My grandmother was a committed lady. I don't mean committed as in institutionalized, I mean committed as someone that has achieved success. The reason I'm talking about this is because today is a bittersweet day. I bring up my Grandmother, because today is my grandmother's funeral. Maybe it's really a memorial because her body won't be there. I don't really know and I don't think it is important. Whatever it is, the family is getting together to pay respects, remember and celebrate a rather long and well lived life of the family matriarch. As a kid I think about my grandmother's house growing up. Her home was the central focus for the entire family. Whenever anything happened good or bad, we went to my grandmother's house. She is the last of her generation in my family, and we could learn a little from that generation.
My grandmothers house wasn't a very big house, but it was big enough for everyone to have a seat and a smile. Most holidays were spent at my grandmother's house with the entire family there. When fireworks were still legal in Los Angeles, we would have 20 people or more in a very small backyard running around with fireworks. Oddly enough no one ever got hurt. It was always safe, nobody could insult you or hurt you while you were there. If someone started picking on you, my grandmother could always fix it with chocolate milk. If a fight broke out, it could be ended with cake. She had so many activities for every kid you never really had time to bicker or fight anyway. TV was out, my granddad only allowed golf on TV. If you said something negative about another family member or someone outside the house she would just laugh it off and say "don't be ridiculous." She would say it with a smile that somehow let you know what you were doing or saying was wrong.
As long as I can remember my mother and her three sisters have been trying to each build a house that was the family focal point as my grandmother had done. Three of the four women definitely had focused on the objective and yet none of them have achieved it. The fourth gave up and just lived life her way. It wasn't until my grandmother died that I understood why the other three could not build that family center. It is that same aspect of focus that separates the snipers from the infantryman. It is the same aspect that let the Green Beret become a Green Beret or a SEAL become a SEAL.
In my first book I had a chart on success and willingness. The bell shaped chart was pretty simple with most of the people in the middle. The ultra low achievers that some might mislabel as extreme failures, were to the far left. The far right side of the chart was those who are considered extremely successful. That bell curve works as a nice graph to represent a population distribution as it relates to successful people and their willingness to achieve. The aspect that was missing is the same aspect that let my grandmother build the family gathering place. Maybe a new chart should look like this:
Keep in mind, this chart is only valid for one specific goal. If you are committed to getting to Hawaii and don’t let anything stand in your way, you will get there. The commitment to the Hawaii trip will have nothing to do with the promotion at work. Each goal requires it’s own level of commitment. Success in some goals will reduce the commitment required to achieve other goals, yet each goal is still unique.
In the advanced marksmanship school, the instructors used several techniques to build this aspect of our character. I’ll share one of these techniques to illustrate my point. Our basic shooting practice would start with a 5 mile run. At the end of the 5 miles, you would lay down prepare your weapon and take aim at a target 400 yards away. Your heart would be racing and your lungs would be burning trying to catch up with the muscles that were running at least a mile ahead of your breathing. The extra deep breathing and your beating heart would make it difficult to focus on the little dot of a target 400 yards away. Just as you thought you had enough control of yourself to pause your breathing, account for your heart rate and pull the trigger, the instructor would bang two garbage can lids together. The word for this training technique? Distraction.
Have you ever been focused on something and jumped when someone else walked in or appeared where you didn’t expect them? That person was a distraction. Have you ever been stopped by someone on your way to get something and forgot what you were doing because you were distracted? The mind works the same way in all of these events.
One of the planning techniques that I like to use is to set my goals for the next day before I go to bed. This allows my subconscious to work through the best method of finishing my goals while I sleep. When I get up in the morning and look at my goal sheet, I'm ready to focus and get on with the day. I dedicate the first 2 to 3 hours of my day to accomplishing my five or six goals for the day. Just like the instructor bringing the garbage can lids, distractions start almost immediately.
The cat might want to go outside, the dog might want to come inside, my nephew might want to play baseball or the phone might ring showing my mother's name on the screen. Anyone of these things could derail my focus on my daily goals. Has this ever happened to you? Maybe you tried a goal sheet and gave up because of the distractions. You are probably asking how this relates to my grandmother by now. If we ask, “What is it that let my grandmother create a place that became the family focus?” “What is it that let me that target 400 yards away with instructors banging garbage can and kicking my feet?” or “What is it that lets infantrymen become a Green Beret or a sailor become a SEAL?” we find the answers are all the same.
When I ask people questions like this, the normal answer is "military training". They don't seem to have any idea how my grandmother relates to the conversation. The funny thing is it isn't military training that gets someone through a marksmanship Academy or special operations training school. Most people picture a Green Berets or Navy SEALs as T-shaped bodybuilder style people with small minds that are easily molded by the military. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I worked with Green Berets that were were five foot four inches and Navy SEALs that weighed 150 pounds. These guys could speak several languages and most had degrees. How did these little geniuses make it through the toughest physical training the US military has to offer?
The aspect of focus all of these guys had and my grandmother had mastered was commitment. When my grandfather died we learned that he had a son from a previous marriage. No one except my grandmother knew. Now that's commitment. She understood there would be no benefit to the family as a whole if she shared the information. She kept that secret to herself all of those years, and when the fire captain showed up at the funeral everybody was confused. My grandfather had the unique ability to maintain two separate commitments, one to his son Steve and the other to his four daughters. My Grandmother never told any of the girls about Steve.
Commitment to achieving your daily goals is how you stay focused no matter what distractions come your way. When you start your morning you should already have decided a level of commitment to your goals for the day. There should be no question in your mind whether the phone call from your mother or your daily goals are more important. At some point in life all truly successful people begin to insert distraction filters. For instance, my mother knows if it's really important that she needs to call my wife. My wife is the first person that can bypass my filter.
Distraction filters can be anything. In business, a well-trained secretary is nicknamed a “gatekeeper” because they keep the distractions outside of the gate. After all what's the point of the secretary to just give you every single call, you can do that yourself. If you can’t afford a secretary, just turn off your phone for two or three hours every morning so you can stay focused. Skip the excuses. If you can turn your phone off to go to bed or in a meeting, you can turn your phone off to accomplish two, three or four critical tasks every morning. You just have to keep practicing; success is a habit you must build.
Commitment, like focus, takes practice. In fact in order to be committed you not only have to know what your target is, you have to be focused on the target. This is why commitment is an aspect of focus, not separate from focus. You can't have commitment or be committed until you have a target to shoot for or a goal to achieve.
True success in life starts with focusing on a very specific goal and then committing yourself to achieving that goal. It doesn’t matter if the goal is building an empire, or a family home. You can’t commit unless you are focused. My grandmother was clearly successful in her goal, take a lesson from her and goo achieve success in reaching your goal.
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Thank you for your insights.