The 7 Arenas of Success

Turn potential into performance by winning at each phase of success.

Chris Widener

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” —Theodore Roosevelt The degree of our success is directly related to the degree in which we excel in and balance certain segments, or principles, of our life. Every person, organization and business can, and should, operate out of the following seven arenas. Here’s how:

1. I Am: Arena of Values

Every person, organization and business has values, and they may not know or be able to articulate what they are, but they have them. The values of a business are what they believe in: What do they think is important? What a company values will affect the way the business runs and the employees act and work, so it is important to know what those values are. Here are some questions for you to ask: What do we think is important? What do we hope to accomplish? What do we believe in as we go about our work? Is there clear indication in your workplace or home that you are operating in the Arena of Values? Can you say without a doubt that “I Am,” or “We Are”?

2. I Should: Arena of Responsibility

What are the responsibilities that we must live by?

• To be a person and company of high integrity. Ultimately we are only a success to the degree that we are honorable people. This means that we are honest, hardworking and forthright. I don’t think it matters how much money one accumulates if they are not a person of integrity.
• To make our families priority. Sometimes I think of all the people I help and work so hard for day by day and realize that none of them will be at my side when I breathe my last breath. My wife and children will fill those spots—so they get the most from me.
• To give to charity. One of the things that rounds us out as healthy, successful people is to give away money, time and possessions, free of all strings. Instead of a $10 check every now and then, put it into your budget to give away a certain amount every month—make it big, make it a sacrifice. At first you will think it is impossible, but it will come around. At the end of your life, you will be able to look back and see the difference you have made.

3. I Could: Arena of Possibility

People often get so caught up in the day to day that they lose their zest for life. They get the nose to the grindstone, and may be doing important work, but they forget to dream. They forget to think of what could be. How is your business in the arena of possibility? What would happen if at your next staff meeting, whether you have 30 people or just you and your partner, you asked the question, “What are the possibilities for this business to really do something great?” I think that you would probably be astounded at what you might hear. People have great ideas, dreams and possibilities inside of them—they just need someone to stop the treadmill and ask the question, surrounded by an atmosphere of acceptance.

4. I Would: Arena of Negotiation

Every possibility has a cost associated with it. At this point, an organization not only says “we could” but also internally negotiates with questions about the tradeoffs, like:

If this is to come about, what will the cost be? Is it worth it? If this comes about, what will the ramifications be in other areas of my business? What other adjustments would have to be made, and are they worth it? What would the reward have to be in order for me to pursue this possibility? How long will it take me to reach this possibility? In light of that, do I want to readjust the organization for that period of time? Take some time to measure the costs of your possibilities. Then, when you find the ones that are good for you, go for it.

5. I Want To: Arena of Vision

Now, of those possibilities, what ones would you really like to do? The ideas that stir our passions for excellence become things that we can easily “see.” They can become our “vision.” In order for something to happen, someone has to first see it happening long before it actually does. If money, and time, were no object, if you knew that you couldn’t fail at your attempt, what would you want to try? Then, why not try? This is your vision. And a vision is a powerful thing—it’s what drives success and accomplishment. Great things come when we dream, and vision drives us to attempt things far beyond where we are right now.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy, nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

Recognize all of the hard work that will be involved in achieving your dreams, then spend some time preparing to meet the challenges.

6. I Will: Arena of Dedication

Perseverance is the most important thing in work. I have come to believe that much of what separates the successful from the unsuccessful is simply determination. The successful are not always the brightest, the best looking or those with the most prestigious diplomas. Instead, they are the ones who say, “I will do this!” and “Hardship will not deter me!” These people have entered into and continually live in the arena of dedication. Staying there long enough usually puts them on top.

Dedication is a key to success. So the next step? Hard work! Recognize all of the hard work that will be involved in achieving your dreams, then spend some time preparing to meet the challenges. Here are some questions to help you get through the process, prepare yourself for the job ahead and come out on the end of success.

• What are the obstacles we will face?
• How will we overcome those obstacles?
• What kinds of attitudes and dedication will we need to exhibit when the time comes to face difficulties and uphill battles?
• What are the rewards our dedication will bring to us as individuals and corporately?

Focusing in on these questions will help you prepare for the times when you will need to show dedication, perseverance and inner fortitude. The mental preparation now will strengthen you to succeed later.

7. I Do: Arena of Accomplishment

Accomplishment comes when the job is complete. What is important at this stage? A few things:

• A little rest. It isn’t time to sit back for good, but resting can be a much-needed reward for all of the hard work you have shown up until now. After the pace of pursuing your dreams, your body and mind need some well-deserved rest.
• A little celebration. Celebrations are great for us. What is all the work for if one can’t enjoy the fruit of his labor? Maybe it is a small dinner out. Maybe it is a huge celebration for 100 of your closest friends and business associates. Maybe it is an exotic vacation.
• A sense of fulfillment. The greatest reward is, as the old saying goes, “the satisfaction of a job well done.” Not many people make it to the accomplishment arena very often. Enjoy the satisfaction!
• A new high bar. One of the great things about life is the challenge of new heights. You have accomplished your task, and that’s good, but... what’s next?

