We at Overton Leadership Associates have noticed that there seems to be no limit to the number of unimaginable actions that individuals and groups of friends choose to take, usually without a good plan or a thorough understanding of the consequences if things go wrong. When it comes to young adults ages 17-25 who want to be successful and they have a big idea or hear a ‘great’ idea from friends or associates, we recommend the young adults compare the idea being considered to the activities represented by the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions detailed at overtonleaders.com/blog/ to determine if taking the action being considered moves him/her closer toward success. By performing the comparison and then choosing an action that leads to success, the young adult is demonstrating the ability to self-regulate, an essential quality of responsible leaders and successful business owners. Also, testing an idea proposed by friends and associates against the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions is a way to resist peer pressure. In fact, adoption of the philosophy of the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions results in the young adult becoming a positive influencer when discussing important ideas with friends, family and associates.
The success-focused activities that stem from Overton Leadership Associates’ Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions are shown below:
- Parenting
- Faith
- Work
- Study—high school or college
- Training—on a specific craft such as plumbing or auto mechanics
- Talent development—if the individual has professional-level potential such as in a sport or in music
- Caregiving
- Military service
- Business ownership
- Volunteering
An easy way for young adults to remember the activities identified by the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions is to make up a sentence using the first few letters of each one of the 10 activities. We recommend they use the following sentence, but each person can create his/her own sentence or rap:
‘TAsha TRaveled to WORK by BUS and began to STUDY for her class by watching a Video on her PC while Finishing her Mango smoothie.’
If the big idea being proposed does not match any of the activities identified by the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions, then it is probably a bad idea. Note that this discussion is in regard to young adults ages 17-25 contemplating significant actions—ones that affect his/her life, family, finances, freedom and career; not routine decisions such as when to wash your car or if it is too cold to walk your dog.
Finally, it is important for us to acknowledge that some people may feel that the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions is an attempt to force young adults ages 17-25 to always make perfect decisions or to stifle their creativity, but that is not true. The goal of the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions is to provide young adults an easy to remember guideline that always points them in the direction of success. Whether or not young adults use the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions is entirely up to them. That’s why we state that the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions are designed to be a self-regulation tool for young adults to use instead of being a monitoring system for parents to use.
One last thing…Overton Leadership Associates does not recommend that anyone attempt to perform all 10 of the activities identified by the Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions; just select a few and pursue excellence in those.
Here’s a direct link to Overton Leadership Associates’ Top 10 ‘Gut Check’ Questions: overtonleaders.com/blog/top-10-gut-check-questions-part-1-of-3/
Please share within your network. Thanks!!
Herb