The 3 Step Success Formula
Better awareness drives better choices, which produce better results
The 3 Step Success Formula is Sharma's model for understanding the causal chain that produces every life outcome: Awareness → Choices → Results. The formula is both a diagnostic tool (for understanding why you are getting the results you are) and a change prescription (for improving results by intervening at the right level of the chain).
The key insight is that most people try to change their results directly — by working harder, trying different tactics, or changing external circumstances. But results are downstream outputs of choices, which are themselves downstream outputs of awareness. To change results sustainably, you must change the awareness that is generating the choices that are producing those results. This means the primary investment must be in developing awareness — the quality of attention, perception, self-knowledge, and understanding of context — not in forcing different outcomes.
Granularity of awareness is the ultimate lever: the more precisely you can perceive reality (your own patterns, the dynamics of a situation, the underlying drivers of outcomes), the higher the quality of choices available to you, and therefore the better your results. This is why the Reflect pocket of the 20/20/20 Formula is as important as the Grow pocket — developing introspective awareness is a direct performance investment.
- Results are lagging indicators of awareness and choices made weeks, months, or years earlier.
- To change results, you must first change the level of awareness that is generating the choices producing those results.
- Most people intervene on results when they should be intervening on awareness — this is why effort without reflection produces the same results repeatedly.
- High-quality awareness requires both outer observation (reading, learning, coaching) and inner observation (journaling, meditation, feedback-seeking).
- The Daily Diary in the Reflect pocket is the primary tool for developing the granularity of awareness that drives better choices.
- Diagnose the level at which your performance failure is occurringFor any result you are unhappy with, trace it back: what choices produced it? What level of awareness (or lack of awareness) produced those choices? Is the failure at the Results level (tactics), the Choices level (decision criteria), or the Awareness level (perception, self-knowledge, information)?Pro tipMost sustainable performance failures are Awareness-level failures — diagnose here first before attempting tactical changes.
- Invest in Awareness development through the Reflect pocketUse the Daily Diary in the Reflect pocket to build granularity of awareness: journal your patterns, your emotional reactions and their triggers, your recurring blind spots, and the gap between your intentions and your actual behaviors. Seek honest feedback from trusted people about what you cannot see about yourself.Pro tipAsk one mentor quarterly: 'What am I not seeing about myself that is limiting my results?' The answer to this question is the highest-leverage awareness investment available.
- Redesign the choices that are downstream of improved awarenessOnce awareness has improved, redesign the specific choices that were previously generating poor results. Write the new decision criteria explicitly: 'In situation X, I will now choose Y instead of Z because I now understand A.' Explicit choice redesign prevents old awareness from defaulting to old choices under pressure.WarningDo not skip directly to redesigning choices without first doing the awareness work — choice redesign without awareness improvement produces temporary behavior change that reverts under stress.
- Track results as delayed feedback on earlier awareness and choicesTreat current results as feedback on the awareness and choices of 3–6 months ago, not the choices of yesterday. This prevents the frustration of 'I changed but nothing is different yet' — the lag between awareness investment and result improvement is predictable and normal. Track leading indicators (quality of awareness and choices) not just lagging ones (results).Pro tipThe Daily 5 Concept — five small actions per day aligned with your most important goal — converts the formula into a daily practice of micro-choices that compound into major results.
The entrepreneur has repeatedly built companies to a certain scale and then watched them plateau or fail. At the Results level, this looks like a strategy problem. At the Choices level, it looks like hiring and delegation failures. But at the Awareness level — revealed through the Reflect pocket — it is a deep fear of success rooted in her father's abandonment, which causes her to unconsciously sabotage growth at the point where it would require her to trust others.
Sharma presents the 3 Step Success Formula as a synthesis of his coaching experience across thousands of individuals and organizations. He observed that almost every performance failure could be traced back to a deficiency in awareness — not a deficiency in effort, tactics, or resources. The formula crystallizes this observation into a teachable three-step causal model.
The framework draws on cognitive behavioral therapy's model of thought-feeling-behavior chains, the mindfulness tradition's emphasis on awareness as the foundation of wise action, and strategic consulting's root-cause analysis approach. Sharma's contribution is packaging these into a simple, memorable formula applicable to everyday performance contexts.