Be Great

The Five Foundations of an Extraordinary Life in Business - and Beyond

Peter H. Thomas

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780470161180
• eBook ISBN: 9780470737576
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Peter Thomas has lived a tremendously successful and fulfilling life, despite personal tragedy and occasionally grave financial circumstances. He founded and built Century 21 Real Estate into the largest real estate network in Canada, and profitably spearheaded dozens of large-scale real estate developments all over North America. He has founded several more wildly successful businesses, the not-for-profit organizations LifePilot and the Todd Thomas Institute for Values-Based Leadership, flown a helicopter, dived to 850 feet in a submarine, and raced motorcycles. So why him?

Peter Thomas doesn't believe he is a particularly gifted person or any smarter than the average man or woman in the street, but his achievements in business and philanthropy are world class. So what is the secret to building an exceptional life? The answer is that there are many paths to success, but what they all have in common is being true to the people on them, and you get to – have to – pick your own. Thomas shares his life, experience, and wisdom with you to illustrate his Five Foundations for achieving the life you want:

• Values: Clarify your personal values and live them.
• Focus: Understand the power of focus and how to apply it.
• Visualization: If you can picture your goal, you can work towards it.
• Inspiration: Celebrate the genius within you.
• Reflection: Tap into positive forces you control.

For Peter Thomas, learning and applying these principles has brought him fame and fortune, aligned with a resolute conviction to help the less fortunate. There is no limit to what we are capable of achieving. Be Great is a manual for unlocking human potential.

FOUNDATION 1:

VALUES

CHAPTER 1

DOING WHAT MATTERS

Like a skyscraper that pierces a city’s skyline, there is a great deal of engineering that goes into laying a solid foundation before the building begins to rise out of the ground. And, like the skyscraper, before you can reach to the sky, you must be prepared to dig deep and make your foundations strong. The most important place to start building is on your values. Your values represent what matters most to you. They affect every aspect of the way you interact with the world. What you value, you become.

This is a lesson I learned more than thirty years ago. The year was 1974, and I was attending my first Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) meeting in Hawaii. I signed up for a workshop given by Red Scott, who was then chairman and CEO of the Activa Group. I knew I could learn a lot from him. Red bounded into the classroom with a big smile, looked at the group of fifteen of us, and said, “It’s far too nice outside. Let’s go down to the beach.” Like ducklings in a line we followed him.

At the beach, we sat around campfire-style and Red asked us a question that changed my life: “Are you living lives that honour your values?” To demonstrate what he meant, he gave each of us a pad of paper and asked us to write down what we felt our values were. We worked away for about ten minutes. Then Red asked us to list on another page all of our daily activities. That took me longer, but after about twenty minutes I had a full page. “Now, check your activities against your values,” Red told us, “and see if each activity aligns with one of those values.”

I compared my two lists. A sudden realization hit me smack between the eyes. Most of the activities taking up my time and energy were not related to any of my values—at least not to the degree I had anticipated.

At the time, I had listed about a dozen of my values, including being healthy, being happy, having good relationships with friends and family, and having the freedom to live and work by my own rules.

And yet, when it came to health, I realized after Red’s exercise that while I considered myself healthy, I had become a work machine and was doing little to maintain a healthy lifestyle. As for relationships, I discovered that most of my relationships were work related. Anyone who fell outside of that area—sometimes even my own family—didn’t see much of me. As for my family, I thought the biggest thing I could do for them was to make a lot of money and provide them with everything they needed. What I realized was they needed more of me. I also wrote down “happiness” as a value but realized I was trying to find most of my happiness through successes at work and not other important parts of my life. “Freedom,” too, was on my list, which to me meant doing whatever I wanted with my life. I thought I was free, but that exercise helped me discover that I was in fact trapped by the work I chose to do at the time.

I had what I call an epiphany, what the dictionary calls “a sudden, intuitive realization.” It was like being hit over the head by a universal two-by-four, and I knew that some major changes were in order for my life.

The philosopher Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Personally and in my career I was doing okay, but my activities were all over the place and only sporadically aligned with my values. The exercise taught me the power of recognizing what is important in life, and ensuring my daily activities aligned with my values.

The results came remarkably quickly. With newfound inspiration, understanding and confidence, I left that conference in Hawaii early and flew straight to California to check out a business opportunity. That opportunity led to the creation of real estate company Century 21 Canada, which years later I would sell for millions of dollars. Within ninety days of seeing Red in Hawaii, I had moved from Alberta to the West Coast of Canada, launched Century 21 and literally started my life over. By reaffirming my values and matching my activities to them, I gave myself permission to change my life. What I soon discovered is that when you live by your values, life becomes easier. Your decision-making becomes more clear-sighted, and you spend far less time wondering what you should do, how you should act, what’s right and what’s wrong. Your values guide the way.

