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Drown Out the Noise, and Focus (First Things First)
Maybe it took me a pandemic. This window of slowing down has crystalized a lot of things, and re-prioritized things. I have often preached to others the value of Steven Covey’s concept of putting First Things First. Prioritizing the things that should be first and drowning out the noise that distracts from primary focus. It’s what @Kak does every day. It’s what @LightHouse teaches to his coaching clients. It’s what @Kung Fu Steve does entire seminars on, and it’s something that @MJ DeMarco and @AllenCrawley excel at. It took me a pandemic to slow down, re-prioritize, and practice what I preach.
For me, it means gaining an acute sense of awareness of where I am going. Beyond goal setting (which is a tool), it’s an intentional and single minded focus towards an end game, and the casualties along the way are anything that distracts, inflicts harm to, or otherwise forces itself into your mindset and takes you off mission.
EXAMPLE: Losing weight is a goal. Keto is a tool. Working out is a tool. End game is long term health. Drowning the noise in this regard is turning down options as non-considerable (like @Chitown ’s donuts for those of you who heard his speech a few years ago).
EXAMPLE: A certain revenue is a goal. A business platform is a tool. The Millionaire FastLane is a tool. Financial freedom is an end game. Drowning out the noise in this scenario might be people, video games, action fakes… an unsupportive spouse. Anything that creeps in that takes you off of plan.
Some specifics for me lately that been realigned :
Changing how I interact with social media. Social media is a tool, not a pass time. I reorganized how I use social media to eliminate the distractions. Distractions there can range from games to political debates to simply the time suck of being up on the latest media buzz. It’s not essential. Some surveys find the average amount of time people spend on social media is two hours and twenty four minutes… PER DAY. What if that time was repurposed towards your family, your business or your health? I am not going to take it to zero, but the time spent on business on social media doesn’t count in the calculation.
Changing how I interact with extended family. One thing I talk about from time to time is how adversity reveals character. Watch the people in your inner circle. Are they cheering for you? Are they interested in you, or simply in what you offer them? Investments in people have to be a two way street in order for you to be satiated. I am now totally OK with eliminating things that are a negative energy drain. You can spend a lifetime trying to fix people and hoping they become what you want them to be, or you can do what I should have done much earlier in life and allow the cord to be cut. We spend time with our young daughter talking about filling or depleting someone else’s tank… the value add or detraction from other people’s lives. Why is it so easy to tell an eight year old what you spent a lifetime trying to cover for? It’s OK to eliminate negative energy and negative people from your life.
Changing expectations of people. Rather than striving to invest in people to the degree you want them to change, accepting them where they are at and enjoying them for what they are vs. what you hoped them to be. I may write more on this at a later date, but it’s a complicated learning through adversity of who people really are to you. If you shift your desire from what you want FROM them to what you can enjoy about them and what you can do to simply love and live in the moment, you can free yourself from the weight of your own expectations. This would take me way more than a paragraph to articulate in a way that would make sense. I may try it down the road in detail.
Changing things as simple as how I interact here at the forum. For a long time, I had a moderator-Napoleon complex. I had a self imposed, self important policy of not ignoring individuals or threads here out of a warped sense of self importance (as if this shit was ever important.) As a result, while others including the forum founder judiciously added people and threads to their own ignore lists, I subjected myself to the abuse and lunacy of the forum’s biggest assholes - and there have been a lot of them over the years. The result was to my own detriment here, minimizing my enjoyment of the best of what you all have to offer while dealing with douche bags and craziness others were free to ignore. I held myself to a higher calling than the volunteer job required, and than the founder of the forum even asked for. I had my own self righteous policy of not ignoring people.
No more. This was best illuminated for me when I realized I was the only one (even out of the mods!) that didn’t have certain posters, or certain threads, or both… on ignore. The only real informal rule regarding this for MJ is that we can’t ALL be out of a thread or it would become the wild west. But the freedom to eliminate the noise was mine all along and my own ego kept me from using it, until now.
Yesterday I eliminated a bunch of assholes from the forum using the beautiful IGNORE button. And you should do the same. I am not talking about people you disagree with… I am talking about the filthy energy drainers that detract from your enjoyment of the forum. Hopefully you use the ignore function regularly. Surprisingly, I even ignored assholes I have helped dozens of times personally who at the slightest prompting took up pitchforks against me. Guess what? F*ck you. You’re noise. You’re out. Take control of the things you allow in to your circle. Being at the Fastlane Forum is something we do for enjoyment and education. Assholes serve no role in either. Use the ignore function liberally to make your value to and from the forum even greater.
A lot of these things may seem like common sense you you, and I hope you are well ahead of me in terms of keeping FIRST THINGS FIRST. Use this time to re-prioritize the things that are most important to you, and then structure your life around those things. Eliminate the noise, the people, and the distractions that would keep you from a life built around striving towards the things that are the most important. And if you've managed to make it past my now liberal IGNORE LIST, thank you. So many of you have added richness and education to my life and I hope that I have been able to in modest measure do the same.
And special thanks to my haters for setting me free. In an ironic way, it’s even sweeter being the opposite of what you would have ever wished for me. Go ahead and post a response here when you see this thread... and I will blissfully continue to not give a shit as I will never see it.
That's awesome, and to you haters I owe a debt of gratitude for the revelation.
"Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you."- DR. STEPHEN R. COVEY
Maybe it took me a pandemic. This window of slowing down has crystalized a lot of things, and re-prioritized things. I have often preached to others the value of Steven Covey’s concept of putting First Things First. Prioritizing the things that should be first and drowning out the noise that distracts from primary focus. It’s what @Kak does every day. It’s what @LightHouse teaches to his coaching clients. It’s what @Kung Fu Steve does entire seminars on, and it’s something that @MJ DeMarco and @AllenCrawley excel at. It took me a pandemic to slow down, re-prioritize, and practice what I preach.
For me, it means gaining an acute sense of awareness of where I am going. Beyond goal setting (which is a tool), it’s an intentional and single minded focus towards an end game, and the casualties along the way are anything that distracts, inflicts harm to, or otherwise forces itself into your mindset and takes you off mission.
EXAMPLE: Losing weight is a goal. Keto is a tool. Working out is a tool. End game is long term health. Drowning the noise in this regard is turning down options as non-considerable (like @Chitown ’s donuts for those of you who heard his speech a few years ago).
EXAMPLE: A certain revenue is a goal. A business platform is a tool. The Millionaire FastLane is a tool. Financial freedom is an end game. Drowning out the noise in this scenario might be people, video games, action fakes… an unsupportive spouse. Anything that creeps in that takes you off of plan.
Some specifics for me lately that been realigned :
Changing how I interact with social media. Social media is a tool, not a pass time. I reorganized how I use social media to eliminate the distractions. Distractions there can range from games to political debates to simply the time suck of being up on the latest media buzz. It’s not essential. Some surveys find the average amount of time people spend on social media is two hours and twenty four minutes… PER DAY. What if that time was repurposed towards your family, your business or your health? I am not going to take it to zero, but the time spent on business on social media doesn’t count in the calculation.
Changing how I interact with extended family. One thing I talk about from time to time is how adversity reveals character. Watch the people in your inner circle. Are they cheering for you? Are they interested in you, or simply in what you offer them? Investments in people have to be a two way street in order for you to be satiated. I am now totally OK with eliminating things that are a negative energy drain. You can spend a lifetime trying to fix people and hoping they become what you want them to be, or you can do what I should have done much earlier in life and allow the cord to be cut. We spend time with our young daughter talking about filling or depleting someone else’s tank… the value add or detraction from other people’s lives. Why is it so easy to tell an eight year old what you spent a lifetime trying to cover for? It’s OK to eliminate negative energy and negative people from your life.
Changing expectations of people. Rather than striving to invest in people to the degree you want them to change, accepting them where they are at and enjoying them for what they are vs. what you hoped them to be. I may write more on this at a later date, but it’s a complicated learning through adversity of who people really are to you. If you shift your desire from what you want FROM them to what you can enjoy about them and what you can do to simply love and live in the moment, you can free yourself from the weight of your own expectations. This would take me way more than a paragraph to articulate in a way that would make sense. I may try it down the road in detail.
Changing things as simple as how I interact here at the forum. For a long time, I had a moderator-Napoleon complex. I had a self imposed, self important policy of not ignoring individuals or threads here out of a warped sense of self importance (as if this shit was ever important.) As a result, while others including the forum founder judiciously added people and threads to their own ignore lists, I subjected myself to the abuse and lunacy of the forum’s biggest assholes - and there have been a lot of them over the years. The result was to my own detriment here, minimizing my enjoyment of the best of what you all have to offer while dealing with douche bags and craziness others were free to ignore. I held myself to a higher calling than the volunteer job required, and than the founder of the forum even asked for. I had my own self righteous policy of not ignoring people.
No more. This was best illuminated for me when I realized I was the only one (even out of the mods!) that didn’t have certain posters, or certain threads, or both… on ignore. The only real informal rule regarding this for MJ is that we can’t ALL be out of a thread or it would become the wild west. But the freedom to eliminate the noise was mine all along and my own ego kept me from using it, until now.
Yesterday I eliminated a bunch of assholes from the forum using the beautiful IGNORE button. And you should do the same. I am not talking about people you disagree with… I am talking about the filthy energy drainers that detract from your enjoyment of the forum. Hopefully you use the ignore function regularly. Surprisingly, I even ignored assholes I have helped dozens of times personally who at the slightest prompting took up pitchforks against me. Guess what? F*ck you. You’re noise. You’re out. Take control of the things you allow in to your circle. Being at the Fastlane Forum is something we do for enjoyment and education. Assholes serve no role in either. Use the ignore function liberally to make your value to and from the forum even greater.
A lot of these things may seem like common sense you you, and I hope you are well ahead of me in terms of keeping FIRST THINGS FIRST. Use this time to re-prioritize the things that are most important to you, and then structure your life around those things. Eliminate the noise, the people, and the distractions that would keep you from a life built around striving towards the things that are the most important. And if you've managed to make it past my now liberal IGNORE LIST, thank you. So many of you have added richness and education to my life and I hope that I have been able to in modest measure do the same.
And special thanks to my haters for setting me free. In an ironic way, it’s even sweeter being the opposite of what you would have ever wished for me. Go ahead and post a response here when you see this thread... and I will blissfully continue to not give a shit as I will never see it.
That's awesome, and to you haters I owe a debt of gratitude for the revelation."Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you."- DR. STEPHEN R. COVEY
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