Our Private Thoughts
Our circumstances are just a reflection of what is going on inside our secret world of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. What we think about most will ultimately be revealed for everyone to see. In other words, our private thoughts don’t stay private for very long. Human beings are really “human becomings.” As we begin to renew our thinking, our world changes with us. As we become better, our lives become better. The prerequisite for changing circumstances is that you must first change yourself. To have it any other way is like pretending the tail can wag the dog. Living on purpose requires deliberately deciding in advance how you are going to grow more like the person God wants you to become. This decision requires that you get in touch with your core desires. It is these high-intensity desires, sometimes called the DNA of success, that reveal what role God made you to fill. Later in this lesson, I’ll share some clues that will help you identify your Genius.
I believe that God’s will for you is something wonderful and glorious—far better than anything you could ever design for yourself. So don’t conform to the average life. Fight off this pull of mediocrity and stand out! Be unconventional. Be an original. Refuse to let yourself be a common copy. Accept that you have been custom-made by God to serve an exclusive function in this world, even if that role and a plan to fulfill it are not yet clear to you. This is your true place—and it’s up to you to find it. There are no extra human beings. God has a plan and a place for everyone, and that includes you.
Is Everyone Doing It?
So if God’s will is so compelling, why isn’t everyone doing it? After working with thousands of ambitious clients over the last sixteen years and undertaking an enormous amount of personal research, I’ve developed some strong conclusions about how our talents, our mission, and God’s will are intertwined:
• God has a particular objective for your life. I’ve touched a bit on this already.
• This objective (or purpose for your life) coincides with your gifts and talents and a host of other heavenly factors.
• Your areas of interest—the activities and pursuits that you find most enjoyable and attractive—are the best indicators of strong talent and giftedness.
When you engage in activities that demand your special talent, your brain releases chemicals that trigger satisfaction as an incentive for you to continue in this area. It is a positive reinforcement mechanism that is all part of God’s perfect design. These talents then get converted into strengths and eventually into Genius if we sustain the course long enough.
Our unique conglomeration of character, talents, life experiences, and personality merge and spark a dream within each of us. The more often we engage in our strengths, the more crystallized our ultimate vision becomes.
With this God-given dream imprinted on our minds, we become intrinsically motivated, needing less and less prodding from the outside. We become inwardly directed, and self-discipline comes virtually without effort.
This whole process is countercultural. Instead of competing to max out their God-given potential, most people in our society compete to keep up with one another. They are in the wrong race. Philosophically, they tend to desire comfort more than character. Strategically, they often find themselves in the wrong career. Tactically, they’ve resigned themselves to simply enjoying their evenings, weekends, and vacations, with no long-term goals. Most people underperform because they were sloppy in choosing the right race for themselves in the first place. With three kids, a second home, and twenty years spent in their current field, many people feel trapped.
The dream God plants in your heart, in your DNA, will not come to fruition by accident. Naturally, there is a price. In a nutshell, the price requires that you surrender the concepts of safety, security, and comfort in exchange for the higher rewards of living the life God gave you and leaving your unmistakable mark on the world. You must grant yourself a promotion and escape from your personal comfort zone if you want to become the difference maker that you were designed to become. Jump, and the net will appear!
All along the path, you will face resistance—institutional, cultural, relational, financial, and mental. This is simply part of the dream game. You must press on in the face of all the pressure to conform. You must take action that leaves no doubt you are committed to your ultimate vision—and you must do this before you have the money, before you have the confidence, and even before you have the blessing of those closest to you. You must first commit unconditionally, then the plan will come and the resources will emerge. Only after you give up all thought of retreat will you become an unstoppable force.
Persistently ask God these three questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Where do you want me to go? Ask God to reveal his will for you through your desires.
Excellence Is Inevitable!
Now let’s move a little deeper into the concept of Genius, and in particular, how it applies to your work. Your area of Genius is the specific point where what you enjoy doing most intersects with what you do best. This is where you are capable of making the greatest contribution in the world. Excellence is inevitable once you find this Genius.
How do you find your Genius? First, determine what you naturally enjoy. Ask yourself what you’d do all day long if money were not a factor. Only when you really love what you do as much as a cherished hobby will you have what it takes to generate tremendous results. A Genius is someone who believes in the ideas that God sends and then takes action.
What is God whispering in your ear? What do you secretly want to do with your life? Exercise the courage to honestly identify where you have been uniquely blessed—where you have special talents and abilities. If you don’t know, pray about it. Ask your spouse. Ask your friends. But seek it out. I believe you have the ability to become outstanding in at least one thing if you are selective and if you throw your whole heart into becoming the best. You must give up all hope of becoming excellent—and enjoying the abundant opportunities that come with it—if you can’t lose yourself with enthusiasm for what you do. As the old saying goes, “Do what you love—love what you do.” Start thanking God it’s Monday!
