Leadership guru John Maxwell speaks to full house Tuesday

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“Hi, my name is John,” he said, “and I’m your friend.”

That’s how leadership guru and internationally renowned motivational speaker John Maxwell opened his keynote speech Tuesday at this year’s Impact Alexandria event.

Formerly known as the Community Live and Learn, the annual event was created in 2003 by the Alexandria-based food company Tastefully Simple.

In his first visit to the area, Maxwell played to a packed house at the Lake Geneva Christian Center, talking for a little more than an hour about finding success in one’s life.

Maxwell said there are three things anyone can do to be successful.

They are:

•?Knowing your purpose in life.

•?Growing to your maximum potential.

•?Helping people around you also achieve success.

“When you and I discover our purpose in life, when you and I know what we’re here for,” he said, “it takes us to an amazing level in success and fulfillment.”

Maxwell said finding your purpose in life often takes time, but there are two things people can do.

The first is to follow your passions, which most often will lead you to what you were meant to do with your life.

The second, which Maxwell says is 100 percent effective, is to find your “strength zones”.

“Work on your strengths,” he said. “Stop working on your weaknesses. People don’t become highly successful spending all their time on things they’re not any good at.”

Once you’ve found your strengths, he added, you need to put all your energy toward improving them.

“Growth is not an automatic process,” he said, noting that it takes a concerted effort to get better in the things you already do well.

The key to reaching your po-tential is two-fold, he pointed out.

First you must make deci-sions, and then you need to manage those decisions.

It is the second part, manag-ing and following through, that is the most important, and the part people too often forget.

“Here’s the only example I’m going to give you – New Year’s resolutions,” Maxwell said.

People make, and break, New Year’s resolutions all the time, Maxwell said, not be-cause the resolution was bad but because they don’t follow through.

“You need to understand it’s not about the decision,” he said. “It’s about managing it and keeping up with it.”

Once you’ve become success-ful in your life, it’s important to pass that on to others, Maxwell said.

Help them find their purpose and fulfill their potential, he said.

“If you just do things for yourself you will have a certain amount of personal success,” he said, “but if you help bring success to others, you will be significant.”

Tags: john, maxwell, leadership, success, impact, alexandria