Focus on First?

At this point in life I now spend a lot of time thinking at the end of each year about things I have accomplished and future direction. The more I go through this process the better I am getting at understanding the power of planning and thinking. I recently looked through all of the results from 2014 and something has changed in my process over the past few years in reflecting that I wanted to share with you. I have always been fortunate in life at clearly seeing the things, I wanted to change, that were not the full results of what I had wanted or desired for my years efforts. I think that expecting results from your effort is a critical part of growing but now I am learning to also see the other side of planning correctly. I have been working hard on changing the process in order to examine what I am appreciative of FIRST. Not Second but FIRST.

I honestly believe in that which we focus our minds upon grows the most and while I know we all have talents to overcome the issues we find ourselves in all year long  why not place First things First?

If I am desiring a positive reward, positive outcomes and situations in my life, then isn’t it up to me to focus on those positive items I had in 2014 First? I am not wanting to sound Pollyannish so I want to also examine the negative things I wish to change from 2014 but never at a cost which forsakes the gifts I received this year First. I know that the mistake of Focus can be the greatest mistake of all in life and I want to celebrate each month of the year by reading my calendar and remembering where I was and what I did. I am currently going through that process for each and every month and making a list of appreciations.  Imagine spending a few hours alone and just taking the time to realize all that you did in this year of your life… 

What would you see from this same type of examination?

What would you learn?

As I go through these past months, weeks and days I am learning what an awesome year this has been and if you are reading this I probably shared some of it with you, so thank you! This year has held so many great opportunities to learn more about myself, my priorities and my commitments. I am trying to use that information to become “better than I was yesterday” because I know that is my main responsibility in life. 

In order to maximize this time of year I want to go through all I experienced BUT my habit for most of my life in doing this exercise is to find the things I want to fix and create a list of goals I want to accomplish in the upcoming year. This process sounds pretty good on the surface but I now realize it is one of my main problems! If I do this task and do not remember to place the gratitudes first then that means I am focusing on what I did not like. By placing my focus on those items and making a list for the new year I now realize I have always been basing my goals for improvement upon my view of whats missing!

Napolean Hill taught us the principle of “what the mind can conceive and believe the will can achieve” He was right! The question we must ask ourselves is when we examine the power of the mind, what is our mind focused upon? It seems like  a small challenge but I realize every year it is anything but SMALL! It is the largest part of building me. Knowing what I like and I don’t like in my life are both important but which comes first?

You have heard of the proverbial question “Which comes first the chicken or the Egg?” That is a confusing question but has nothing to do with our focus on goals. When focusing on changing your life there is a  VERY clear order to which comes first. It is always what you appreciate FIRST. If you examine human kind you will find that the majority of the population has way less than the minority of our population who possess way more. I think this obvious as we study the numbers of world wide wealth and ownership. 

Is it true that 1 percent of Americans control a third of the wealth?

Yes it is TRUE, in fact according to Huffington Post and Reuters….

Oct 9 (Reuters) - Global wealth has risen by 68 percent over the past 10 years to reach a new all-time high of $241 trillion and the United States accounts for nearly three quarters of the increase, Credit Suisse said in its World Wealth Report. Average global wealth has hit a peak of $51,600 per adult but this is spread very unevenly, with the richest 10 percent owning 86 percent of the wealth, analysts at the Credit Suisse Research Institute said. The top 1 percent alone own 46 percent of all global assets!

Why? Is it because we live in an unfair world? 

I personally do not think so. Yes it is true that some people are born with more advantages than others but it is also true that generational wealth is not a step up for very long if at all. When you talk to many people about this subject you will commonly hear their envy of “if only I had that opportunity” or “if only I was born with that much of a head start.” 

There was an article in FORBES I recently read in which the headline read…
”How The Wealthiest Families Make And Lose Their Money”

I love reading history and I love reading about the people who have created incredible impact in business and in life. It is all too common that the people who created wealth often leave a legacy of wealth to their children but it is very rare according to history that the wealth is maintained by the generations it is left too in the future. 

John D. Rockefeller left a fortune to his descendants that was the largest fortune ever accumulated, by the time Rockefeller died in 1937, his assets equaled 1.5% of America’s total economic output. To control an equivalent share today would require a net worth of about $340 billion dollars, more than four times that of Bill Gates, currently the world’s richest man.

Rockefeller’s Family – lives on, spanning more than 200 surviving individuals and possessing a collective net worth of about $10 billion, as compared to the $340 billion equivalent they were left, despite the family’s continued wealth, which rests primarily within a small percentage of the family, the Rockefeller’s no longer stand atop America’s financial hierarchy of wealth a far cry from the heyday of John D. Rockefeller less than 90 years ago.

What makes the difference? 

The Rockefeller legacy began with a 16-year-old bookkeeper in Cleveland, Ohio, whose greatest ambitions were to earn $100,000 and live 100 years. His formal business training included a ten-week class in accounting, as well as a con-artist father who was known to say, “I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make ‘em sharp,” according to the biography John D. Rockefeller: Anointed with Oil.