Genius Is as Genius Does
I have been emphasizing the concept of Genius, which is the ability to focus on your unique strength to the exclusion of all else. This is accomplished by identifying your Genius and then over a period of years eliminating all those activities that interfere with it or oppose it. The concept of Genius is closely aligned with two major principles of peak personal performance:
• The Strength Principle, which is that by focusing on your strengths, you ultimately render your weaknesses irrelevant
• The 80/20 Principle, which is that 80 percent of your results come from only 20 percent of your inputs
Let’s examine this by more closely defining your Genius. We’re not talking about Einstein genius; we’re talking about entrepreneurial or performance genius. Sometimes I call it Forrest Gump genius, meaning it’s a way of acting. To paraphrase Forrest’s mother, “Genius is as Genius does.” Your Genius is a set of related activities that collectively produce superior rewards in the marketplace. Whether you’re a star athlete, a pastor, a business leader, an FBI agent, an entrepreneur, a stay-at-home parent, or a teacher, you have a marketplace—a group of people you are charged with serving. When you operate in your Genius, you produce outstanding results. Best of all, these outcomes are generated with a disproportionately small but extremely calculated investment of time and effort.
Your Genius is where you are most fully leveraged. You can achieve far more with less time, effort, and energy. In many fields, this means you will be able to work less and earn even more by significantly increasing the dollar value of each hour of your time. For others, you will simply be much more productive. By operating within your Genius, you can do less but become much more. Your Genius is where you’re capable of making the greatest difference in the world.
Almost everyone has experienced brief glimpses of Genius, yet onl
y a small minority have capitalized on their latent potential and transformed it into their daily operating system. Here are seven clues that will help you identify your Genius.
Passion. Your area of Genius will always be characterized by enthusiasm, intense interest, and pure fun. This passion will be difficult to turn off, even when you’re away from work. You’ll have boundless energy; working in your area of Genius will energize you physically, mentally, and emotionally. When you do experience fatigue, it will be accompanied by a powerful sense of satisfaction.
Rapid and Continuous Learning. In your area of Genius, you’ll notice that learning new information takes little time. New concepts are easily visualized and quickly integrated into your existing knowledge base. Just as important, the learning process is fun, and never-ending improvement comes naturally.
Strong Memory. Your area of Genius is characterized by a vivid, clear, almost perfect memory. Facts, figures, dates, names, conversations, and key points related to your Genius activities are effortlessly recalled when needed.
Flow. When you’re operating in your Genius, you’ll tend to get totally immersed in what you’re doing. World-class athletes sometimes refer to being “in the zone” when they’re totally absorbed in the present moment and able to shut out everything else.
Using Intuition. In your Genius, you’ll naturally tap into and be inclined to follow your intuitive hunches, and most importantly, you will be right. Expect to experience a strong, instinctual knowing that helps you make quick, positive decisions to move you toward your goal.
Absence of Burnout. By operating in your Genius, you will insulate yourself from burnout. Since you’ll be doing what you do best and most love to do, you will get more done in less time and be happier, healthier, and much more balanced. Burnout is the mental, emotional, and physical consequence of overwork in an area of weakness or non-Genius. Burnout is the breaking-point result of accumulated resistance to non-Genius activity.
Yearning. When you experience a deep desire that just won’t go away, it’s a strong sign that you may be approaching your Genius. Several summers ago, one of my sons kept holding a ball underneath the water in the hot tub. When he released it, it would shoot like a rocket to the surface and up into the air. He seemed to get a kick out of this process, especially when the ball smacked his dad in the face. No matter how deep he held the ball or how often he repeated this exercise, the ball still shot up to the surface. And this is exactly how a yearning works. No matter how often or how deeply you try to bury it, it will keep emerging until you do something about it. Your Genius is longing to be released once and for all.
The “Wing-It” Factor. Have you ever attempted something, completed it with very little effort or preparation, and then received tremendous feedback and praise? This means you “winged it” and got away with it. This can be a great clue to your Genius. If you have the talent to wing it and get great results, how well could you do with a little more preparation? How well could you do with a lot more practice? One of the biggest performance mistakes people make is continuing to wing it because they can, rather than investing the effort and time to make it to the top one percent. Where do you still wing it? It’s worth thinking about.
Your Personal Mission Statement
In this next segment, I want to coach you through the process of creating your personal mission statement. I will share with you an exercise I assign to my 1% Club clients as they develop their personal missions, and I will give you a simple recipe that will help you generate the first draft.
