When we pay, we pay attention.
Brendon talks about the 5 moves: what are the five moves that will most move the needle for you in the direction of your big goals? Typically, there aren’t more than five. You should be able to drill down precisely what the next five actions are to get there. If you can’t, you don’t understand what will really cause you to get there. You may not understand the goal’s path. What are you working now to get there? What are the daily actions / behaviors that will get you there? If you don’t know, you need to do more research. Find people who already have the results you seek and see how they did it. Follow them. Model their success. Most people will be happy to share how they did something in order to help others get the results they seek. They’ll especially help when they pay. When you don’t know what to do next, but you sought out an expert who already has the results you seek and you’re willing to pay them for their time / expertise, then you’re in alignment with your goals and five moves. Something special happens whenever we invest in ourselves. Something clicks. We’re serious now. We mean business. No more jacking around. We laid down our money to learn this one thing and to master it. We cannot help but improve from here. The expert mentor shortcuts our success, which is one of the reasons why we pay them. We also pay them because that gives us skin in the game in our own development. We’ve gone all-in. It’s this or back to where we were, which isn’t where we want to be. The personal investment acts as a catalyst to push us into this new area.
The opposite happens when we attend a conference or a class for free: those who do typically do nothing afterward. They go and have a good time at the course, ask questions, meet people. They have good conversations and maybe make some connections. But as far as taking action on what they’ve learned at the conference or from particular instructors, they usually do nothing to improve afterward. It is like not paying for the conference stymied them into doing nothing. It is the strangest thing. Isn’t taking action one of the most important things to get out of the conference? Isn’t improvement what we’re all here for? Isn’t seeking and pursuing larger goals the point?
When we pay, we pay attention and take action. If we’re offered something for free, we give it half of our attention and we move on. We don’t really work at it. We’re not really committed. We’re there for surface appearances and that’s about it. We’re half-assing it. While the personal investment, the investment in oneself, is what catalyzes action. These are the people who are serious. These are the people who are there to learn and do. These are the people who make it to the next level up. The trouble is free is so enticing: Who doesn’t love free? And yet it is free that will trip us up in moving to where we desire to be.
Take Warren Buffett’s advice and invest in yourself. It is the best investment you’ll ever make.
