Achieving Life & Career Success

By Dennis J. Sobotka

The Achieving Life & Career Success shares the 7 step process that provides a specific step-by-step method to create your own customized written life success plan. This personalized success plan is unique and powerful with results that have delivered significant life and career changes.

These products can be used by individuals or groups interested in using the correct tools to define and achieve their success. Sponsorship of these products by companies or organizations can increase their recognition and involvement in their community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Achieving Success Press
• Release date: Feb 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524289652

Book preview

FOREWORD

Dr. Brian Harris

Founder & Chairman, the Partnering Group

I write this Foreword to this book with a lot of pride and joy. I have known Dennis Sobotka since 1990 and have admired his work in all the areas of his endeavors. Since that time he and I have travelled the world together as business partners and friends and I have come to regard him as a brother. I have crossed paths with many amazing people in my personal and business life but I have met no one with the combination of professional and personal qualities of Dennis. His consistent ability to balance the important dimensions of his life’s journey, his business career, his charitable giving back and his family are exemplary. He can teach us all a lot about the secrets of Achieving Life and Career Success. I am very pleased that he has decided to share his ideas and experiences through the writing of this book.

Elements of Success

The book provides a path for success and especially the blending of key elements required for success in life. We all strive for success but define it in different ways. It is an elusive term and in today’s world of over-hyped celebrities it is easy to become confused, and even mislead, as to its real meaning. I have always believed that the way to better understand what success means lies in three areas. First is the choice of suitable role models whose accomplishments and qualities provide an inspiring example for us and help define a path to the goal of success for us. Second is the need to understand the elements that blend together to make up the true meaning of success. Success happens when we achieve goals for each element and accomplish the right balance among these elements as we go through life. And third is the willingness to do, as a mentor of mine once told me, a brutal self-assessment to uncover where your strengths and weaknesses are and to set goals that can systematically close the most important gaps in your capabilities and qualities. Dennis’ book provides sound and practical guidance for addressing each of these three areas. It is a must read for anyone striving to develop and live a more balanced and successful life.

Importance of a Life Plan

Dennis has often called me his mentor. But as I’ve found out in my own journey, mentoring always goes both ways. The mentor learns just as much, if not more, from the mentee. This has certainly been the case in my 25 year relationship with Dennis. Let me illustrate this in a couple of ways. When I first met Dennis he was building a very successful career path with a highly respected supermarket retailer in upstate New York. I was asked by the company to bring in a new approach I had developed for how to manage a retailer’s buying and merchandising functions. Dennis was appointed to be the project leader for my consulting work. At the time the new methods were becoming recognized by leading retailers around the world as the next generation of methods in these areas. Dennis confided in me that he had a ten year life plan and believed that part of his plan was to use his experience and knowledge to help other companies and their managers raise their performance and success levels. He asked me whether I would consider him joining with me to accomplish this goal of his. For the next 25 years that is what we have done together all around the world. But the lesson to share is that what gave him the guidance to make such a bold career move was the fact that he had a comprehensive and well thought out ten year plan as the path to success. Since then Dennis has shared two additional ten year plans with me and his decisions have been guided by these plans. Among the many valuable contributions of this book is that it provides us with a checklist of the key elements of a personal and professional ten year plan.

The Challenge of Balance

One of the biggest challenges we all face as we strive for success in our lives is how to achieve the right balance among our personal, family and professional endeavors. While there is no easy answer for most of us one of the secrets is to try to use similar approaches in each of these areas. If we have no synergy across these areas it is a lot more difficult to achieve a balance. Dennis has provided me and us with an excellent example of how to improve the likelihood of a successful balanced life. He has applied the methodology of his ten year planning approach to how he manages both his professional consulting career and even more impressively to how he has managed his charitable giving back and family activities. I remember how impressed I was when I learned about his Achieving Life and Career Success charity work especially the programs he conducted with young prison inmates who are preparing for life after their release. As expected, Dennis’ methodology was to teach these young people how to develop a practical plan for their next phase of their lives. This was the same approach he used for his own career and life plan. By involving his wife Patricia and their children in his Achieving Life and Career Success seminar work he has also shown them, both by example and method, the value of developing and following a plan for life. As with any long lasting relationship, the boundary between mentor and mentee is a blurred one as the value of the mutual benefits becomes clear. Whether you strive to be a better mentor or mentee, Dennis’ advice in this book gives us some important guidance for achieving success in this element of our lives.

