LEGACY 16: The Value of Focus

(Originally written 10/12/15, but reading back through it, it reads like today, except for a few of the specifics being updated! I am at the point of revisiting my focus, re-focusing. Part of that has been a mastermind group on John Maxwell’s THE 15 INVALUABLE LAWS OF GROWTH: Live Them and Reach Your Potential.

Interestingly, though, as our company, Easley Electric Inc., celebrates 25 years of existence this month, I find that over the course of my life, I’ve been more focused in the long view than I had realized–45 years doing electrical work, 41 years being a licensed master electrician, 29 years in business with 25 of it full-time under the incorporated name, 5 years in a BNI chapter). And in marriage, I’ve been very focused also–one marriage of 25 years, ending in death of my spouse [I’d still be married to her, I believe, if she had lived], and coming on 19 years in the second. I like how Eugene Peterson, author of THE MESSAGE paraphrase of the Bible, titled his autobiography of his journey, using a phrase from Nietzsche: “a long obedience in the same direction.” The context reads

The essential thing “in heaven and in earth” is, apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long obedience in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality– …

So I guess, there is focus and there is focus. My life has been worth living. And that would be a legacy I could wish for everyone.

This is the last of the blogs on Legacy I’d written 3-4 years ago. Stay tuned for a new direction tomorrow!)

I have lost my focus. Again. It’s been exactly a year since I finished 13 blog writings in less than a month. In that intervening time, I’ve written 2, 1 in March, 1 in May.

Maybe I should say I had different focuses, other focuses. I decided to try to become a Life Coach in January this year, so I was devoting a lot of time to that. We were engulfed in a custody battle for our grandson that ended (abruptly and badly) in May. I was depressed after that. I tried doing a website for a tangent to the coaching (assessments), and that was a fiasco. Legacy was not even on my radar.

I was brought back by reading the section in Donald S. Whitney’s SIMPLIFY YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE: SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES FOR THE OVERWHELMED, the section on “Simplifying and Your Journal.” I was reminded of the legacy we need to work on consciously leaving. So here I am, back at it.

I’m getting some coaching myself, as well as coaching one guy, so I’m realizing the value of focus. I am re-committed to building the business in a more focused way.

Focus is key. Focus is primary. Focus is central.

Focus is critical. Critical to success. Critical to leaving a legacy.

Focus is a mindset. Focus requires perseverance, realignment, elimination, simplification. Focus requires focus.

Yes, that’s a circularity. (Maybe that’s not strictly the meaning in the discipline of logic, but it makes sense to me.) Focus begets focus. Focus encourages focus. Finding focus, ironically, encourages focus.

But it’s so easy to get off track. Life happens. Emotions waylay us, and we cave in to them. Situations arise, and we focus on them, and lose the bigger focus.

How do we stay on focus?

We keep coming back to it. We revisit it. We re-focus.

We remember. We remember being focused, the clarity, the sense of purpose, the rewards of being focused.

So here I am again.

Focusing.

And that’s enough for tonight. More tomorrow.

LEGACY 9: ADDING VALUE TO PEOPLE

(Originally written 9/23/14)

Who can assign the value of a single soul? One of the most basic and rock-solid tenets of the Judeo-Christian heritage is the value of each individual.

One of the most chilling lines in literature is on the final page of James Clavell’s Whirlwind. In the setting of Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 takeover of Iran, here a muzzein sits horseback, looking down on the British compound, says to himself, “We will defeat you. We will defeat you because you value one soul too much.”

What—or Who—gives value to human beings? How is worth determined? One of the most basic ways we do it in our own lives is by the choices we make with expendable, often non-renewable—treasures—time, energy, resources, momentary attitudes and attachments. We say to people by our actions, “You have worth”—or we fail to give them that added value.

Focus is one of the greatest gifts we can give. My oldest granddaughter, now grown, used to grab my cheeks in her hands and pull my face into hers, as if to say, “Pay attention to me! I’m important enough for you not to have a divided focus while I’m talking to you!” And she was. She was pointing me to the real value she felt she had—and did.

One comment I’ve heard about the most respected leaders is their ability to give the person they’re engaging with full engagement, a sense that they are at that moment the most important person in the world. This captivates people, partly because it is so rare. We hunger desperately to know we are important, that we have worth, value, significance. And we will spend vast and precious resources to feel that, even for a fleeting and destructive moment, our “15 minutes of fame,” as it were.

How do we keep that value in the forefront? It’s not easy, but the answer is classic and ageless. The Golden Rule has been around for millennia—“Treat others as you want to be treated.” I like the adaptation of it that has been called the Platinum Rule—“Treat others as they want to be treated.”  That can be more difficult, simply because it assumes we are adequately able to discern what the other truly wants—and we are at best conflicted people. Still, focusing on the needs and desires of the other takes to focus outside ourselves, and enables us to be less self-centered, even if only for a golden moment that can sometimes create immeasurable value, a sense of worth that transcends time. It’s rare, yes—but worth striving for.

Humans have intrinsic value before anyone gives it to them, but we can add to that value by our interaction. We can add to that, or we can strip it away. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words…” can do far more damage. And words reflect underlying attitudes, the root they are fruit from. Be fruit-full in the best way.