Building your best life isn’t something that just happens to you. It’s about recognizing opportunities when they are presented to you, taking full advantage of them and treasuring those that come your way.
Often the opportunities that are hugely impactful and life-changing are those that feel the smallest. In the first session of my ‘MASTERMIND. with Sherrie’ program, we started out the series by setting ourselves up to build our best lives and were incredibly lucky to hear from Li Cunxin, Director of Queensland Ballet and author of best-selling autobiography, Mao's Last Dancer.
If you have had the opportunity to watch the award-winning movie based on his life (and if you haven’t, I recommend that you do!), you will know that as a child, Li was presented with an opportunity to see a bigger and different world, one he never knew existed. One that changed the course of the rest of his life.
Here is some of the advice he shared with us.
Take full advantage of the opportunities that are put in front of you.
Li spoke all about how strange things can happen in life and you never know what will happen. With a blink of an eye, your life could completely change if you take advantage of opportunities that present themselves to you, or it could be a sliding door moment and if you don’t act, the potential never happened.
Don’t be scared to take full advantage of those opportunities when they are presented to you.
Finding belief and inspiration
Those opportunities only get you so far. You still need to work HARD.
Li was a terrible dancer in the beginning, spinning made him motion sick. But one person’s belief in him and the fact that he now could see an opportunity that was never there before drove his success. As leaders, it’s important to highlight that if you have someone in your team you believe in and can inspire, you can help provide them with confidence to chase their dreams.
Success and perfection do not come that easily. Those that have natural talent and combine it with a solid work ethic are the ones that become the best in their field. By working hard, it will open doors or present even more opportunities for you.
So practice and perfect the skills that you need as a real estate agent – your listing presentations, your objection handling, your negotiating skills.
Vision is most important.
To #BuildYourBestLife you need to not only have a vision of where you want to go, but you need to plan out the steps and set yourself with targets to pave the way.
After a successful career as a dancer and stockbroker, Li went on to transform Queensland Ballet into a world class company. Under his leadership he took it from a $4.5 million dollar business to a $20 million dollar business in revenue.
He did this by creating a clear vision, creating drastic changes and making it positive and aspirational to ensure his team were on board.
These are just some of the incredibly powerful takeaways from such an inspirational leader.
The current ‘MASTERMIND. with Sherrie’ series is SOLD OUT, but you can register your interest for next season and learn from impactful and successful leaders achieving great things. Find out more here.