily basis. So I think that, you know, we need to find

• 4:38Speaker 01

  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 always 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

• 5:21Speaker 01

  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 behaviours. 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 rooms tidy. So we're constantly talking to people about behaviours. 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. And we

• 6:05Speaker 01

  start talking about actions and behaviours. We need to go back 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 then different actions.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  As a little tip which I sometimes give leaders, and I said to 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. Say to your team, I'd like to try and experiment. They'll all be on board with it. And we'll give that a go. That's okay. So even just a difference in language to allow someone to think differently, or make them feel differently and hopefully therefore choose to act in a different manner.

• 6:53Steven Bartlett?

  And how would I get someone to change their thoughts?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you've got anyone in mind.

• 6:59Steven Bartlett?

  I have.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  You know, I think the best way is gamification. What holds people in place is what they believe to be true. And so people are sitting around a boardroom table and they'll discuss strategy. And I'll say, 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 a boardroom table and say, look, guys, there'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? How would we be doing

• 7:45Speaker 01

  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 the habitual thinking. So let's ask them what if questions. Adam, can you imagine that, you know, a life if you weren't smoking? Adam, what would it look like? Adam, what would you be doing today if you weren't smoking? What'd you spend your money on that you save on cigarettes? Adam, just play the game of what if. So let's break free of some of the things which are holding people in place by, not by conflict, not by arguing and debate in a confrontational manner, but finding some common ground and working from there. And the common ground is, let's play a game.