Hunting For Tigers
The subject of focus and purpose has been written about hundreds of times. As a matter of fact, it is one of the most talked about subjects in business and self improvement literature. You would imagine that by now, we would have gotten it but maybe the reason people keep writing books on this subject is because in fact most of us as Zig Ziglar would say are still living our lives as "Wondering Generalities." Gary Keller's book "One Thing" breaks it down to the most basic level possible by saying as Curly did in the movie City Slickers, "Life Is About One Thing." Jim Collins in his book "Good To Great" shared the principle of First Things First. In Goethe’s words, “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” Never let your most important priorities fall victim to the least important. Don’t confuse the urgent for the important. The urgent is easy to see. The important is harder to find time for when you are loaded up with urgent tasks. Andy Andrews in The "Travelers Gift" shared the principle of "Thinking Big." When speaking about his book Andrews put it like this, "If you are hunting for rabbits in tiger country, you have to keep an eye out for the tigers but if you are hunting for tigers in rabbit country you can just ignore the rabbits." In other words, if your goals, your why is not big enough something more important will always get in the way, or worse yet, life's challenge's and setbacks will stop you. However, if you are on a mission towards something big, if you are hunting tigers, NOTHING will stop you or distract you. People who lack focus do so because they don't have a clear vision of what's truly important to them. They don't know what their "Big Why" is. If I don't know why I'm doing something, I will be easily distracted by life’s interruptions. ...Imagine your boat sank 10 miles off shore. Your "One Thing" would be crystal clear. You would start swimming towards shore even with no chance of success and would persist without failure or you would die. Just imagine swimming for your life and your friend or co-worker says 'let’s stop and check facebook, read e-mail or chat about our problems." Silly, right? It's only a ridiculous question because now, we are focused on our purpose, our destination and NOTHING else matters. Now, imagine you lived your life with this type of clarity on why you are here and with this type of focus.
In 2002 I became a part time Real Estate agent. My full time job was in another field. One that I had become very successful at and was making a very good income. It had also become mundane and too easy and I lost focus of my big why and my priorities. Then one day, the CEO and my business partner of that company called and told me he didn't like me selling Real Estate part time and I was issued an ultimatum, quit selling Real Estate or be fired from my position with his company. I made my decision immediately and at the same time discovered my BIG WHY and regained MY FOCUS. At the same time that this was going on I had a family to support including a daughter that was born in 2001 six weeks early and had spent four weeks in the hospital complete with huge unpaid medical bills. So, I go form a six figure income to NO INCOME in less than 24 hours. "Big Why and Focus" are no longer a problem. Like the paragraph above, my boat had just sunk and I had one choice, swim or die. The next day, my first day as a full time Realtor and every day since I am very clear on "Why Am I Here?" I am hunting tigers and I don't have time to even think about the rabbits.
So in closing, back to Gary Keller, "Think Big-Act Bold-And Live Large"
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