Productivity
What’s Stopping You From Being Successful? Use the Four C’s to Power Through
Commitment, courage, capability, and confidence: figure out which one is holding you back, and how to use each to fuel the others
For years, I’ve encountered failures when completing a project or chasing a dream. Then I would ask myself: What’s stopping me from being successful? What’s my obstacle?
Only a short time ago, I self-diagnosed this problem. The problem happens when I lack confidence — when I’m not sure I’m capable of succeeding — so I don’t start the project or get cracking on the goal. Or if I get started but get stuck along the way — or worse yet, have a failure — I hear myself saying, “Well, I probably wasn’t cut out for this anyway.”
Later, I have a different dialogue with myself. I tell myself: “This is fixable. I just need to get smarter. Read some articles. Get a new book. Get another new book. Shoot, grab more books while I’m at it. Watch some videos. Ask a colleague to lend me some expertise. If I can gain the capability or the skill, I’ll be set.” Problem is, skill alone won’t help me move forward.
I had some of it right, but the trouble is, I had it all in the wrong order.
In his book The 4 C’s Formula, legendary business coach Dan Sullivan makes a point to address the order of how we achieve success: Commitment, Courage, Capability, and Confidence. Let me tell you how I understand them, and how you can put them into action to reach your own goals.
1. Commitment
Sullivan says the first step to success is commitment.
None of us should be surprised that commitment comes first. To prove that to ourselves, we might consider some of the biggest turning points in our lives. With a little reflection, we’ll realize that first, we had to make a commitment.
- When we signed up to go to college, we made a commitment. Few of us knew what all it would entail, but we signed up anyway. Many of us later earned the degree. But signing up for the 4-year program — or even for an individual course — was step one.
- When we said “I do” in the wedding ceremony, none of us knew exactly what was ahead of us. Yet we made the commitment. For many of us, it’s decades later and we’ve been successful and blissfully happy.
- Having children? Now that’s a whole other level of commitment! Unlike the college you can drop out of or the spouse you can divorce, parenting is a forever commitment. And to be honest, none of us are “qualified” for the most complicated job we’ll ever undertake.
All of these endeavors started with the commitment. If you cannot make the commitment, it can stop you from being successful.
2. Courage
Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup and other books, raised this question:
“What would you do if you knew you would not fail?”
I was greatly disturbed by that question. Deep down inside, I knew that I had passed up many opportunities because I was afraid I would fail. I didn’t have the courage to pursue an action.
Much later, I reflected on this quote from Hungarian novelist Arthur Koestler:
“Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.”
To me, courage is the opposite of fear. Fear starts in the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions, including (but not limited to) fears. Fears kept our ancestors safe from the sabertooth tiger, but we don’t have those predators wandering around our streets these days. So what makes us fearful, and how does that fear manifest itself?
We have four possible responses to fear — fight, flight, freeze, fawn. The trigger for fear can be real danger. But it can also be our perception of danger, or artificial danger (e.g., a horror movie). When the amygdala is stimulated, our brain re-routes energy to the amygdala, which slows down processing in other areas. As a result, it can be difficult to speak or make rational decisions when we are fearful.
What are your fears about the upcoming commitment you’re reluctant to make? What fears are stopping you from being successful?
What are you about to embark on? Are you waiting to get the courage before you make the commitment or take the action? Phobias aside, Dr. Theo Tsaousides lists the 12 most common fears that many of us face (including, I’m guessing, almost all entrepreneurs). I’ve experienced all of these.
- Failure
- Success
- Public speaking
- Rejection
- Making the wrong decision
- Other people’s opinions
- Responsibility
- Saying the wrong thing
- Being exposed as an imposter
- Commitment
- Challenge
- Missing out
How about you? Be honest with yourself. Make a list of those fears that you have experienced.
Still stuck? Consider Jeffers’s book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway and Foster’s book Seven Primal Questions. (Foster’s book is about a 90-minute read, but it made a huge impact on my ability to identify my primal and secondary fears.)
3. Capability
Capability comes from the Latin capere, to take, grasp, or catch. What is it that we can grasp and hold onto? There are soft skills and hard skills: hard skills are about job-related abilities, such problem-solving or decision-making. Soft skills are more about human interactions, which in my view, are often very dependent on developing good intuition. But what do we do if our capability is what’s stopping us from being successful?
For me, “capability” is the easiest of these four cornerstones. If you’re a high achiever, as I am, your whole life revolves around achievement. You’ve figured out how to do the task because you’re practically addicted to the approval and applause. And, since the Clifton Strengths ranks me as a #6 for “achiever” and #8 for “learner,” it’s fairly easy for me to learn whatever I need to learn to do whatever it takes to perform.
However, if you’re not mastering the skill or correctly completing the task, try finding a different approach, or a different way to consume the information that will help you become capable. As one who has taught thousands, from preschoolers to college-age and beyond students, I’ve seen that some learning approaches work better for different people, and for different tasks. If direct or indirect instruction doesn’t work for you, try seeking an interactive approach, an experiential learning opportunity, or even an independent study.
4. Confidence
In one breath, I’ll say that our own self-image and input from others are related to our self-confidence. In the next breath, I’ll say listen to Sullivan. Those of us who have good feedback from others and a strong self-image may be more likely to take the commitment plunge. Those of us who struggle with our self-image or don’t hear positive feedback (either because we aren’t given it or because we ignore it to obsess over the negative) will suffer from a lack of confidence that may stop us from being successful.
Be honest with yourself. Are you wishing for the confidence to do that next big thing in your life?
- Confidence to pursue that certification exam that everyone says is so hairy and so scary?
- Confidence to land that new job you don’t feel “qualified” for?
- Confidence to start your own business?
If you’re waiting for the confidence to magically appear, that isn’t likely to happen. Trust me on this. Confidence comes from capability, which comes from courage, which comes from commitment… but where does commitment come from? Why, from confidence, of course!
The cycle of the Four C’s
In his book, Dan Sullivan says these 4 C’s are cyclical.
“Commitment leads to Courage. Courage leads to Capability. Capability leads to Confidence. Confidence leads to Commitment. Apply, lather, rinse, repeat.”
In short, the order is always the same. But being propelled forward is dependent on the number of cycles we go through. Even though each of the C’s does precede the other in the cycle, it is an ongoing process.
So once you have identified which of the 4 C’s is stopping you from being successful, look to the one before it. If you’re struggling with capability, look for what gives you courage. If you can’t commit, look at what you can be confident in.
Once you can look at them this way, the 4 C’s are a perpetual motion cycle that can power your productivity for years to come!
What do you struggle with most: commitment, courage, capability, or confidence?
