In 2000, Reed Hastings met with Blockbuster’s CEO, John Antioco, to propose adding another video rental delivery system. Antioco rejected the proposal and ignorantly followed the path that eventually led to the closure of Blockbuster. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, achieved success while Antioco missed the opportunity.
In 1999, Mark Cuban sold his publicly traded company, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo for $5.7 billion and proceeded to further expand his successful empire. By 2002, Yahoo shut down its broadcast services and also discontinued Broadcast.com. Cuban sold at what seems to be just the right time.
Antioco and Cuban were successful businessmen at the time and each made an important move at a critical time in their businesses. Antioco’s move led to the eventual closure of Blockbuster and Cuban’s move further propelled his successful career as an entrepreneur.
Those moves involved one thing: awareness. It's a critical element in strong emotionally intelligent people. While emotional intelligence focuses on personal and social awareness, contextual awareness is just as important. The act of being aware can predict whether someone succeeds or fails in his career.
Awareness Exposes Past Shortcomings
Failure without learning is a missed opportunity.
People who have the ability to recognize why and how the failure occurred in the past can gain insight into ways to grow. Unfortunately, failures or shortcomings are not always easy to identify.
If you only chalk up failures as when something catastrophic happens in your life, you are going to miss on the opportunity to grow through them. Failures are priceless and far too many people would rather ignore failures in order to feel like they are successful.
As much as possible, do not ignore your failures and use them instead. If you are more worried about being right or winning in all situations, you will miss those losing moments where experience has a valuable lesson to teach you.
See Also: 5 Ways To Make The Most Of Failure
Push back from your present situation and reevaluate those moments where you messed up, where you did not meet up to standards or where you did not meet a goal. These are the failures that can leave you with a valuable set of lessons.
Your awareness in the past will help you succeed in the future. Truthfully recognizing your past successes and failures will open the doors to a successful tomorrow.
Awareness Brightens Present Situations
Awareness has the ability to let you see your current situation accurately. With all the distractions fighting for your attention every day, it's easy to feel overloaded and even burned out. They can stop you from seeing life clearly. And the less clarity you have, the harder it is to successfully pursue your dreams, plans and goals.
Recognize your present situations, their benefits and consequences. The more awareness you have in the present, the better you'll be in making decisions. Awareness helps you decide what you should and shouldn't pursue. Your decision in these matters will be a deciding factor to your level of success.
Mark Cuban saw his present situation within his company as a good point to sell high. Without this present awareness, he might have missed the opportunity to sell high and build his empire off of his company being sold.
John Antioco missed his current situation because he was blinded by his current success. Blockbuster was very successful when Reed Hastings approached Antioco, but Antioco didn’t see the true colors of Blockbuster’s present success. Blockbuster was making most of their money on people’s late fees and Hastings and Netflix eliminated this pain from customers. While Blockbuster was successful on other people’s failures to return their movies on time, Netflix grew in success because they solved customers’ problems.
Do not be blind to your current situation. A true reality check will allow you to see if you are in a healthy situation or not.
Awareness Sheds Light Into The Future
People who can honestly identify past successes and failures and see their present situations accurately will have the advantage to see into the future. Things today are changing constantly and those who are able to identify the changing tides have the upper hand.
See Also: How To Maximize Your Potential While Embracing Your Weaknesses
A surfer, for example, will sit in the water to wait out on his desired wave. He must be aware of the movement of water and the timing of the wave before he jumps. That is awareness.
Mark Cuban didn’t miss his success wave. In fact, he caught it just in time.
Awareness Will Predict Your Future Success or Failure
Step back and exercise your ability to be aware of yourself, your relationships, social environment and context. The stronger your awareness of the past, present and future, the greater your chances of being successful.
Use awareness in business to learn lessons, measure conditions and plan for growth. These things can surely set you on the right track to achieving your goals.