Let me ask you something simple. What are you paying attention to?
Not in theory. Literally. What got your attention first thing this morning? What's had it most of today? And here's the harder question - what is that attention costing you?
We're living in an attention economy. Social media wants it. The news wants it. Advertising wants it. And now AI is everywhere you turn, and everybody's talking about it. All of it is built to grab a piece of your focus. Whether we notice it or not, we're paying for that with something.
Where focus goes, energy flows
Tony Robbins says it this way: where focus goes, energy flows. Wherever your attention lands, that's where your energy and your days go too.
So think about your morning. Do you wake up and jump straight onto the treadmill of the rat race? Get up, get ready, go, go, go - with nothing in there but the next thing on the list? If that's where your attention goes first, that's what your morning is costing you.
Think about a football coach in the middle of a season. If he's paying attention to everything except the game, while the coaches on the other sideline are locked in, it's going to cost his team. Most of us don't live in an environment like that. But the principle carries over to every one of us. What we give our attention to shapes what we get.
Urgent or important?
Then we get to work. What gets our attention there? Is it the urgencies or the priorities? The emergencies, or just the same routine patterns we fall into every day?
I'm gonna be honest with you - I've had plenty of days that were distraction upon distraction. Next thing I know, a day or a few days have gone by and I never touched the priorities I say matter most, in business or in life. I need this reminder as much as anyone reading it.
Andy Frisella talks about a power list - the three to five most important things in your day. When our attention gets pulled everywhere else, those are usually the first things to go.
It costs us what we do and what we don't
Here's the thing. Our attention can cost us through what we're doing. It can also cost us through what we're not doing.
Think about exercise. We can buy the weights and lift them, or down the road we can buy the walker. "Man, I don't have time to work out." Okay. Down the road, I might have plenty of time for a walker, because that's where my body is going to end up if I don't do something now.
Doing something costs us. Not doing something costs us too. The question is which cost we'd rather pay.
The gap that keeps us stuck
One of the biggest things that holds people back is the distance between where they are and where they think they're supposed to be.
Financially, I should be way further along. Health-wise, I've let myself slide. In my relationships, we've taken each other for granted. And my mindset isn't trained to handle the adversity that's coming.
That gap can feel so big that we quit before we ever start closing it. Sometimes it's comparison feeding it, sometimes it's just honest frustration with ourselves.
Dan Sullivan's idea of the gain, not the gap, flips that around. Stop measuring yourself against the ideal version you haven't become yet. Put your attention on the gain instead - just get a little bit better today than you were yesterday. We're all capable of that.
Your One More Rep today
There's an old saying that we overestimate what we can do in a short period of time and underestimate what we can do in a long one. The way to get a lot done over the long haul is to do a little bit, a lot.
So here's the challenge. Take a few minutes today and answer three questions:
- What am I paying attention to most right now?
- What is it costing me?
- Which one area of my life will I get a little better in today - spiritual, mental, physical, relational or financial?
Just pick one. Not all five. If it's your faith life, take one step there. If it's your body, maybe it's sleep, water, food or a walk. If it's a relationship, give that person your real attention today. If it's your finances, steward one thing a little better than yesterday.
Then do it again tomorrow. Stack the days, then the weeks, then the months. Next thing you know, that gap isn't so far anymore. You start keeping the promises you make to yourself, and then you can go to work on the next area.
Grow to serve
That's what building a REAL FIT life is about. REAL, not artificial. Not just more information, but the reps - taking what we know and applying it, day after day. FIT is forever intentionally training our growth to serve well.
We don't grow just for us. We grow because of who it makes us, and what we can do for others with it.
So go do something challenging today. Tell yourself, "I get to, I choose to, I love to." You are worth it, and you have what it takes. Let's grow!