From that point on, I became intent on making sure everything that came into my life was first measured against my values, which include

1. Health. In my life, being healthy includes doing everything from eating well and working out daily to living in and visiting places that support a healthy lifestyle.

2. Happiness. I am happy when I can help bring joy to everyone else in my life. When my world is happy, I am happy.

3. Freedom. Having the freedom to do what I want in life, both business and personal, has been key to many of my successes.

4. Integrity. Having integrity means maintaining my reputation as a hardworking and trustworthy person and always telling the truth, no matter how difficult at times.

Today everything I do, and I mean everything, relates to my values. If something comes along that doesn’t fit into at least one of these four values I don’t do it. Period.

When I go off track—which happens to everyone on occasion—my values always pull me back to what is right for my life. Not only has this mantra cleared my head for the important stuff, it has kept me alert for experiences that have the power to change my life for the better. When you live in alignment with your values, you’ll experience a life filled with happiness, passion and achievement.

I believe people who are unhappy feel that way because they are not living their life in line with their values. That’s because, for the unhappy people, their external world doesn’t reflect what is going on inside of them. They feel inauthentic. If this sounds like you, ask yourself: “Is there a gap between the way I’m living and what I believe in?” If the answer is yes, you have to change either what you value or what you are doing. I would suggest it’s healthier and easier to change what you are doing than to give away your values.

DEFINE YOUR VALUES

What are values? They are your personal principles. They define what is most important to you. Some examples of values include (but are not limited to) being successful, having financial security, having freedom to make your own choices, living a healthy lifestyle, being compassionate and generous, mentoring others, doing public service, having mutual respect for people and building wisdom.

Your values represent what matters most to you. They influence every aspect of the way you interact with the world around you.

It’s also important to remember that different people have different values. These differences should be respected. There was a time when I tried to convince my wife, Rita, that our values should be the same. We had many discussions about this until I finally agreed that it made perfect sense for Rita to have her own values and for me to have mine. What’s more, I opened my eyes and really explored what Rita’s values were and why they were important to her. This was a real turning point in our relationship because I began to honour Rita’s values, as she did mine, and we worked to align those values in our life together. Now that Rita and I know what matters most to each other our relationship is stronger than ever. We have created a true partnership. Not only does this help us to schedule and plan our lives, but also we set goals together and help each other reach those goals.

For instance, Rita really values nurturing relationships, particularly with her family, so I often organize surprises for her that relate to family and friends. For Christmas one year, I purchased tickets for her, her four sisters and her mom to go to Umberto’s cooking school in Italy. We also purchased a townhouse in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, which is close to Rita’s family, so we could spend more time with them.

At times we have different ideas of what we want to do, either for the day, or in making longer-term choices. When this happens, we look to our values to help us understand each other’s decisions. This allows us to work in harmony.

Some people find that getting in touch with their values is easy, while others have to look deeper, beneath layers of things they’ve invented about themselves or what other people have told them their values should be. If you are having trouble figuring out what your values are, I suggest listing ten that are the most important to you. This is key. Also remember: these are your values, not those of your spouse, your boss or your mother, but you alone. Once you’ve listed them, try to whittle that list down. This is how I started. Eventually, I narrowed them down to my four top values mentioned above.

WHERE DO VALUES COME FROM?

You gain your prevailing values over the course of your lifetime, and you continue to develop these values as you pass through various stages of life. Most of our values are instilled in us during our childhood, teenage years and early adult-hood. Experience, role models, mentors, parents, teachers, friends and cultural icons further shape these values.

My mother influenced many of my values. We were very close. I was an only child, and I never knew my father. My mother was a strong and independent woman who loved to laugh and have fun. She was also a very positive person, and encouraged me throughout my childhood. She always gave me the feeling that I could do anything.

My mother taught me at an early age the difference between right and wrong. I remember having taken a pocket-knife from the corner store as a young boy. My mother discovered it when it fell out of my pants and slid across the kitchen floor, landing right in front of her. She was so angry that I would do something like that and punished me for it, as they did in those days, with a pretty good spanking. She also made me go down to the store with her, give the knife back to the owner, and apologize. I never did anything like that again.