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Tried (and Failed) to Go a Month Without Spending Money

Jeff Vrabel

I cut out inessential spending for one month. And by that, I mean: I didn’t come anywhere near cutting out inessential spending for a month.

For the record, I tried. My assignment was simple: Eliminate all spending that wasn’t essential to the health of my family, the payment of recurring bills or the survival of the pets. No fancy coffee. No clothes. No cocktails. No movies. Nothing outside of the pure necessities of life in a hardening America. Then at the close of the experiment, I was to report all of my glittering lessons about the value of self-denial, discipline and minimalism.

Here’s what I learned: Life can get crazy, and sometimes you just want a taco.

This is not to say that a spending hiatus is a bad idea. British blogger Michelle McGagh documented this exact concept in her book The No Spend Year: How I Spent Less and Lived More, which tracked 365 days of no spending by her and her husband. As a financial advice writer, McGagh’s challenge was better organized and executed than mine. After bills, food and toiletries, she writes, “Everything else was off-limits. Which meant there’d be no more rounds of drinks purchased in the pub (tap water only from now on), no new clothes, no presents for my nephews, no takeaway coffees, no meals out and no holidays.” She got around on her bike, discovered free entertainment and allocated the money she saved largely for extra mortgage payments.

Although I might not have cut out all of my spending for a month, this exercise instilled in me, like McGagh, a sharper grasp on what money is going where and why. And I reminded myself that dedicating time and icy, emotionless attention to your budget is a wise and welcome endeavor, as long as you don’t do it so frequently that you end up abandoning joy or companionship.

Applying a magnifying glass to it all didn’t help me eliminate a new car’s worth of expenses, but it did force me to prioritize them.

Frankly, I had neither her willpower nor her dedication for eschewing an anti-consumerist lifestyle. My family has never been terribly big into gratuitous spending anyway, with exceptions made for travel and Bruce Springsteen tickets. Not to sound like a sore loser, but McGagh also had two big advantages on me: 1) She has no kids; and 2) She lives in London, where some of the world’s most awe-inspiring activities, like hanging out with a sarcophagus at the British Museum, are readily available for the reasonable price of nothing. We have two kids and no free ancient dead people in Indianapolis, so there would be some unavoidable expenses.

But if I’m being honest, it was mostly the lack of willpower that made me fail. Dedicating myself to a milkshake-free month turned out to be an exercise in brutality I was unprepared to face. It’s one thing to be mindful of your expenses; it’s entirely another to walk past La Chinita Poblana on Westfield Boulevard and not drop in for a crispy shrimp taco, just because, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

One could argue that my failure represents a breakdown of will, an inability to make it even 48 hours before collapsing into a heap of excuses and justifications. To that I’d say: Yeah, I know.

But there’s more to it. First, this experiment in militant miserliness came at a particularly bad time. February contained my son’s 13th birthday, the release of The Lego Batman Movie and the announcement of a summer concert that featured Def Leppard and Poison, together, ON THE SAME STAGE. I’m appropriately dedicated to my work as a writer, but I’m also a sucker for shameless, sugar-packed nostalgia-metal concerts you can see for a $25 Groupon. Also, as you may or may not know, February is the month that has Valentine’s Day in it, and that required a finer present for my wife than hair metal tickets.

Second, and more important, I found out quickly, a life without the occasional indulgence—even, if not especially, small ones—can be a dull and pointless slog. In no way am I suggesting that happiness is available only in the form of moon-sized yachts and cigars lit with rolled-up $100 bills. Some of my favorite people conjure joy with very little, and many of my most prized memories didn’t involve a single expense. McGagh writes of camping trips, handmade gifts and visits with friends that don’t have to happen in pubs.

But a life without rewards, without a moment to breathe and think, I’ll get that slice of key lime pie or I’ll put this away for summer vacation? What’s the point in that? Isn’t that ill-advised extra glass of wine one of the better parts of life?

I initially found the idea of a spending hiatus deeply appealing. As a family, we Vrabels have always been a frugal lot, and by frugal, I mean some of us take strawberry and grape jelly packets from diners instead of purchasing substantial jars at the grocery store. My extended family’s garages contain about 900 buckets full of water-logged golf balls fished out of ponds and mini-golf courses. And my cousin recently confessed that after nearly 15 years of marriage, it still drives him bonkers to see his wife use a piece of aluminum foil only once. “I die a little each time,” he texted, “and don’t even get me started on the plastic bags.”