Creating and Maintaining a Living Life Success Plan

While having a plan with its inherent goals is an obvious requirement for success whether it be within an organization or as an individual, it is not enough to ensure that these goals are accomplished. As we have seen many times during our consulting work, a plan achieves nothing if it sits on the shelf and if it is a project that has to be completed. A good plan is a document that lives. It guides one’s actions on a day-to-day basis. It is a living document. Its value is sustained because it is a source of continual learning. It provides a picture of what success looks like and what is required to get there. Several steps of Dennis’ book provide important insights for what is needed to keep your plan connected to reality. Step 4 emphasizes the key role of being disciplined in the light of the many distractions we face as we move through life. It also highlights the importance of having gratitude for the gifts we have received. Good goals take shape through creative visualization, the ability to imagine what the accomplishment of a goal will look like and the path to achieving the goal. On a number of occasions over the years as Dennis and I have been challenged by especially difficult consulting assignments, it has been Dennis’ ability to creatively visualize the outcome that has led us to the right recommendation. The practical insights into how to use this technique that are described in the book are a very valuable contribution to defining a path to success. Finally, true success is based on a lifetime of learning. This starts with the realization that the fastest way to expand one’s level of knowledge is to realize how little we know. This inspires us to tap into the knowledge of others who have expertise in areas either directly related to our plan or areas that can extend our horizons in a synergistic way. These are the mentors and role models in our life. I have been amazed with the diversity of thinkers that Dennis has tapped into to expand his personal knowledge over the years. It has truly given him insights that are beyond the normal curve of expanded thinking. The book offers us advice as to how we can acquire new knowledge as we follow the Odyssey of Learning in our own lives.

A Practical Path for Success

Achieving Life and Career Success is a must read for anyone in search of a balanced and successful (in the true meaning of the word) life. It presents a unique blend of the attitudes, the disciplines, the creativity and the tools that are needed to achieve the true meaning and feeling of success. Dennis Sobotka is a living example of the power of these elements coming together. Reading his book will provide the methodology and the tools for incorporating these elements into a success plan for our lives. I have seen it work so well for Dennis, I have incorporated it into my life and I hope his words and example will inspire you to achieve an even higher level of success in your career and personal life. Enjoy the book.

Brian F. Harris Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

Within Each Child is an Untold Success Story Yet to Unfold

~ Author Unknown

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Our Mission

It is our commitment and passion to provide individuals with the spark, the vision, the path, and the tools needed to achieve their full potential for success.

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You have just taken the first step to success by investing your time and money into reading this book. The intent of this book is to provide direction to all people who are seeking self-improvement and have a desire to achieve life and career success. The magic of this book is the 7 Step Process that delivers a specific step-by-step method to create your own customized written life success plan. This personalized life success plan is unique and powerful with results that have delivered significant changes in the lives of others.

This 7 Step Process for achieving life and career success can be used effectively with a wide-range of individuals. It is designed to help the non-professional and professional person on their path to success. The emphasis is on individual dreams to success which is why our 7 Step Process is effective with all ages, groups and organizations. Our process has been used by companies with middle and senior management, advanced professionals in their fields of studies, public school and college students, along with community groups and organizations.

There are two approaches you can consider while reading this book. The preferred approach is to complete each exercise as you read through the 7 Step Process while it is fresh and top of mind. This will provide you with the greatest benefit. However for those who are challenged with time, the second approach is to read the entire book first and then return to the exercises as time permits.

Let us summarize what will be covered in each of the 7 steps to give clarity of this process.

Step 1 -Defining Success: You will establish your individualized definition of success by reflecting on your personal dreams and desires. This will be facilitated by challenging you to think bigger than your present self-imposed limitations.

Step 2 - Your Path of Life: Where Have You Been? This is an analytic review of your past life activities in which you will identify your strengths and weaknesses. These learnings will help to build your future path of life to achieve your dreams of success.

Step 3 - Your Ten Year Goals: Where Are You Going? A combination of long term and short term goals are needed to achieve your definition of success. First, you will identify long term goals which will be incorporated into a ten year plan. Then you will establish short term goals directed towards accomplishing your long term goals in your ten year plan. Milestones of accomplishments will be identified along your path towards success.

Step 4 - Attitudes and Disciplines: The theme of this section is to provide you with daily success tools and the required changes needed when using them.

Step 5 - Creative Visualization: This is the most powerful daily success tool that can be used to achieve your short and long term goals which will lead to your dreams of success.

Step 6 - Cloud of Unknowing: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know. This part of the process recognizes voids of knowledge. Mentors and role models will be identified in this step that will assist you in filling these voids of knowledge.

Step 7 - Odyssey of Learning: Personal development is emphasized in this step to encourage your continued improvement in skills that will assist you in completing your short and long term goals. We will introduce the concept called the odyssey of learning in which you will reach out to unique individuals for additional learnings.

The teachings in this book are written in conjunction with our seminar/workshops. Our success seminar called Achieving Life and Career Success is a hands-on, personalized approach for individuals to explore their inner dreams and then manifest them into reality. The same 7 Step Process presented provides an individualized written life success plan that is found in all three of our products; this book, a workbook and at