Success Curious explores the common challenges we all face in our careers, businesses and personal lives. It provides tangible and practical steps that set a clear path towards improvement for ordinary people. Photo: Supplied.
We need to take success off the pedestal that society puts it on because conjuring up an image that represents achievement varies. High performance is not reserved for the “special ones – the untouchables, the unbreakables”. Don’t listen when you’re told it’s simply not attainable for the ordinary person facing the trials and tribulations of real life.
Host of the High Performance Humans podcast and award-winning auctioneer Andy Reid challenges some of the common understanding around success that he thinks is well past its sell-by date. He offers alternative perspectives that may well make success feel that much more attainable, because as of right now the knowledge around accomplishment is falling on deaf ears, and it’s not your fault.
For anyone inquisitive about how you can become a high-performing human, Success Curious explores the common challenges we all face in our careers, businesses and personal lives. It provides tangible and practical steps that set a clear path towards improvement for ordinary people.
Reid understands what it takes to be a high performer: at 21 years of age, he was running a $13 million business, which led to a 20-year career in people-focused industries. He aims to help normal people do awesome things, enjoying challenging the standard way of thinking in the name of progress, to make success more accessible to more people.
In this thought-provoking book, Reid explores the concept of success and how to achieve it, often sharing his own vulnerability with comicality and humbleness. There is some straight shooting, but there’s hope of a new perspective that allows you to finally get past the excuses and onto a better path for your life.
“Success is a complex concept and means something different (even if slightly) to every person on the planet, making it hard to find advice that perfectly fits your vision,” Reid writes.
“We chase success, believing it will bring us happiness, yet we often struggle along the way. Buzzwords like ‘sacrifice’, ‘discipline’ and ‘consistency’ are thrown at us … via inspirational quotes that have undoubtedly been plagiarised and doctored from some poor Stoic back in ancient Greece. The harsh truth is that not many of us get to see our vision of success in real life.”
Sure, there are barriers to success. There are so many distractions and excuses for not making more from your life, so when you reach a certain age with standard family responsibilities, you could find yourself in a rut with a distinct lack of contentment, if not resentment, for the choices you have or haven’t made to that point.
Reid points out he wrote this book to simplify the journey towards your version of success, making it more attainable by bridging the gap between commonly known solutions and your current reality. He has interviewed lots of successful people from different disciplines and walks of life to uncover relatable elements and inspire you to ask: “Well, if they can do it, why can’t I?”
“This is where we hit a stick point, and it’s the question this book aims to address: if we know what it takes to be successful, see it constantly on social media, listen to all the audiobooks about it and hear motivational speakers talk about it constantly, then why aren’t we doing the stuff that we need to do?”
The author and real estate coach suggests a plan of attack.
“There is a gap not yet identified on an individual level and understanding it in our approach to success isn’t about placing blame. The gap is simply a reflection of how life and society have evolved without giving us time to question the status quo.”
Reid has divided the book into four parts: success, influence, connection and happiness, paying close attention throughout to human behaviour – both other people’s and his own. He takes a deeper-than-usual dive into the topic of success because most of the books and online programs don’t give you a depth of understanding that allows you to connect success to your life.
Then he looks at how you can better influence yourself and those around you without overstepping. Next, there’s focus on how you can build better connections within your version of success so you can anchor yourself to a better life in today’s world.
Last, he discusses how you can make sure you’re happy doing what you do, because there’s no point chasing success if you’re going to be miserable doing it!
Success Curious, by Andy Reid, Major Street Publishing, $32.99