When I was seven years old, my mother and I moved from England to a small town in Alberta to live with a man who would become my stepfather. This was an adjustment for me. For seven years I was the apple of her eye, and suddenly she had another man in her life. I didn’t like the idea that my stepfather was the provider so I decided to make my own money through odd jobs such as picking blueberries and splitting wood. As far back as I can remember I made my own money. Having my own money gave me freedom and independence, which are part of my values today.

My yearning for independence eventually led me to move to Ontario and enlist in the army at age fifteen, against my mother’s wishes. For me, joining the army was a way to be free, to see the world. I wanted to go to an unfamiliar place rather than stay behind in Alberta with what was familiar. I spent seven years in the army—six at Camp Borden and one in Egypt—and believe the experience contributed greatly to my successes to date. I learned a lot in the army, including having respect for people in positions of authority even if I don’t always agree with their leadership methods. I also learned the importance of discipline. Many people believe that if you are disciplined you aren’t free. I believe the opposite. To me, absolute freedom is total discipline. Life is about choices. If you want to be free, you need to be disciplined to achieve it.

YOU BECOME WHAT YOU VALUE

Computers and toasters come with operating manuals. Human beings don’t. Most of what we know is based on trial and error, and how much we are willing and able to learn from others. We enter the world dependent on basic needs such as food, comfort and love. As we get older, we learn to stand on our own and ride a bike and, before we know it, we’re trying to balance—or even juggle—every aspect of our life.

With no operating manual to guide us, it’s not surprising that so many of us wind up feeling off-balance, unfulfilled or just plain lost. We rush from one task to another. We reach for success, only to achieve it and discover it isn’t as satisfying as we hoped it would be. And it seems there’s never enough time for all the things that really matter to us.

When life gets complicated, I think back to an experience I had flying in a helicopter over the Whistler ski area in the coastal mountains of British Columbia. It started off as a clear day at the base of the mountain when, all of a sudden, we were surrounded by clouds so thick it was as though we were flying through milk. Life is like that. One day you are flying along quite happily and suddenly you hit rough weather, or the fog of uncertainty rolls in around you and impairs your vision. Life feels chaotic. At this point many people go out of control. Maybe your health is in jeopardy or someone you love leaves you. Or, as we’ve seen in recent history, maybe there’s an economic downturn that puts your business or job at risk. When negative situations are thrown in front of you, it’s vital to check your instruments, as our pilot did that day, and navigate your way through the storms in life. In other words, stick to your values. Knowing and understanding your values will help guide you until the rough weather calms and the fog clears.

But navigating by your values isn’t just reserved for bad times. Checking in with your values regularly will give you confidence and a sense of direction at every stage of life’s journey. It’s easy to become lost, especially if you are in places with few discernible landmarks. Starting a new job or entering a relationship are some examples of this. If you know your values, you can use them to guide you through unfamiliar territory.

I would like to share with you a story about my friend Dru Narwani, a successful businessman and pilot who has flown his single-engine Cessna from New York to Australia. Dru has learned to navigate his own life by living according to his values and mentoring others to do the same. Years ago, Dru was at the height of a very successful banking career as the president and CEO of Standard Chartered Bank in Thailand.

At that time, he and his family were living a luxurious life in Bangkok.

But Dru felt something was missing. The answer came one evening as he sat down to dinner with his family, late as usual after a long day at the office. Even during dinner, the demands of phones and faxes meant constant interruptions. This night was no different. But for some reason, Dru paused long enough to realize his children were very subdued. “Why are you so quiet?” he asked them. They responded saying, “Mom asked us not to share things about our school because you’re so busy.” Dru knew this was true, but hearing it first-hand had such an impact that he immediately reassessed his values and his activities.

“I was so disconnected and so busy,” Dru recalls. “My values included family, health and integrity but I had lost track of that. I said, ‘It’s time to follow my values.’”

Although he was still a young man, he was financially well off and decided to retire and return to Canada. Dru and his wife have journeyed far and wide in their Cessna, and have written a book about their travels.

TAP INTO YOUR VALUES

“Values are essential to living and to human happiness,” said Pope John Paul II. This idea is not unique to Catholicism. It is echoed throughout the works of the world’s greatest philosophers and leaders, from Socrates to Gandhi, but t...

Table of contents

• OTHER PUBLICATIONS
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• FOUNDATION 1: - VALUES
• FOUNDATION 2: - FOCUS
• FOUNDATION 3: - VISUALIZATION
• FOUNDATION 4: - INSPIRATION
• FOUNDATION 5: - REFLECTION