Be an Achiever
You become an achiever by achieving your goals. If
you achieve your goals, you’re an achiever. If you
don’t achieve your goals, you’re not an achiever.
This is a simple, binary way to think about
achievement. To achieve means to reach, attain, or
accomplish. What you choose to reach, attain, or
accomplish is up to you.
The difference between an achiever and a
non-achiever is largely a matter of attention.
Non-achievers give their goals little attention,
if they bother to set goals at all. Achievers give
their goals sufficient attention so as to reach,
attain, or accomplish those goals.
Non-achievers reach, attain, and accomplish
something other than their goals. Quite often they
will reach, attain, and accomplish someone else’s
goals, without consciously making those goals
their own.
To be an achiever, you must give your goals
sufficient attention to reach, attain, or
accomplish them. This means you must withdraw much
of your attention from activities that are not
directly leading to the accomplishment of your
goals.
In a given week, where is your attention going? If
you aren’t habitually obsessing over your goals,
then what are you obsessing over instead?
What do you normally put ahead of your goals?
Do you manage to watch some TV or movies?
Do you keep up with email, social media, and text
messages?
Do you attend to the social obligations that your
family, friends, and co-workers expect from you?
What exactly are you reaching, attaining, or
accomplishing in a typical week? Are you making
progress on your goals by giving them many hours
of attention, or are you putting your attention
elsewhere?
Achievers accept that in order to achieve their
goals, they must withdraw attention from non-goal
activities. Achievers also accept that these
competing interests may resist being put on the
back burner.
The cable company may try to talk you
out of canceling. Starbucks may send you a
reminder email if you don’t show up for too long.
Your mother may nag you about something trivial.
Achievers learn to decline these invitations for
their attention by default. They keep putting
their attention back upon their goals.
You must especially be on guard for new
invitations and opportunities that come up while
you’re working on your goals. These hidden
distractions can easily sidetrack you. If an
opportunity aligns solidly with your goals,
wonderful… take full advantage of it.
But if it seems off-course with respect to your current
goals, then stick to your path, and say no to the
diversion. Generally speaking, it’s wise to be
less opportunistic, so you can be more of a
conscious creator. You’ll often make faster
progress by creating your own opportunities
instead of haphazardly chasing the random
opportunities that others bring you.
The Scarcity of Attention
Attention is a limited resource. The ability to
consciously direct your attention with good energy
and focus is even scarcer than the time you have
available each day.
In any given week, there may be many interests
competing for your attention: friends, family,
co-workers, random strangers, corporations,
organizations, government agencies, media, and
more. And these days they have many different ways
to reach you.
Internally you have some competition as well: your
physiological needs, your emotional needs, your
cravings, your habitual behaviors, etc. You need
to eat, sleep, eliminate waste, bathe, and so on.
These activities require some attention too.
Somewhere among those competing interests is
another voice seeking your attention. This is your
goal-oriented nature, your greater intelligence,
your desire to live a life rich in meaning and
purpose. This part of you craves achievement, and
it won’t be satisfied by anything less. It wants
you to set your own goals and to reach, attain,
and accomplish them.
How much of your attention are you giving to your
achievement-oriented self?
If you starve this part of yourself for attention,
it will punish you with low motivation, low
self-worth, and a general scarcity of resources.
But if you give it the attention it craves, you’ll
be rewarded with high energy, drive, passion,
abundance, and a sense of purpose and
contribution.
Directing Your Attention
Fortunately you have the power to consciously
direct your attention. You can let your attention
float around aimlessly. You can focus your
attention on something other than your goals, such
as the goals other people have for you. Or you can
focus your attention on your own goals.
To really move your life forward requires a major
commitment of attention. If you want to improve
your finances, you must put your attention on
creating value for people, sharing that value, and
intelligently monetizing that value.
If you want to positively transform your relationships,
then give that part of your life some intense and
prolonged attention.
Unfortunately we have the tendency to remove
attention from those areas of our lives that
aren’t doing so well. In the short term, it’s wise
to shift focus when we feel overwhelmed because
temporary diversions can help relieve stress. But
for deeper transformation to occur, we need to put
lots of attention squarely on those areas that
scream for improvement.
Setting goals requires focused attention. Planning
out the action steps to achieve our goals requires
even more attention. Executing those action steps
takes more attention still. Achievers make such
activities a priority in their lives.
Non-achievers don’t.
As you get older, keep raising your standards for
what deserves your attention. Keep deleting and
declining unnecessary fluff and obligations that
might otherwise distract you from your magnificent
goals. This will free up more attention to focus
on your goals.
Have you noticed that when you put your full
attention on a goal and obsess about it, you can
really move it forward quickly, and you do
eventually achieve it?
But when you let your attention become diluted by
too many competing interests, then progress on
your goal slows to a crawl, and you eventually lose
your connection to the goal altogether. Goals
require significant and prolonged nurturing until
they’re achieved; otherwise they die.
Say No to Almost Everything
The difference between successful people and
really successful people is that really successful
people say no to almost everything. – Warren
Buffet
What does it mean to say no to almost everything?
For me this means being able to work full-time on
my goals, without letting anything get in the way.
It means keeping my schedule free of distracting
entanglements.
It means that even when I work on goals that seem
to be put on my plate by someone else, I must
either make those goals my own (and say yes to
them), or I must reject them and not give them any
attention. If I cannot make a goal my own in some
way, it doesn’t deserve my attention.
