Maxie McCoy likes to offer a contrarian approach to success. If other motivational speakers preach about the big plan, the personal growth expert advocates starting small. She reckons you don’t always have to look ahead; it’s fine to cast an eye behind you. And for those wrapped up in what other people think of them? That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, she says. Just pick those people wisely.
“You are not alone,” she told the audience and fellow panelists at the “Make It Happen” track at WeWork’s Global Summit for employees in Los Angeles earlier this month. “I have spent the past seven years in rooms just like this, as big as 5,000, as small as 20. It didn’t matter if I was in London, Miami, New York City, or Dallas. The same thing continued to come up, which is, ‘I feel really lost.’”
The author of You’re Not Lost: An Inspired Action Plan for Finding Your Own Way, knows first-hand what it’s like to feel lost—and she knows she isn’t alone. Her audiences are filled with people who feel stuck in life despite accomplishments that might say otherwise. “Every one of these people are creative, well-educated, doing awesome stuff,” she says. “So why are we feeling this way?”
McCoy, who describes herself as a “reformed goal junkie,” believes that the biggest impediment to long-term success is being focused on the end instead the myriad steps that need to happen before getting there.
“We’re scared to take a step because we don’t know where that step is going,” she explains. “Or we’ve gotten to a cool place in our lives—with the ideal job, partner, body, apartment—but we didn’t actually want it. So now what? What’s next?”
Her approach? Make a determination, every day, to take a small step to make something happen, despite feelings of uncertainty. Small steps build on one another, she said, and cultivate the confidence to start implementing a bigger plan.
“What that is going to create for you is direction,” she said. “And direction is what you’re looking for. We’re not looking for the end destination. It’s reconnecting with our own power to make things happen.”
Sometimes, says McCoy, you might end up looking backward. Reflection on past triumphs can be a terrific motivational boost. “Most of the answers of where you’re going are in the experiences and data of where you’ve already been,” she said. “We just have to take a second to look behind us, to take inventory, and give it merit. All the mountains we’ve moved in the past, for better or worse, mean something. You’ll know what lights you up. You know the things that energize you. They’re here to tell you something.”
McCoy is familiar with the pitfalls of any career path: racism, sexism, homophobia. The key is to not let them reshape you. “If you are trying to fit into someone else’s mold—think of what a mold is, it’s a cold, hard limit,” she says. “You are limiting yourself.”
Instead, solicit feedback from people in your circle of trust, says McCoy. Ask them questions like, “What’s my superpower? Where do you see me in five years? What’s holding me back?” These are the people who believe in you the most, and she promises that eventually your image of yourself, and what they see in you, will match. “You will start to believe what they believe.” And you won’t be lost at all.
