Focusing Life’s Chaos

Near the end of last year, I learned of a concept called “The One Thing”. The basic idea is that if we devote 100% of our energy to one thing in our lives, then we are able to accelerate our success in that area and achieve impossible goals. This is a pretty big idea, and it warrants some further discussion, because in most ideas, there are seeds of truth, and seeds of error.

Shortly after learning about this concept, I started hearing and reading pushback to this idea. There are many people who rebel against any form of self-imposed limits, but most people forget that these are “self-imposed” — specifically it is our brain (specifically our choice) doing the limiting and not an external source.

For some people who recoil at the thought of limiting themselves, they feel as though they are turning off a part of their life by choosing to not engage in a hobby or interest. This thought doesn’t appeal to them at all, but like all of life’s choices, when we choose to focus on something, we choose to ignore something else.

As an example to illustrate this, I can choose to watch a movie, but by making that choice, I am choosing to ignore other tasks that I could be doing — or I could choose to ignore the movie and focus on the task. With either of the choices, or trying to multitask doing both the task and the movie, something will be shortchanged in the process.

Most people miss realizing that we are always choosing to ignore something. The One Thing idea is a self-directed prioritization of what to ignore and what to focus on in life. We can have many goals, but they must be prioritized to be effective — and to keep impulse away from making the choice when two or more goals conflict. It is only through this prioritizing of our time and energy that we can hope to achieve success.

Some of you have shared what your goals are for the last 6 months of 2012. What is “One Thing” you are going to focus on to achieve the goal? If you have plural “goals”, what is the “One Goal” that is more important than the rest?

If you haven’t set or reevaluated your goals for the last 6 months this year, I highly recommend choosing “One Thing” and writing it down as a goal to accomplish in the last half of 2012. Most of us have “One Thing” that we can think of that would transform our lives. Choosing it as the “One Goal” is a choice to change our lives!

What are your thoughts, your goals, and your plans for the last 6 months of 2012?

(Read an example of someone living a life dedicated to “one thing” in Nehemiah chapters 1-6.)