Did you see how much Pat Flynn made last month on his income report? My GOD! Gary Vaynerchuk has literally a million Twitter followers. Tim Ferris’ podcast is permanently pinned to the #1 spot on iTunes now. This is nuts! What do these people have that I don’t? When am I going to blow up on the Internet already?
If that little monolog sounds familiar, listen up. Seriously. Listen to what I’m about to say to you very carefully because your success depends on it. You know, success, that feeling that makes you feel your efforts are paying off. Kind of a big deal.
Don’t favorite or save this post for later because we all know that never happens. Now that I have your full attention, keep reading.
One of the best ways to ensure you will never be successful is a lack of focus on what is important. If you want to fail, if you want to be terribly unsuccessful, spread your focus as thin as possible.
What you focus on is what you allow yourself to think about for a given time. If you focus on enough things that have nothing to do with your success, you will ensure a lack of time to focus on what will actually make you successful. Let me clairify this because it’s so important.
STOP FOCUSING ON EVERYONE ELSE!
Do you think John Lee Dumas is spending hours “researching” what Omar Zenhom is doing today? No. I know for a fact that he actually spends most of his wakeful hours focusing on his business and what he needs to do to light things on fire (Sorry, John. I couldn’t resist). He didn’t become the best podcast on iTunes by focusing on what everyone else was doing. He was completely focused on the tasks that would allow him to have the best podcast possible.
That is not to say that John is only motivated by self-interest, quite the contrary. He spends a significant amount of time helping other entrepreneurs without any sort of monetary compensation.
We all have people we look up to in our industry and they all have valuable insights we can use. But take the insights and get busy because the experts you look up to sure are.
I wish you could see me right now. You would see me pounding the keyboard with the same vigor as if I where to shake you out of an unconscious state. Why would I shake you? Because I wish someone shook me a couple years ago when I wasted so much time focusing on everyone else’s success that there was not enough time left to focus on creating my own.
When I was in High School, I played basketball but I also ran track in the spring to stay in shape in the off-season. I ran the mile; that was my event. I hated it. But the funny thing is, everyday during practice while I was in agonizing pain, I would tell myself I am quitting tomorrow. But when I rode the late bus home after practice was all over, I would say to myself “I love track! I can’t quit!” So why the sudden change of heart?
When training in track, you don’t really race or compete with other runners. You compete with yourself. Everytime I ran the mile in practice, I was trying to beat my mile time from the day before. I’m not trying to outrun others on the track, I’m trying to out run myself from yesterday.
So when my mile time was better than the day before, I felt great! I felt successful. Why would I quit feeling successful? I was focused on my success. I was focused on the fact I was becoming a better runner.
I don’t think I need to elaborate on my track story for you understand the lesson learned. Comparing yourself to others is just not healthy and it’s flat out not helping you succeed.
Being an entrepreneur is hard as it is, so you can’t afford a lack of focus on what will bring you success. Mom was right- Don’t worry about everyone else, worry about yourself.
I have a challenge for you. Are you up for it?
Tomorrow, when you sit down to work on your business, force yourself not to focus on anything other than your work. This means closing down all social media (save your social media marketing for another day). Only focus on work that will make your business better. This could be writing an epic post, working on your new sales page copy or shooting a new video for your audience. Focus on what will only directly contribute to your business’ success.
See how you feel the next day? Do you feel a little bit better about your success? Do you feel like you are making progress? Come back to this post and let me know in the comments. Constantly comparing yourself to others is simply a waste of time. Not to mention, it will ultimately make you feel more and more less successful because you are allowing the success of others to define your own.
Last Reminder:
If you don’t take anything from this post other than this, you’ll be in better shape than most:
Don’t compare yourself to others; compare yourself to yesterday. Are you in a better situation today?
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