A lot is spoken about frameworks or structures in life that assist us in achieving our goals. Recently I posted an offer to hold space for people who may wish to improve their immune system function through simple lifestyle choices. I have promised myself that I will go on this 90 day journey and hold space for myself as I believe that a healthy immune response is key to the current pandemic. The following explanation of the BE DO HAVE model explains simply that what matters most is who we need to be to show up, not what we need to have or what we need to do. What kind of person do I need to be in order to commit time and energy to my own health and well being?
Success in any area of life always starts with a very clear picture about the results you desire. If you don’t know what the goal is, it is impossible to tell if you’ve achieved success or not.
Once we are really clear about what we want and why we want it, the game changing question in not ‘what do I need to do?’ but ‘who do I need to be?’
Another way of asking this question is ‘what kind of a person would have access to these kind of outcomes?’
For example, let’s say I want to write a book that’s a best-seller. Only 2% of all authors will ever sell enough copies of their book to justify the time, money and energy they’ve spent in writing it. It’s not simply the best books that get published, just like it’s not the most talented sportsperson, artist or business person that ends up on top of the pile. Despite what most people think, the best don’t always finish first. So simply doing my best isn’t likely to deliver the results I am looking for. I need to find out what kind of person gets their book published and sold when most others don’t. The question I need to ask myself is, “Who do I need to be to write a best-seller?”
What kind of person makes it in their field of expertise, when most work hard for very little recognition or reward? What must they believe about themselves? How do they dress? What is their relationship with money? What story do they live out of? How do they walk when they enter a room?
If I can be this kind of person, then I can have access to the same results as they do.
The Be Do Have model really unpacks how this works in the real world.
Be Do Have
There are three common approaches to trying to get ahead in life. Only one of them actual works.
Let’s call them:
- The Victim,
- The Worker
- The Winner
The victim arranges their life in the order HAVE DO BE
They say, “When I HAVE enough time, money and support, then I’ll DO the things I’ve always wanted to, and then I’ll BE happy and successful. The problem is I don’t HAVE yet. If I had what that person had, I’d certainly be as successful as them, but I don’t so I’m not.“ The victim is always waiting for externals to change before they can move ahead in life.
The worker is all about DO HAVE BE
They say, “The more I DO, the more I’ll HAVE. The more I’ll HAVE, the happier I’ll BE. The problem is, the more I do, the more there is still to do and the more I have to more there is still to have. I am defined by what I do so I become driven, busy and tired. The more I have, the more there is to lose so the harder I work.” We all know that the link between having more things and being happier is a myth, so being happy never arrives.
The winner orients their life quite differently: BE DO HAVE
They say, “It is not what do I need to HAVE before I can start, or what work do I need to DO… but who do I need to BE? What kind of person would have access to the kind of outcomes I want? Then being that kind of person, what would I be doing? And then the having takes care of itself.”
Be Do Have is definitely the rarest of the three lifestyles and the most abstract, yet it is the only one that works.
[1] https://jaeminfrazer.com/blog/a-simple-explanation-of-the-be-do-have-model