with Christina Guidotti
MANY OF US DREAM OF CREATING THE LIFE WE WANT BUT STUMBLE BECAUSE OF OUR LACK OF SELF-BELIEF, CONVICTION AND COMMITMENT.
Dreams require courage and Christina Guidotti is one courageous woman – a woman who has shaped her own future and is now one of Australia’s most popular and successful thought leaders.
In her second book, The True Believers, Christina writes, “Those who master their own internal environment – what goes on inside their own mind – are less likely to be stressed navigating their constantly changing environment. Those who learn to do this, learn to create their own life masterpieces, their own success story.” With incredible courage and self-belief, Christina has created her own life masterpiece. She had it all: the fantastic, stimulating job with an incredible salary, the beautiful family, gorgeous house and wonderful holidays. But it was only when she worked out her life’s vision and purpose, took the initiative and left behind all that she had known and put everything on the line, that she became the woman she had always wanted to be. Christina now helms a multi-million dollar business and is one of Australia’s most highly sought after experts on belief, conviction and commitment in areas of sales, leadership, productivity, achievement and fulfilment. The author of three books, she’s an inspiring and powerful speaker, mentor and trusted professional advisor.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
Part of one of Brisbane’s real estate dynasties and the daughter of the indomitable Arthur Conias, Christina spent 12 very successful years in the property game at the group’s Ashgrove office. She started in property management, went into sales for seven years and then took on a leadership role. Christina delivered the company some exceptionally profitable results. She says, “I had a dream. I had a dream that I was going to own the greatest real estate office in Australia. We were achieving over a $100,000 net profit per sales person within the office. The staff were working to a five-day week plan and we had a lot of conviction around that to make sure we had high achievement but the fulfilment and the life as well. I kept that essentially quiet to myself, that dream of having this top office.”
What she learnt however was that, “It's hard to sell a secret. You have to let someone know, so this particular day I decided, after 10 years of keeping it quiet, that it was time to take the CEO of the company, which in actual fact was my father, to lunch and to let him know my intention. Of course, there was a lot of tension over the years keeping that to myself. I plucked up the courage, I booked a beautiful restaurant which had nice white table cloths, great wine, and I said, ‘Hey, I'm ready to take on some ownership of the company and take it to another level’."
Her father, in fact, said, ‘No’ and while the ‘No’ stung and hurt, Christina came to understand that her dream was actually somebody else's legacy, not her own true legacy and vision. She realised she wanted to create her own vision and create her own legacy. She explains, “After a period of time, I understood: ‘No’ - this ‘No’ is the biggest gift. I teach people now that sometimes you are meant to get a ‘No’. Sometimes the ‘No’ will test your clarity and it'll allow you to see bigger openings.”
So as one door closed, another larger window and world opened. Frequently approached and asked, ‘How do you do what you do?’ and ‘How do you juggle so much as a mum and a wife and business leader, and work five days a week, and look after yourself, and still take great holidays, and have the wealth?’, Christina realised that she could offer something unique to women like her. She decided to take the initiative, believe in herself and her abilities, and become a motivational speaker, author and life coach aimed at empowering women who feel unfulfilled or who ‘want it all’.
She started to unpack her life and her beliefs, wrote books and developed courses and the rest as they say, is history. Just 10 women showed up at her first session at the Palazzo Versace in 2012 but now thousands of women from all over Australia and New Zealand fly hundreds and thousands of miles to hear Christina speak.
She is now one of the most in demand and inspirational speakers, authors, mentors and trusted professional advisors in Australia. Christina is on a mission to help people to climb up the ladder of success, making sure they're leaning on the right wall, to achieve their dreams and to also be fulfilled. She says, “It’s really, really difficult to have complete fulfilment with just the money alone. I think anyone that's lived a little bit knows that money is no guarantee of fulfilment.” She adds, “I come from a position of understanding, compassion and a lot of conviction. I want to help my clients. I love the fact that when I hear their stories and their struggles I can relate to some of the problems that they're having. I've had the same problems, but now the key is that I'm pretty excited about helping them with the solutions.”
So how did Christina implement change in her life?