That young man named John Davison Rockefeller in 1855, who in 25 years would become the wealthiest man of his time, and arguably the wealthiest in history, reigning over a monopoly that refined as much as 90 percent of America’s oil. (cited from Carl O’Donnell Forbes magazine)

JD Rockefeller built a fortune that was diminished by his children and their descendants but this is only ONE example of the same story over and over again, the Roosevelt’s, the Dupont’s, the Vanderbilt’s, the Carnegie’s are but a few more names from history that can show the same type of examples of generational wealth and not propelling their children forward with advantages beyond their own abilities.

It is awesome to think that our future is unlimited but when we fall into the space of thinking that some have greater opportunity than others it becomes dangerous. I would argue that in this country while the odds might be helpful for some with a greater starting point it has been proven over and over that it is up to each of us to determine our futures. Our futures are much more dependent on self focus and disciplines than what we have been handed from others before us.

The opposite has also been shown to be true, more often than not, many people who are handed great wealth and opportunity are in no way assured of a better outcome for their lives or a continuation of “easy street”. 

Doesn’t this all depend upon the individual and the way they choose to see the world?

At this point of the year, I do not want to spend any time wishing for what could have been or envious of what others may have because it just creates me falling further from my goals. Instead I choose to see this year and what it held so that I may create a template for where I want to go next year. No year is safe and I will never be locked into anything except what I find to be right for the coming year and it’s creation of my life. I have been fortunate enough since being a child to recognize the power I hold to change anything I want but I am learning how to now divide those perceptions into two categories.

As I study each moment of 2014 there are clearly many great things and also some things I would like to change going forward but I am learning to be thankful for the great ones FIRST. Learning gratitude, appreciation and reflection for what I have been given in my life always comes First. Secondly I have the ability to see the things I wish to improve upon and both need to be planned for accordingly. I never knew the order was so important and that has often caused me to take for granted the things I have had while in search of the things I wanted to accomplish. I am working on myself to change these reflections and their order of importance even as I write this article.

We all have these choices to be great but as I look around I once again realize that there are few people who choose to really focus on what they want and create a plan to build it. There are even fewer people who make the choices to see what they are grateful for first. I was studying some teachings recently which instructed that our frustrations come from our continued desires for what we often want. 

While we are taught dreaming of higher goals is a great thing, we also know that when we do not have what we want, it is often, if not always, the source of our frustrations. Realizing that Desire is at the root of all frustrations I started to wonder how to build new goals, new ambitions and new results if thinking about them took me away from appreciating what I have now and focusing instead on what I wish I had.

That picture has become a lot clearer to me over the past couple of years with the “Order of importance” I now realize that I want many things, goals and results in the new year to come but I am not concerned with what I do not have as much as I am with what I have already found. There are so many items I appreciate as I study 2014 and I simply want more of them in the coming year. They may take a different shape, they may be new ways or even new things which allow me to celebrate what I already appreciate but they should be based in appreciation from the life I am currently living.

There is nothing I would change throughout my past life because it has brought me to where I am. There are many things I would never repeat but I must recognize that all that has happened to me has created what I am today. Please do not misunderstand me because many of the things I have gone through this past year and years before I will never choose to do again but showing appreciation for my LIFE starts with me NOT forsaking what got me here. Now the next step is to decide where I am going and what I want to focus on today and forward. 

I will share with you my 6 steps as I am learning them…

Review the year you just lived and think about your appreciations and write them down. 

Make a second list of the things you would change and find the good that was within each item, no matter how tough it was.

Make a new list of your goals from these two lists above and make each one attach to your appreciations in life.

Make a list of ways that tie your new goals into giving to others and benefitting others in life.

Create a plan attached to each of the new goals you found worthy of your coming year. 

Share that list with trusted advisors and ask their help to build a better future for yourself and the people around you.

If you follow these steps and build your goals it will allow you to look at the time you spent with someone this year and plan for more in the coming year. It will let you see the money you made and what you did with it and look for ways to expand it next year. It will let you see the reasons you did so many things that created results and decide how you want that to expand. By taking the time to reflect on what was really great and how you want more of it you are also preventing yourself from seeing the negative focus. You are instead creating your energy towards how to become better and not focused upon or propagating further “whats missing in your life”. Those negatives go away when we choose to make them go away but that starts with our energy to create and be greater in the next opportunity we all have which is now.

When you build your goals from your appreciations you will realize that they come true much quicker and easier because they are not built from frustrations. Appreciation compels us to excitement and energy where our focus on lack, loss and frustration steal our energies and leave us exhausted. Choose the space you want to start the new year in wisely and your goals will make a difference for you and those who have connected their lives to you.

I am working on my list and I am positive that my decisions with where and how I spend my time and life will create great results. They always have before and each year it gets better, my only hope from writing this to you was that I could share what I have found. I hope you have a great 2015 but I know at the end of the day that is totally up to each of us and what we choose to Focus on First!