Even a goal like doing your taxes, you can make
your own. You can commit to keeping your finances
up to date and in good order. You can choose to
pay the tax contribution for whatever reasons
appeal to you.
But if you can’t make a goal your
own, and you try to work on it anyway, then you’re
fighting yourself, and your progress will be
stunted and inconsistent, which is an enormous
waste of precious attention.
Don’t dwell in the land of half-commitments. Put
your full attention on your own goals, including
goals you’ve made your own. If you have a job,
then either make the commitment to do your very
best at that job, or vacate the position and let
someone else do it better.
Put Your Goals First
Many achievers have jobs. Many achievers have
families. Many achievers have competing
commitments of various kinds. But achievers don’t
use their job, kids, and other commitments as
excuses for not giving sufficient attention to
their goals.
For everyone who uses these to excuse
their inability to set and achieve goals, there’s
a real achiever who started from a more
challenging position and used those same elements
to help motivate them to achieve their goals.
Where non-achievers see excuses, achievers find
drive.
A good way to put your goals first is to set
high-quality, holistic goals to begin with. Don’t
squander your attention on shallow pursuits like
making money for its own sake. Set goals that will
help you grow, build your skills, create value for
others, and do some good in the world.
Ask yourself: Does the goal seem meaningful and
intelligent when you imagine yourself 20 years
past its achievement?
Deliberately put your attention on your goals.
When you catch yourself standing in line, dwell
upon your goals. Visualize yourself taking the
action steps. Make this your default behavior
instead of pulling out your phone to attend to
something trivial.
Carefully plan out the action steps to achieve
your goals. If you received my latest newsletter,
you’ll find an extensive how-to article about
planning the achievement of your goals.
Clear time to work on your goals, and make this
time sacred and inviolable. If you can only clear
a small slice out of each week to work on your
goals, then consider setting a goal to reach the
point where you have the freedom to devote as many
hours to your goals as your energy allows.
What specific goals would you need to set and achieve
to make that a reality? Imagine being able to
devote most of your time every week to working on
your most important goals, without anything
getting in the way. Many people live this way, and
they love it. Why not you?
The Goal of Freedom
One of my past goals was to remove financial
scarcity as a potential source of distraction, so
I could spend most of my time each week working on
my goals, whether they were income-generating or
not.
I want to center my life around personal
growth pursuits and share what I learn as a legacy
for others.
I devoted a significant amount of attention to that goal
over a period of years until it was achieved, and after
that I could continue to maintain such a lifestyle with
relative ease.
I know that some people think it’s unusual to have
the freedom to immerse oneself in setting and
achieving goals that may have nothing
to do with making money or having a job, like
traveling around Europe for a month or going vegan
or exploring open relationships, but this kind of
freedom is important enough to me that I made
achieving this goal my top priority for years,
sticking with it until it was achieved. It was
challenging but definitely worthwhile.
I know many people who’ve achieved similar goals.
Generally speaking, they tend to be the happiest
people I know. Instead of taking orders from
someone else as their daily routine, they put
their attention on their goals, desires, and
interests.
They make it a priority to maintain this freedom.
They don’t use a job, kids, or the lack of money as
excuses — just the opposite in fact. From these
people I commonly hear stories of setbacks recalled
with laughter and good cheer, not with fear or regret…
like the time a couple of friends had to sleep in a park
because they had no money for a place to stay.
What non-achievers fear as roadblocks are merely
stepping stones (and entertaining future stories!) for
achievers.
If lifestyle freedom is important to you, then
make that your primary aim. Put the attainment of
this goal first in your life. Working to achieve
this goal must become more important to you than
keeping up with social media, pleasing your
parents, watching your favorite TV shows, and
other distractions.
If anything else is truly getting in the way, then
either drop it from your life, or find a way to turn it
into an advantage that increases your drive and
motivation.
It’s easy for me to tell the difference between
people who are committed to achieving lifestyle
freedom vs. those who aren’t committed. The ones
who are committed are obsessed with the goal; they
think of little else. I can’t get them to shut up
about it!
They’re constantly trying to figure out
how to make it a reality. They work hard at it.
They stumble and keep right on going. Usually the
goal takes longer than they’d like. They often
want it to take less than a year.
It usually takes 2-5 years to reach the point of financial
sustainability. The achievers make it obvious that
they’ll get there no matter how long it takes. For
them the goal is mandatory, not optional.
The non-achievers talk about the goal as a distant
fantasy. It’s a wish, a dream, a possibility…
something that would be nice to have if and when
the planets align properly.
Their action plan consists mainly of reading books
about the Law of Attraction and listening to Abraham-Hicks
recordings. They treat the goal as a casual desire
but not a serious commitment. They disrespect the
tremendous force of will that’s required to
achieve it. They virtually never get there.
If the goal of lifestyle freedom matters to you,
then drop, cut, and burn whatever distracts you
from it. Put your attention squarely on that goal,
and obsess about it until you achieve it. If you
need more time, cancel cable TV, close your social
media accounts, and keep your phone powered off
during daylight hours.
Take breaks as you need them, but keep putting
your attention back on this goal. If you do that, it’s
a safe bet that you’ll achieve it.
You’ll set yourself on the path to achieving
lifestyle freedom when you stop putting other
distractions ahead of that commitment.
( John Lewis )