So I initially thought of this as a welcome and genetically satisfying reset, an opportunity to throw the emergency brake on the family finances. (It helped that it arrived about the same time as the Christmas credit card bills.)

Besides, I thought, How bad could it be? I already had a house full of unfinished projects, unwatched shows and un-spun records. I re-evaluated old clothes. I found books I’d been meaning to revisit since college. (I am blessed with a few hoarding chromosomes.) But one night, when we settled in to figure out whatever this Stranger Things TV show was, an uncomfortable thought floated right into my field of vision: Does Netflix qualify as necessary? And then, scanning the rest of the house: Does any of this qualify as necessary? Can I eat only dry bread and cans of beans, use gasoline only to get to essential places? Is karate essential? Is school? Frankly, it was way more of an existential crisis than I was expecting. This would need rules. The rules went like this:

Inessential spending included:

• All clothes.
• Books.
• Ice cream from The Scoop downtown.
• Media, unless we could stream it with an existing subscription.
• Breakfasts and lunches out (not dinners, as our Tuesday schedule is packed with after-school events and a weekly Dad-and-boys pizza trip I consider emotionally essential).
• 100 percent of externally purchased doughnuts.

Essential spending:

My first essential was the coffee shop. (Look, I work from home. If I sit in my house all day, I end up a patch-bearded lunatic with 6-inch fingernails who wanders the grocery store in a bathrobe. But I ordered only small black coffees, which is a fairly pathetic version of self-denial, but here we are.) Then it was a dentist appointment. And I confess that I splurged on medicine for pinkeye—the medicine was $30, which at the time seemed awfully extravagant, and I stood at the pharmacist’s counter wondering: Is this an essential expense? Can I just ride this out? Would it strengthen my white blood cells to let them combat this for free? And then I forked over $30 for the medicine, because I was tired of being a crimson-faced demon with itchy eyes.

And indeed, I found pretty quickly that the line between essential and non-essential was nebulous, constantly shifting and subject to my whims and caffeine needs. I also found how quickly I factored in things that were technically non-essential but felt pretty essential. Our Blue Apron subscription, which we use to cut back on grocery bills and shopping time, stayed in. We abandoned cable years ago, but Netflix’s Octonauts and Dragons: Race to the Edge were highly essential, according to the small children who run my house.

Why didn’t it occur to me to work from the public library? Well, it did, and I discounted that idea outright: I don’t work from coffee shops for the pricey coffee. I do it to be around people; and as richly valuable as libraries are, they’re not great for people-watching.

These were the kinds of minor justifications that sank me. I decided I could purchase tickets for a concert because it was in May; that I could buy this butter streusel coffee cake because technically I found it before my experiment and also because it’s delicious. Those little cracks of sunlight in the rulebook made all the subsequent ones much easier.

This, of course, is the gradual, subtle process of justification that gets people into trouble: One jacket here, one scone there, and before long every incremental expense adds up to credit card balances and dark phantoms that steal your money without you ever noticing.

Although I didn’t succeed at McGagh’s brutal version of cold turkey, I feel the experiment worked, and here’s why: It demanded vigilance. It coldly identified easily removable spending, expenses I’d become accustomed to OK’ing even when they were red-flagged in Mint, the budgeting app I use.

Like most people, I had a broad sense of how much went to four movie tickets, a record here or there, a Panera meal on the run. But that sense was less math and more a vague notion easily shoved to the back corner of my mind. And the cracks in between those merciless digits are where the overspending takes hold and flourishes.

Applying a magnifying glass to it all didn’t help me eliminate a new car’s worth of expenses, but it did force me to prioritize them. Vacation saving, for instance, was the first thing that stayed. My wife and I long ago decided that travel is a primary reason we work in the first place. If you’re not setting goals, working toward them and then enjoying the payoff when they become reality, what’s the point?

Although I might not have cut out all of my spending for a month, this exercise instilled in me, like McGagh, a sharper grasp on what money is going where and why.

And this reordering of priorities—a dull, annoying process—is the life-saving part. Fiscal vigilance taken to the extreme can make you not a lot of fun at parties and a super-annoying spouse, but determining what is essential is worth a few lousy hours.

Now I stop and think before purchases, an automatic little self-check that wasn’t there before. In 30 days—a shorter time than I’d have guessed—I installed a mental hold-up button, one that I’ve been employing ever since. I’d argue that even this entry-level awareness can pay off in the long term.

So I’m left a bit more mindful after this experience, skipping another blue-plaid shirt here and movie there to gradually hoard cash for more meaningful-to-me goals like travel, family, time not thinking about money and maybe a few tickets to see the Chicago Cubs, who raised their ticket prices 20 percent this year—inessentially.

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