THE COURAGE TO BELIEVE
The courage to believe is the first step. She says, “I always say that it's actually not self belief that's essential to success. It's actually having the courage to walk in the face of selfdoubt. In my lifetime I've been riddled at different times with self-doubt. I remember when I left my real estate office and I had an amazing income, between $300,000 to $500,000.
When I started this new life, this new world, as a speaker, author, a mentor, it went back to zero. There's a lot of self-doubt that comes in. A lot of people said, ‘You're crazy, you need to go back’, and ‘Do you know what you're doing?’.”
She continues, “What happens is, I reckon all successful people have one key essential quality and that is courage. They walk forward and they don't get turned off by the fear. They actually say, ‘No, this fear is all part of it’. I think it's all about self-belief and it comes later. Self-belief doesn’t turn up first. Self-belief comes later as a result of you walking forward, and then the evidence shows up, which could be the listings, the sales, the profit, the great holidays or the five day a week plan. Then, we go wow, as a result of me facing those fears and that doubt, I now have self-belief.”
TO MAKE FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE, CHRISTINA HAS FIVE ESSENTIAL STEPS.
1. EXPIRE THE OLD STUFF
Baggage hangs around and Christina believes you must toss it away and let it go. We can obsess over our old stuff and other people or situations can inflame old hurts and wounds and Christina implores that we have to let it go. If we don’t let it go, she thinks, we will not be able to move forward. Christina explains, “All the old stories, all the bad stuff, all the tough stuff. We've all got that stuff. Right? Then you might turn up with them later on. It might be someone that's in your team, it might be someone in your personal life. They'll go through the old story and we do it to ourselves. I love to think about what those things are that we need to let go of. Look, it might be a divorce you went through. It might be some really tough time. It might be the finance, it might be the bankruptcy, it might be the sale that you lost last week. Lose it.”
2. EXPECT SETBACKS
Christina says, “You know the cha cha - when you go two steps forward, one step back? It's like a dance in life. We must bounce back quickly because if we keep on taking step backs and step backs and we keep on going backwards, we're not going to go forward toward our visions. I love the whole idea of actually expecting that there are going to be setbacks. You see, all successful people have a back story, but you just don't hear them talking about their tough stuff all the time because they’ve expired it and they also expect and understand that there's another setback around the corner.”
3. CRINGE AT EXCUSES.
We must take responsibility for our actions. She advises, “I reckon we've got to hold ourselves accountable for our own lives and to take responsibility and go, ‘You know what? I got an excuse radar up. I can hear myself right. I reckon I'm making an excuse. I'm blaming the market, I'm blaming my competitor, I'm blaming my team, I'm blaming my leader’. Really, let's cringe at the excuses that we're making and keep walking forward.”
4. FEEL IT IN ADVANCE
Christina explains, “When we decide on what we want, so we might think it or we might actually write it down as a goal. The next step is to actually feel it, with all the emotion it engenders, that you've actually received it in advance. Imagine that you were going to have a vision that you were going to write maybe a million gross commission for the year. Instead of just thinking it, how about you imagine what it's like to be turning up at the annual conference and to be going up on stage to receive your reward, and to actually think about what it would be like to take that speech, to actually celebrate success with your team, to actually be able to go on a great holiday as a result of the financial reward from achieving that particular target. I recommend we wake up each day, instead of just thinking about what we want, to actually spend a couple of minutes maybe closing our eyes or just going for a walk and thinking about what it would feel like to have the success in advance.”
5. ADDRESS YOUR AMBITION
Christina believes, “It’s absolutely essential for us to share our ambition with somebody. It could be a leader, it could be a great friend, it could be a partner. Say: You know what, this is actually what I want going forward. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that we actually give the ambition a voice. We actually say what it is that we want out loud to the people that care and love us. I call them true believers that are around us, and they can actually help hold us accountable. This is one of the keys that we often miss. I work a lot with women and we know the statistics on women. Women systematically underestimate their own ability. I think it's particularly important for us to declare, men and women, what we want and to have an actual voice. I think that's a way that we go forward. We're going to actually roar with what we want in our life.”
Belief, conviction and commitment enable you to write your own story and create your own success masterpiece.
What does your masterpiece look like?
Christina Guidotti has been announced as a keynote speaker at The Complete Leader Conference.
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