Seven A’s of Accomplishment: Adaptiveness

In an earlier post, I identified and briefly described the “Seven A’s of Accomplishment”:

In my last post, I described the Absorption factor.  In this post, I will expand upon the Seventh and final Accomplishment factor: Adaptiveness.   I will do so by answering the following questions:

•What is the Adaptiveness factor?

•What are the key aspects of the Adaptiveness factor?

What is the Adaptiveness factor?

Rarely things go according to plan.  In order to accomplish, one must remain open to this fact of life.  Adaptiveness is the ability to adapt as you move towards your aim.  Adaptive organisms survive the evolutionary process.  Adaptive individuals survive the accomplishment process.  Adjustments may be necessary in a number of areas.  You need to be prepared to make adjustments when and where necessary.   You may need to adjust your type and level of ambition, attitude, aptitude, approach, actions, and absorption.  In fact, one can argue you may need to be more or less adaptive.  These are all situational adjustments driven by conditions and circumstances surrounding the accomplishment you seek.

What are the key aspects of the Adaptiveness factor?

There are three key aspects to Adaptiveness:  Openness, Flexibility, and Resilience.

Openness

You need to be open from the start.  Know that things may change along the way and do not despair if they do.   Remain ready, willing and able to accept change.  If change surprises you, you may not be as capable of handling it.  Keep what matters most in mind.  That will help you put things in perspective and not lose track of the key success factors.  Worry about what is worth worrying about.  Remain open about everything else.

Flexibility

Early on in the accomplishment process, figure out your tolerance range.  Think carefully about which things you will be most/least flexible about and what you will be willing to compromise.  Starting with the goal or aim, determine your ranges.  How far will you go?  How much will you bend?  Think about the things that can go wrong and imagine scenarios to deal with the variation.  Identify your “uncompromisable” items and allow the rest be more fluid.  Typically values and principles are the least fluid.  Keep your eye on the aim and work your way towards it.  There are many ways to accomplish it — Stay flexible!

Resilience

The ability to bounce back from disappointments and set-backs is the hallmark of highly successful accomplishers.  This aspect is critical to success!  Just like a muscle, it must be used and worked on in order to develop.  At first, practice bouncing back from small, less meaningful setbacks. Then, work on developing the capacity to bounce back from bigger ones later on.  Your ability to be flexible and recover from these type of situations is informed by your ambition level and is supported by your preparation, attitude and aptitude.  If you want something bad enough, you will do whatever it takes to get it.  Thus, any set-backs are overcome much easier than otherwise.

Your Ambition is the key source of energy to successfully complete the accomplishment process.   Keep it in check by building a solid rationale for it and reinforcing it as often as possible.  Whenever any doubt creeps in, visualize yourself accomplishing your aim.  Feel the emotions of successful accomplishment.  Get the feeling embedded into your neurology.   Either remember or imagine a time when you accomplished something and let those feeling flow.  Go back to that “place” (imagined or remembered) as often as possible to keep yourself energized for success!  Nothing and no one will stop you!!!

This concludes my blog series on the Seven A’s of Accomplishment.  I hope you have read all of them and found them useful.  I suggest you go back over each post one more time.  Try out some of the things I suggest and see how they fit and work.   Your best accomplishments are yet to come!  Good luck!!!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO