Book Review – Leveling Up by Ryan Leak
One of the opening lines in the book was “I wanted to have a career where I helped people win and work and win at home, even people who were crushing one aspect of their lives but struggling in others.” And that’s when I knew this book was going to resonate with me!
I appreciate that Leak recognizes that we can be successful both at work and at home – it doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario. And he starts with the most important question of all: What is YOUR definition of success? Once that is clearly defined, articulated and envisioned you will be more aligned to get there. In order to paint the picture of success, Leak explores various aspects of success and breaks them down in the chapters of his book, and I’m sharing my favorites here.
“We have to be careful not to be so consumed with looking successful that we miss out on actually being successful.”
We are all guilty of watching everyone else’s highlight reels on Instagram and seeing the “fake news” on Fakebook, and perhaps we are even guilty of doing this ourselves? The world of social media is the perfect platform for inauthentic success stories. That’s not to say that nothing on social media is authentic, and trust me, I’m here for all the wins and enjoy posting them myself so the key piece here is authenticity. People resonate with the struggle to create the success more than they connect with the actual success. Even IRL (in real life), we can create an outer shell of perfection, happiness and success and still feel like we are falling behind in work or with our families or both. That disconnect is what actually resonates with others – and it’s our opportunity to grow on our own path and to help others do the same.
“What if success wasn’t just what you achieved or what you got or what you wanted, but who you were becoming?”
Another beautiful nugget of wisdom! The whats in life can all be taken away but WHO we become is ours forever. Crafting, creating and collecting thoughts, experiences and opportunities to become the best version of ourselves is (in my humble opinion) one of the best ways to lead a successful life! The beauty of is that in becoming who we want to become, the whats in life generally follow. There is no downside to working on ourselves.
Another part of the book I enjoyed was the section where Leak has the reader pick a word. If you’ve been here awhile you know I have a Word of the Year practice, which helps me focus on who I want to become and how I want to create intentionality in my life. In addition, I’ve done an exercise in the past where I posted on social media and asked people to comment with the top three words that come to mind when they think of me. This was enlightening! If you haven’t done this exercise, I highly recommend it, and Leak suggests a similar exercise in this book.
“The secrets to success aren’t secrets.”
This is so true! You want to know the secrets to success – there are millions of books written on the topic, enough social media posts to fill your feed for weeks and experts willing to share their insider tips with you. Here’s the thing – the information isn’t the important part. That’s right, I said it. What matters is how we process and implement the information we consume. One of the core competencies I have as a coach is that I help people connect their inspiration and intention with action, and that’s because that’s where the magic happens! We can think about who we want to be and how we want to act all day long, but until we take ACTION nothing changes. The map, the playbook, the lists are all out there – it’s up to each of us to bring them to life to create our definition of success to life!
I really enjoyed this book – it was easy to read and digest and included practical examples and easy to implement takeaways. There were so many more nuggets of wisdom so I highly recommend it for anyone (from beginner to expert, the content applies to all levels which I appreciate) looking to build their personal and professional development skills!
