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About this Episode:

In this episode of The Transformative Leader Podcast, I’m excited to be bringing you a powerful discussion with transformational coach, speaker, and author, Maki Moussavi. Maki is a fellow corporate career veteran, who, like many high achievers, grew up with messages of working hard, chasing the dream, getting degrees, and making money. However, after achieving the “success” she had always wanted, she still felt stuck, restless, and unsatisfied. Soon, she realized that “success“ wasn’t all it was cracked up to be after all. This experience led to Maki turning her attention to an often neglected area in business and in life: what it takes to find fulfillment no matter where you are. Now, Maki focuses on guiding fellow high achievers and executives through the journey of personal development, coaching them through the deep work of transforming their mindset to achieve fulfillment in addition to their success. This was a great conversation with a fascinating guest about a very important and powerful topic, so this is another episode that listeners can’t afford to miss!

This conversation that Maki has honed in on is a critical and powerful one, especially in areas of life where we are driven to succeed. However, more often than not, especially in the business world, the focus is almost always only on external measures of success, results, improvement, etc. This is taken to such a degree that even just talking about things like satisfaction and fulfillment is depicted as “woo woo, touchy-feely“ type stuff. Of course, as usual, this conventional wisdom couldn’t be further from the truth. I know from my experience leading turnarounds all over the globe that, while success is a worthy and necessary goal to pursue, success alone isn’t sufficient to take people from good to great to extraordinary. If people don’t feel fulfilled by the success they are achieving, then eventually they will stop achieving it. Because in a very real sense, on a personal level, fulfillment is the only reason that we pursue success in the first place!

I know that many of my listeners can relate to Maki’s experience of achieving success, yet still feeling as if it isn’t enough and feeling unfulfilled or even disappointed by what they thought they wanted. For many high achievers, who tend to define success according to external markers, this is just accepted as par for the course. But, despite what we’re told, it doesn’t have to be that way. The key here is not something outside of ourselves, but rather the solution is found within. While we may find some joy in the pursuit, we end up disappointed by the end result, because we haven’t taken the time to figure out if our “success“ resonates with who we are and what we want. In other words, it all comes down to mindset and our need to examine and transform it, and this is exactly what Maki guides others through in her coaching and speaking practice. Until and unless this mindset shift takes place, no amount of additional success, status, or wealth will ever really make a difference. In fact, in many cases, the more one achieves in the absence of the proper mindset, the more dissatisfied and empty and demoralized they may feel in response.

Some additional topics we discuss in this episode include Maki’s ingenious “computer analogy” of personal development, how surviving holds us back from thriving, what a “high achiever“ actually is, what holds us back from investing in our own development, the 3 illusions that give fear power over us, and so on. This is just a flavor of the topics covered in our conversation, as well as those included in Maki’s book and coaching practice. Suffice it to say, this was an awesome conversation and I cannot recommend this episode—or Maki’s work—highly enough!

Maki Moussavi is a corporate career veteran and Master’s trained genetic counselor who left the glory of societally-defined success to become a transformational coach, motivational speaker and author. She works with executives and high achievers to unlock their potential to achieve fulfillment in addition to success, by focusing on personal development and the programming, baggage, and mindset challenges that holds people back from living their best life. In her (highly recommended) upcoming book, The High Achiever’s Guide, Maki shares her best tools, processes, and insights to determine what fulfillment means to you, so you can thrive with empowered confidence.

Guest Links:

To learn more about Maki and her work, you can visit her (excellent) website. To learn more about or pre-order her upcoming book, which comes out August 15th, you can visit its dedicated page. You can also connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

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