A personal mission statement is a written articulation of your God-given potential—as God sees it. It expresses your unique purpose for living. Your personal mission statement encourages you to change in a deliberate, preconceived direction. The process of constructing the statement forces you to think seriously about the vital areas of your life and to clarify your long-term direction. Creating a personal mission statement requires reflection, introspection, and considerable mental effort. For this reason, it is not an exercise that is appealing to everyone.
A Powerful Exercise
A mission statement is a written, present-tense articulation of exactly what type of person you believe God wants you to become. More importantly, it states what you are willing to do differently in the present to become that person in the future. A good mission statement clarifies what is allowable in your life. It helps you say “yes” to the right things and “no way” to the wrong things. It reminds you of what is true and false. It is a bridge from intention to action, an outward sign that you have accepted complete responsibility for your life. Here’s a sample to get your creative juices flowing:
My Mission
My mission is to set an excellent example by massively contributing and serving others while I am continuously learning, growing, and improving myself, all to the glory of God. I am a child of God. I obey God’s commandments and reap the natural benefits. I confidently claim the glorious and wonderful promises that my heavenly Father has made to me. I am grateful to God for each new day and the opportunity to begin a new . . .
I experience and enjoy perfect health! Developing my full potential and living consistently with my values is not possible without being in excellent physical condition. My diet is filled with life-enhancing foods. I exercise aerobically, take the necessary time to relax, sleep, and practice deep breathing. I have trained my mind to focus on my goals and . . .
I am a loving, loyal, and fun marriage partner. I take sufficient and meaningful time with my spouse, helping and encouraging him or her in the areas of spiritual, mental, social, professional, and financial growth . . .
I am a loving, wise, and fun parent. I develop strong family unity. I take all the training and education in child rearing I can get so that I am always improving as a parent. I understand that my actions and habits as a parent speak much louder than my words . . .
I am a master of my profession. I look for and find opportunities, always making things happen. My clients trust me, appreciate me, and seek my counsel without hesitation. I plan my time wisely each year, each quarter, each week, and every morning—and then I work my plan. I love my career, and its rich rewards are a blessing to my family . . .
I am a super-learning machine! I am committed to constant personal and professional development. I learn from those who have gone before me and . . .
I am a super-learning machine! I am committed to constant personal and professional development. I learn from those who have gone before me and . . .
To study some additional sample mission statements, please visit www.1percentclub.com/missionstatements.
When you have completed your mission statement, you will have a clear picture of the person you hope to become, which dramatically increases the odds that you will actually become that person. Your mission statement will be the unifying element around which you organize the rest of your life. And if you want your mission in life to become a magnificent obsession, you have to constantly remind yourself of that mission. If you review your mission statement regularly, it will hold you accountable to changing and improving in a deliberate, preconceived direction. As you travel down the path of discovering your Genius and finding your life’s purpose, always remember that your success blesses others!
Lesson 2 Questions for Reflection
If money were not a consideration—if you were taken care of financially and could use your days any way you wanted to—how would you spend most of your time?
What is the most important piece of career advice you would pass on to your child?
In what aspects of your life do other people tend to be most impressed with your performance?
What were four specific activities you loved doing when you were ten years old?
What recurring activities cause you to feel distracted or “off purpose”?
* * *
Whom can you influence with the ideas from this lesson in the next forty-eight hours?
The Personal Mission Sta
tement Worksheet
1. What three qualities would you most like to have associated with your reputation?
2. What three activities do you find most enjoyable?
3. What three activities are most important to you?
4. What three things would you like to change about life if you had no restrictions or limitations?
5. What six things do you want in life more than anything else? Be limitless in your thinking.
6. Who are the people you admire most and why?
7. Of all the people you admire most, what one quality do they all have in common?
8. What would you be willing to die for if you had to?
9. Why do you go to work in the morning?
10. What are your four most important roles in life (friend, salesperson, entrepreneur, student, uncle, husband, mother, etc.)?
11. What qualities would you like to be known for in each of these roles? (For examples, see pages 48-49.)
12. What evidence would prove you have those qualities?
13. Which three metaphors accurately describe your outlook on life? Why?
• Life is a game.
• Life is a bowl of cherries.
• Life is the pits.
• Life is a test.
• Life is a competition.
• Life is a gift.
• Life is a dance.
• Life is like a movie.
• Life is a cycle of seasons.
• Life is a struggle.
• Life is like a school.
• Life is a challenge.
• Life is a sprint.
• Life is a marathon.
• Life is a gamble.
14. What would you like to see written on your tombstone?
15. If you coule write your own eulogy, what would you want it to say?
Success Is Not an Accident Page 5
