Category: Entrepreneur

Focus

In 2019 Jason Shelley was the heir apparent at quarterback for the university of utah football team. He was going to be the starter of a nationally ranked team. People are excited about his abilities and what he can do. Presumably Jason Shelley dreamed of winning games scoring touchdowns and the roar of the crowds adulation.

They brought in Cam Rising. Though he hasn’t played a snap people are more excited by his potential. He has the buzz. Then before practice even begins utah lands a graduate transfer jake Bentley to play quarterback.

This is where the squares and patterns become prominent. What was the original objective of Jason Shelley. To lead the team to touchdowns win football games, make the playoff and win a championship. The circles didn’t change.

But the squares and patterns changed. Does coach doubt me? What made him doubt me? Do they see something I don’t? What did I do wrong? What does he hate me? This is my job, he said so last year. I haven’t had a chance to practice as much. They aren’t even looking at my film.

That is the static, all the emotional and narrative energy that flows through our minds.

Imagine what rickie Fowler had to block out. He was just voted over rated. He probably wanted to stick it to his peers. He was dreaming of the cameras flashing hugging his loved ones, putting the trophy on his mantle. But you see his focus. His mind didn’t wander from the objective. To the good the bad, the confusing, scary or frustrating.

Emotions and feelings are infinitely powerful and they can pull you off your objective like a gust of wind on a high rope.

Ego

The ego will roar to be fed. Achieving the objective seldom happens on the first effort. Failure leads to assessment of what went wrong. We don’t know what went wrong so we take the “facts” of what happened and determine an alternate course. Maybe the first two or three times we remain confident.

Then it happens again and again. The objective isn’t achieved. We start to doubt ability.

We can give up and not try but it is still new so we don’t do that. But we look for patterns. We see shortcomings and others don’t fix. Blame them. Blame situation. And since they have been identified we are hyper aware of them. We see failure, we see the perceived reason. We associate them.

The situation runs out, we give up or we are removed.

I worked sales on business consulting. Completed training, did ride along, practiced my pitch. I was raring to go. They sent me five leads. I failed. They sent me five more. Nothing. Four. Four. Five. It my last one had a good talk. Got farther than I ever had. I felt I was figuring it out.

Come Monday I didn’t get any leads. They said sorry. Next day sent me two. I didn’t make a sale. No leads. No leads. Complained. 2 leads. Nothing. Next Monday nothing. Tuesday nothing. Wednesday I get an email I won’t get any more leads. I didn’t produce.

I had a week where they really fed me.

Then just a couple more. Why waste the leads?

So you know what I did? I started cold calling to make my own leads.

Specific Objective

Think back to when you were in high school. What was the objective? The purpose of going to high school was to learn, pass all the requirements and get a diploma. The objective was graduation.
But how we got there was subjective. Some took photography classes, others played sports. Some were in Advanced classes while others were in remedial. Some worked hard to achieve all A’s while others wanted good grades but were happy with some B’s and perhaps a C or two.
The fact is we got to subjectively choose our path to the objective. However as we get older the path narrows. Say your objective was to get into a prestigious school. Then you had to be much more diligent on your grades, your activities. The objective became more specific so the behavior had to change.
Most of use subjectively feel our way through life forging our own path and that path leads us to where we are. We are on an adventure to see where life takes us. But then we want to achieve more but we only know the path we took. To achieve a new objective we must forge a new path. and to forge a new path we must focus on the objective and block out all the noise that seduces us to go down the familiar path and receive familiar results.

Dominant energy

I was watching a show this morning with my daughter. The main character auditioned to sing the opening number for a television talent show. The whole episode was the adventures she had during the process.

But the character I noticed most was the impresario who was running the show.

He was surrounded by assistants that helped him pull the levers and move the production forward. He had the objective focused energy.

I probably wasn’t supposed to notice him but that is where my head is at now. I thought about the energy it took to decide he wanted to have a show, hire people to realize his vision and hold auditions for singers.

I am realizing more and more I have dueling energies. The one who wants to create worlds and interact with people. And one who wants to burrow down and passively observe the world or just partake in distractions.

For all of my life the observer has been my dominate energy. Even now on a Friday morning I feel the pull of skating at work and relishing the energy of a weekend close at hand.

As I wrote earlier I believe this has to be the way I connect and build a world. It is what I go to in my dominate energy and I do regularly and it is something I can share with others.

Score touchdowns

When a sale fell through I grew frustrated. I cursed the missed opportunity and fell into self pity.

I wondered how I could put so much passion into something and come up empty. The presupposition being I was giving maximum effort, doing everything right and just experiencing unwarranted bad luck. I even thought maybe my despondency might portend a lucky break on the horizon.

If my efforts are not producing results then it is up to me to change my approach. Blaming bad luck is no more acceptable than accepting failure.

In the end it is my job to score touchdowns, win enough games to make the playoffs, then win every playoff game through the championship. Bad luck, tough competition, blown calls, missed chances are nothing but excuses.

I cannot accept excuses in that scenario. I cannot accept excuses in any scenario.

Dead end

I have clung to my plan for 2 years.

I didn’t want to just achieve the objective, I wanted to do it my way. More specifically NOT the way I just laid out in the last post.

My mind is revolted by what I have just discovered.

I always could have achieved my objective but I rejected the way.

I struggle to embrace it still.