Personal Development - Focus on ONE

I remember finding out about personal development, and I thought it was just the greatest thing. I basically sucked at everything, but I realized “Hey, I can improve whatever I suck at” and thats pretty cool. But I ran into a problem that almost everyone going through the same journey runs into. Which is basically starting to want to improve EVERYTHING.

So it goes something like this.. This is awesome! Starting tomorrow I’m going to wake up early, meditate for an hour, go to the gym for two hours, go to work and as soon as that’s done, go to a martial arts class, come home and learn how to play the guitar. Because I’ve always wanted to play it, and once I’m done with that, I know it’s really late, but I’m going to work on my five different business ideas.

And that sounds so good because all of a sudden you’re excited about life again. But.. Here are the two most likely outcomes of that dream.

The first, and the most likely one, is that you won’t be able to actually do it. I don’t care how great you think your willpower is, because willpower’s like a battery. It gets drained. So when you start your day off trying to be the Dalai Lama, and then Ronnie Coleman, and then Anderson Silva, and then Jimi Hendrix and finally at midnight you want to be Mark Zuckerberg. You won’t be able to get Silva, Hendrix and Zuckerberg point, if you even make it that far because the battery is empty by then.

The other option, and this is very unlikely is let’s assume a hyptohetical situation where you somehow can manage and consistently get through all those things. In this unlikely scenario, the best outcome is that you’ll still end up being average at everything. That’s it, just average.

So we’re talking about success here in terms of how it’s usually defined. We think of the Dalai Lama as a success at what he does, we think of Ronnie Coleman as a success at what he does, same thing with Anderson Silva, and Jimi Hendrix, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Now if you look at those people, what do they have in common? You don’t see Mark Zuckerberg busting through his shirt.. Why? Because if he dedicated his daily hours and focus to his workouts, he just wouldn’t be Mark Zuckerberg. Same thing with Ronnie Coleman. If he’s going to be up on the stage in 6 months, he’s focusing on one thing, and that’s his physique. He’s not playing the violin while building awesome business websites. And all of that leads us to this idea of the ONE thing.

Every person who we view as successful has the ONE thing that they focus on. If it’s Mozart, it’s the piano. It’s not the piano plus hitting the gym, and shooting a basketball for hours. If it’s Lebron James, it’s basketball. It’s not basketball plus playing piano and trying to compose for hours.

Now let me make this clear that I’m not here to define success for you. Your definition of success might be different than what’s commonly accepted. Maybe for you, Mozart and Lebron James aren’t successful. Maybe you like the idea of being okay at everything, and having a more balanced lifestyle. And thats fine. I’m not here to tell you what you should do or how you should think. But if you’re asking about how to be successful and success is defined for you by someone like Mozart in music or Lebron James in basketball, you do have to realize that there’s almost no balance with that kind of success.

So ask yourself what is your ONE thing? Are you a Zuckerberg who’s trying to also look like a bodybuilder? And also ask yourself, what do you want? That’s the most important question here.

But if you want to know how to be a success, and you define like it’s usually defined. The only way you’re going to get there is by understanding what your ONE thing is and then completely focusing on that.

@Eggcasual Until next time