This Tony Robbins quote, “Where focus goes, energy flows”, has been stuck in my head all week.
Whether you look at this quote from the perspective of an individual, or an organization, it is important to understand that if we are to grow in any area, the willingness to learn is crucial. Not only is it important to learn, but to apply that learning, and be willing to be focused and persistent in application.
Yet it is easy to want shortcuts that we believe will lead to success, or to hope that we can jump simply upon the success of others. When I first started on Twitter, I remember constantly nagging my brother who already had developed a network to tweet out my posts, and the first couple of times he did, but then he sent me a message. He told me that if he simply shared what I wrote with what he had established, that people would know that I didn’t earn what I had received. Was my focus on getting my work seen, or to do good work?
What I believe is that if you do quality work, consistently, people will see it, and opportunities will arise. But there are two keys here; quality and consistency. This doesn’t mean that you won’t have bad days, or things will be “less than” at some points, but it is persistence at a high quality, that will start to open doors. We should not only look at the success of others, but try to learn what were the things they did that made them successful in the first place. I can look at people that are in great shape, but wanting to be in great shape doesn’t make it so; I have to learn and apply on a consistent basis what they did to get to that point. It might be harder for me, it might take longer than what I would hope, but without learning and applying, it won’t happen.
…he told the story of how one summer his dad tore down a brick wall in front of their family business and then told 12 year old Will and his 9 year old brother to rebuild it. They told their dad that it was impossible. He told them to do it. It took them a year and a half, but they did it. Upon completion Will’s dad said to his sons, “Now don’t you ever tell me there’s something that you can’t do.” In the interview Will said these words, “You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.”
At the organizational level, this same level of thinking applies. Although it is important to understand new opportunities that exist for our students, we have to learn to narrow our focus, and have the patience to focus on depth, not just embrace the next “new thing” as it comes along.
Simply put, the one quality that all successful people have, whatever the endeavour is that they aim to be successful in, is the patience and willingness to learn while applying that learning on a consistent basis. Do that with a focused persistence, and sooner than you think, you will start achieving the progress you seek.
Remember…”Where focus goes, energy flows.”
from Connected Principals http://ift.tt/2jjqhL3
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