Have you ever heard the phrase, "You cannot have your cake and eat it too?" Well, today I am going to tell you how to have your cake and eat your cake. No, I am not going to describe how to put cake into your mouth, chew it up, and swallow while enjoying the deliciousness that is cake. What I am going to do is tell you this.
In order to have your cake and eat it too, you have to focus first on having your cake. Then, once you have masted having your cake, you then get to eat your cake. I know that it sounds crazy but get this that when you work on just one thing at a time, one singular thing, and you get good enough at that one thing then it becomes second nature.
I'm talking about all of this because over the last couple of days I have been writing about how to be more intentional with your family and your friends, your co-mates and your service circles. It is really a large topic and I do not mean for you to believe that if you listen to these things once or read over them one time that you are actually going to become a more intentional person from that alone.
Yes, there is some value in mindfulness. More importantly it is this. There are a lot of components that go into becoming a more intetional family member, friend, co person or servicer. To become more intentional means that you are doing all of the things that an intentional person does. I have to tell you, people do not learn well when they try and do all of the things at once.
When I was in high school we had a guy come to teach us how to juggle for our gym class. Totally cool, everybody loves juggling. When we started juggling though, the thing that he taught us was this: You have to start with only one object. It is not necessarily that you could not juggle all three at once but that when you focus on just juggling the one thing you learn some of the motions and rhythms of juggling.
The same is true when it comes to communication. You cannot be both become a better listener while also asking better questions while also becoming more loyal while also becoming more trustworthy. You cannot do all of those things at once. But, if you do focus one at a time on each of those individual things and become good enough at them that you can do them naturally without having to try, well then my friends you can do all of those things. That is what today is all about.
Here we go. I'll tell you what it looks like to focus on just one thing and then we will talk about why it is so important that you do.
The next time that you are on a train I want you to do me a favor and stare out the window. Look at one tree, just one tree. As you look at that one tree I want you to make a note as to how everything else appears. You do not necessarily have to be on a train to do this. In fact, if you want go outside and look at one object out in the distance and then try to tell me about the rest of the things in your field of view.
What is really interesting is that as we begin to focus on one thing then everything else begins to get out of focus. This sounds like it would be a bad thing but it actually is a good sign that you are focusing on a singular thing.
In photography (according to my mom) that is called boca. It is this effect that the one thing you are focusing on is in focus and everything else is out of focus. The more boca you have in the picture, the better the picture is. The more appealing the picture is. It is not that we like things nice and blurry. That is not why we think a picture with a lot of boca is great. The real reason is that it helps you focus on the actual subject of the picture.
When you take a picture with a lot of things in focus the reality is this. The things that you are seeing are not in focus as much as you would like for them to be.
Sean McCabe and Ben Toalson from the seanwes podcast talk about this within professionality.
They talk about this idea that you have five fire pits in front of you but you can only make one fire pit at a time. When you start making that one fire and build it big enough so that you are able to maintain it then you become able to take some of that fire and use it to fuel your second fire and your third and your fourth and your fifth.
Because you focused on fire at a time instead of all five fires at once you get all five fires. Where if you focus on all five you get no fires.
It is the same when you are focusing on trying to become a more intentional person. I just talked about all of these ways that you can become more intentional but you cannot focus on all of them at the same time. It is impossible, nobody can do it. But you do see people that are intentional people. The way they got there is because they focused on one thing at a time.
When I was in choir back in high school we would work on music. Every time that we would rehearse we would take a large section of music and break it down into small chunks. We would work on those chunks over and over and over again until that one chunk was perfect.
Eventually we had an entire song that we could put together. We wouldn't have had that whole song had we not stopped and broken that song into those pieces. If we had not focused on each of those sections individually then we would never have been able to complete the entire song.
This is how it works with too with becoming a more intentional person. You are not going to become the more intentional person by trying to be the more intentional person. You become the more intentional person by focusing on each and every one of the things individually that an intentional person does.
As you are learning to be more intentional you then pick up the tools that an intentional person has in their belt. You learn how to compound these individual factors that you have focused on into the larger picture. Along the way you also learn how to focus better on one thing at a time.
What is the one thing tomorrow that you are going to focus on to become a more intentional person? Is it going to be asking questions? Is it going to be listening? is it going to be reaching out to others? What is your one thing going to be? Can you commit to doing that one thing?
