Kurek Ashley – Peak Performance Coach

BM speaks to Kurek Ashley, an internationally renowned personality, who lives right here on the Sunshine Coast.

Kurek Ashley has made a name as an expert in personal development, self-discovery and peak performance. He inspires people to get out of their comfort zones and try new ways of thinking to be successful.

With endorsements from celebrities and corporate and sporting entities, it’s obvious Kurek’s methods work. His recent book, How Would Love Respond? took the number one spot on the Amazon.com bestsellers list within four hours of being released, and he’s also credited with motivating the Australian women’s beach volleyball team to win gold at the Sydney Olympics.

Very impressive powers of motivation, but Kurek resists the moniker, ‘motivational speaker’, preferring ‘peak performance coach’.

“My job is to help people facilitate change,” he says. ”So there is a big distinction there for me. I use pretty much any tool in the box that I can, including sometimes tough love in order to get people to actually ‘do’ instead of just ‘know’.”

In a former life Kurek was an actor in Hollywood, appearing in films such as Terminal Velocity and Airheads. It was movie director, John Herzfeld, who helped change his life by ‘forcing’ him to read the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Says Kurek, “For the first time I actually saw what I was doing that was working, but then I could see it as a strategy and that just unleashed my insatiable appetite for success.”

“The only thing that we have power over is the choice to how we think and how we feel. If you study successful people...they have found a way to manage and organise the way they think and feel differently than the way everybody else is doing it.”

Kurek says that while he’s read motivational books and trained with people such as self-help guru Anthony Robbins, he’s learnt more by studying both successful and unsuccessful people. He keeps seeing the same patterns coming up.

“Wallace D. Wattles in the book The Science of Getting Rich said that becoming successful is one scientific formula and when you follow the formula to the letter, you are guaranteed the results you are looking for.”

So, what is this magical formula? Kurek says the first step is to reinvent yourself, because you can’t keep participating the way you have been and expect something different to happen.

“We need to work four new muscle groups every day – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual – to get strong so that we can adapt to whatever environment we are put into,” he advises. “That way, we don’t buy into the hallucination that the outside environment dictates how you feel or how you think.”

“Number two is that successful people always set grand dream goals. They don’t have to be big goals but goals that you are passionate about and that will bring you the most amount of joy.”

“Step number three is that you must take immediate action – never set a goal that you don’t immediately and then consistently go after.”

“The next step is to test and measure, which means to navigate, just paying attention to the goal, the actions that you are taking. Are they pulling you closer to your goal...do you need to adjust your course?”

“The next step is to network. Nobody who has succeeded has ever done it by themselves.”

“Then, the last step is the follow-through.”

Kurek cites success stories such as Oprah, Bill Clinton, Elvis Presley and Richard Branson as glowing examples of people who have taken all of the above steps.

Kurek says he has an amazing life but he wants people to know that he’s had unbelievable amounts of fear like everyone else, but has consistently learnt how to manage that fear and move forward in spite of it.

He concludes by saying, “Act as if today is your entire life instead of today is just another day in your life. When you do that you get way more from your life.”