Nick Santonastasso, Life and Business Coach: The Power of Failure and Resilience

Consistent with its effort to promote more purpose-driven interactive meeting and incentive travel experiences, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance RRN media platform has launched a new series of feature articles and YouTube shows on reimagining meetings and incentive travel by making them more purposeful, interactive, meaningful, sustainable, and measurable.

Overcoming Daunting Challenges 

Insights Shared

• Focus on solutions. “My greatest strength comes from the way my parents treated me, which was pretty much like my other siblings.” They could have made things really easy, he explains, “but then I would have gotten smacked in the face by reality when I left the house and my parents weren’t around.” He says he learned early to shift his focus from his problems to solutions.
• Failure is the path to success. He says that he learned from an early age that failure is part of the process of getting where you want to go. “I failed at almost everything along the way. I failed at getting onto the couch, at dressing myself. My life is a string of failures that led to success.” The faster one gets feedback from failure, the faster one can figure out a game-winning strategy, he suggests.
• Put your focus on what you have in life and can control, not on what you can’t control. “Many people spend most their time focusing on all the things they don’t have versus all the things they do have. I’m a man with no legs and only one arm. If I woke up every day and didn’t do the work and I just let my brain run the show and focus on all the things I don’t have, my quality of life would be terrible.”
• Most people spend most of their time focusing on all the things that they don't have in their lives versus all the things that they do have. What's wrong with their relationships? What's wrong with their bank accounts? What's wrong at work? He says he sees people who “have everything. They have the cars and they have the houses and they have the nice watches and they're still pissed off and angry because they're always focused on the next level of what they don't have.”
• Properly selected mentors can change one's life. “I'm a firm believer that we're all standing on the shoulders of giants...There is so much information trickling down through the years to help people get to the next level.” The right mentor helps us believe in ourselves. If you don’t believe in yourself, you can draw belief from your mentor. A good mentor gives us evidence that what we’re pursuing is possible, and shares information, strategies, and advice we can use on our own journeys.”
• Embrace criticism, he advises. He says he has gotten a lot of push back on his efforts.  “Instead of letting those stones, or those limiting beliefs, dictate my life,” he listened. “I said, okay, you don't think I'm tactical enough, thank you for the good advice. I'm going to be extremely tactical. I am not knowledgeable enough; I'm going to become extremely knowledgeable. I'm going to become a well of knowledge.”
• Know the difference between being a puddle and a well. A puddle is someone with a broad but shallow level of knowledge about many things. A well is one who digs deep into their area of area. That’s the level of knowledge he says people will pay you for.
• A healer is not someone who heals you but who triggers you to heal yourself. “What are your roadblocks? What are your challenges? What are your triggers? Then put a mirror up to yourself so you can see yourself and work through your challenges. We are all handicapped in one way; for most people, it’s a mental handicap. We're handicapped with our beliefs; we're handicapped with our own stories. We're handicapped, because we're addicted to specific emotions that we don't know are not serving us.”  We are all struggling, he adds. Once people understand that it opens up a new door to understanding.
• Santanastasso says his goal at organization events is to give attendees access to strategies and tools that allow them gain greater access to the different parts of the community to bring them together. The idea is to help them “bring their mission forward. Help people better communicate in difficult situations,and increase wellness in the organization. I try to give people the tools to help heal.”
• He believes in the law of exposure. Once people are exposed to a greater way of selling, serving, or communication, they will never be the same.

Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services