Environment > Will Power

You are much better off focusing your energy on crafting an environment that supports and encourages you towards your goal, rather than trying to muster enough will power to reach your goal in an environment that works against you. Given enough time, you will run out of will power; but you will never run out of environment. So create an environment that works for you, and not against you; and you won’t need nearly as much will power to keep going.

Focus = Fortune

As the inaugural post of this blog, I think it fitting that I make the post about the most important lesson I’ve learned in life, health, work, and wealth:

Focus = Fortune

What you focus on, and how well you focus on it, will determine what “fortune” you receive in return. If you ask most people what their goals or desires are, they will usually responds with one or more of the following areas:

  • Health
  • Wealth
  • Relationship

What “fortunes” you get in your health, your wealth, and your relationships can be directly attributable to the type and level of focus you put towards them.

Reality-changing focus is the combination of two things: purity and intensity. Imagine the difference between a red light bulb, a red flashlight, and a laser. The red light bulb scatters out in all directions, and its light goes the shortest distance of the three. The red flashlight does a reasonably good job of directing the light particles in the same direction, and its beam reaches further than the red light bulb. However, the laser not only directs the light particles in the same direction; it also concentrates and intensifies them to an enormous degree, and thus its beam accomplishes so much more. Laser lights can reach extremely long distances. Some you can see from many miles away. With sufficient intensity, lasers can even cut metal. The more singular the focus, the more fully the intensity can be channeled. And the more the intensity can be channeled, the more exponential the effect. Consider the difference in effect between how the red light bulb gets scattered in all directions, while the laser cuts like a fiery scalpel.

Think of your focus in the same way. Think of all your different types of focuses in the same way. Your work focus, your food focus, your physical activity focus (or lack thereof), and your love focus. How well do you direct them? Are you pointing them in the right direction that works for your benefit, or are you letting them get scattered in all directions? Think about how difficult life is for the red light bulb; how ineffective it is to push your energy out in all directions at the same time. Pretty useless, eh? But get that energy going in the same direction, you can push with everything you’ve got.

On the topic of wealth, let’s take a quick look at the world of business and finance; and draw a focusing lesson that will be of great help in building your own fortune. Consider the Forbes 400 list; the list of the 400 wealthiest people in the America. These are household names that nearly everyone thinks of when they think of rich people. They are the richest of the rich. At the time of this writing, the minimum amount you need to even get on the list is over $2 Billion. By the time you read this, it may be even more.

I made a curious observation about the Forbes 400 list once. While there are certainly a few folks on the list who inherited their wealth, for the most part the list is made of up self-made billionaires; and most of those are first-generation wealthy. Setting aside the ones who inherited their wealth, and focusing only on the self-made crowd; you can draw another interesting lesson. The self-made billionaires are nearly identical in that they built most (if not all) of their fortune from one thing. One business, one enterprise, one relentlessly executed vision that took them to the top of the game.

This is interesting, because you hear a lot in the financial press (and the marketing of retail investments) about diversification; allocating your assets into different investment types to spread the risk. Clearly, the self-made billionaires on the Forbes 400 list did not make it there through diversification. They made it through a singular and total commitment to one enterprise. Now, once they reached the top of the mountain; they may have shifted to a diversified strategy in order to protect their fortune, but certainly not to create it. So, when it comes to wealth, we can draw this guiding principle:

  • “Concentrate to grow. Diversify to protect.”

In that light, you can apply the same principle to your other areas of fortune: Health and Relationship. With regard to health, what is one key area that you can improve that will make the largest impact (such as improving your quality of food intake)? Also, could your relationships benefit from focusing on one or few key alignments; rather than a host of casual acquaintances? For more on this strategy of concentration, I would recommend you pick up a copy of Gary Kelly’s “The ONE Thing” ; it will be one of the best difference-making personal development books you can ever implement.

I hope this helps, and if it did, please let me know so in the Comments. In the meantime, use this mantra as part of your morning routine and to get your day pointed in the right direction:

Focus = Fortune