118 – April 28
“Do one thing at a time and do that one thing as if your life depended upon it.”—Eugene Grace
Robert, the doctor, had more energy than a power plant. He was excited and had a million goals. The problem was that his energy was too scattered. It’s fine to have a lot of goals, but it’s really difficult to try to get them all at once. You really can’t start four businesses at the same time and have them all be wildly successful. Robert wanted to build his medical practice, enroll and teach three different seminars, be a professional organizer, and start a new networking group.
It was too much. He was running into difficulties at the networking meetings he was attending. He only had thirty seconds to introduce himself and he was trying to talk about all four businesses in that short time. Not only was this ineffective, but it actually worked against him because it made people doubt his credibility in any of the businesses. When I need a doctor, I want a doctor who is a full-time dedicated health practitioner, who eats, sleeps, walks, talks, breathes healing. Not someone who is thinking about three other businesses at the same time.
The same thing is true if you have too many projects in the works at the same time. It is difficult to split your focus and maintain the energy level needed to bring all the projects to fruition. You need to set priorities on your goals and concentrate on the most important “A” goal first. If you are interested in having more than one business, the best way to proceed is to get one business up and running well, then add personnel to maintain the business. Then you can allocate some of your time to starting up the next business.
It’s like the circus performer who spins many plates on top of tall sticks. He doesn’t start all the plates spinning at once—he starts with one plate, gets it spinning on the stick, then starts spinning the second plate. All the attention the first plate needs is a small touch once in a while to keep it spinning. Then he starts the third plate, while the first and second are spinning along fine needing just a touch now and then. Then the fourth plate, the fifth and so on, until he has many plates spinning at the same time. He never tries to start spinning all the plates at the same time and he can’t ever totally ignore the plates that are already spinning. Otherwise, he’ll get a lot of broken plates!
Today’s Affirmation:
“I focus my abundant energy and produce extraordinary results!”
A speaker asked the audience “How many people would like to lose a couple of pounds?”
Everyone raised their hands.
Then she said, “How many people know what to do to make that happen?”
Again, everybody raised their hands.
“How many of you are doing it?” she inquired.
3 out of 70.
“So why don’t you just do it already?” she asked. “You have the information to produce exactly the result you want!” There were sighs and groans all around.
There are 500 television channels, 5 million-plus books listed on amazon.com, and zillions of pages of ezines, web sites, wikkipedia, etc. All the information you could ever want about how to be richer, smarter, more successful, healthier, thinner, younger (or at least look younger) is readily available at your fingertips.
So why aren’t we rich already? Smarter? More successful? Healthier?
The reason is this: it isn’t information that counts – it’s the action you take after you get the information.
Action requires constant self-motivation, willingness to embrace change, willingness to fail until you get it right, and constant application of new behaviors that are outside your comfort zone.
Arrgh.
That’s the hardest thing for human beings to do. Interrupt our comfortable habits – even if destructive – to change and do things differently long enough, consistently enough, to make the new information take hold and operate our lives in new and better ways with more successful outcomes.
A great coach or teacher can help you. Because they can see your blind spot, the thing that keeps you from your dreams, and they can keep watch and help you around it, over it, through it. You can’t see it because it’s your blind spot, but a good coach can. They help motivate and inspire you to take action. We need a coach, a mentor, a friend who’s been there and done that and can show us the road to success.
That’s when all the results and rewards and dreams you wanted will be yours!
I saw the problems people had with money years ago first-hand, because I had them myself. I am a Tuna-in-Recovery (clueless and food for Sharks). When I saw the problem, I got help. I put myself in the Dolphin-in-Training program I invented – I read books, took courses, counseled my bookkeeping service’s clients, practiced, failed, tried again, and finally succeeded in turning my financial life around. It took years.
But it doesn’t have to take years. In fact, it can take just 8 weeks. I created the 8-week Financial Stress Reduction® Workshop in 1990 to help people like you get the shortcut to everything it took me years and many thousands of dollars to learn.
