So many people want to achieve in life, gain wealth and be recognized for their accomplishments but very few ever come close to achieving the ideas that they have in their heads. I think that’s always been the case but recently I’ve pondered the following question. Why, in a time when we have more tools than ever and more access to knowledge than ever, do so few people achieve anywhere near the levels that they aspire to? I believe that the answer to the question is as follows. They believe they can build a mansion with grains of sand.
Now I’m pretty sure that everyone knows that you can’t build a mansion with grains of sand. So why even try? Well, a person might try if they had become convinced that the grains of sand were cinderblocks. From that point of view their efforts wouldn’t seem so foolish. Still, people have been fooled and it’s worth (to me at least) exploring what’s happening and why. The world today is one where people have become accustomed to sharing every little bit of information about their lives. What they’re having for breakfast. What they’re thinking. What they’re doing or where they are at any given moment. These minute things that once were considered pedestrian are now thought to be spectacular events. People expect, or at least hope, to get strong positive reactions to their everyday mundane activities. And for non-mundane activities such as taking a vacation or going to a fancy party people expect great accolades. That kind of attention is addictive and it devalues the pride one used to feel in obscure efforts that eventually lead to fantastic results.
People want to achieve great things, but they have been trained to be impatient. So the mundane and the pedestrian in people’s lives are accepted as substitutes. There are two sides to the coin with this situation. On the one hand you have the people who post the mundane and pedestrian and other the other hand you have those who react to it. By liking. By commenting. By reposting. Even by having ”offline” conversations (such as talking, texting or emailing) about what they saw someone else post. Quite often people are on both sides of the equation, at times posting mundane aspects of their lives thinking they are fantastic events and at other times discussion what they’ve seen other people post. Whichever side a person is on at any given time, they are not doing themselves any favors in terms of achieving larger goals in life. This goes back to a common theme of people spending inordinate amounts of time on things that don’t make much of a difference in life. More to the main point of this post, the sum of the many posts a person will make on social media about their life and daily accomplishments does not amount to much…if anything, at least when considering the larger goals that many people have for their lives.
Understanding the ideas above is very important if a person wants to achieve difficult things in life. I can think of a host of things that people may want to achieve that are not served well by constantly sharing minute details in their lives, including the following.
- Completing an advanced degree program.
- Changing career fields or seeking a better job in their current field.
- Completing a complex creative task such as writing an article, novel or music.
- Engaging in a program to lose weight and improve health.
- Learning something new like a language or musical instrument.
- Conquering fears or anxieties that have held a person back in life.
- Overcoming a serious health issue or injury.
- Improving a personal relationship or taking it to the next level.
All of the above endeavors require significant time invested and a sharp focus in order to be completed successfully. The distraction of mixing it up daily (or hourly) on social media could seriously delay or even prevent success altogether. The pull of instant gratification is a powerful force though. It is a modern kind of procrastination. It’s become a real discipline to be able to ignore the flood of media that’s available any time we want to consume it. It’s also become a real discipline to avoid jumping in with our own contributions, if only because it will let people know that we’re still relevant. There’s no doubt that some people have the discipline necessary to be able to drop in and out of the flow of social media while still staying on their more significant goals in life. These people are few and far between though. Which begs the following question. How does one develop the focus necessary to achieve in a world where instant gratification is so tempting?
I like to go back to a very basic cornerstone philosophy in answering the question above. If you do what everyone else does, then you’ll get the results that everyone else gets. And I’m not talking about the “results” that you see people posting about on social media. I’m talking about the true results. The long-term results. The life changing results. These are the meaningful types of outcomes that the few are striving for. After all, which would you rather have? Three-hundred likes on a post of you sitting on a fancy car or at some flashy party, or a $3,000 bonus check because you went the extra mile to score a new client at your job? I know that many people would say that both are possible. Perhaps they are, but a focus mindset is one that propels people to extraordinary results in life. So until you’ve reached a pinnacle in your life consider these binary (as in 1 or 0, or Yes or No) choices. Maybe three-hundred likes gets you more followers, but $3,000 repeated and invested over time can create options in life that are not subject to the whims of the social media herd.
For any of this to be relevant you need to have goals that are greater than just getting through the day, week or month. I challenge you to take stock of what those goals are and commit to going quiet on social media for awhile while you focus on one or more of those goals. See my post on Game Changers if you are looking for additional inspiration. Also consider reading the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. The book is a pre-internet personal development classic and includes the concept of public vs. private victories in your life. With this post I’m speaking to the private victories that you can achieve while maintaining a low profile. Another positive side effect of a lower profile on social media is finding out who your real friends are. Those people will be the ones who will be glad to hear from you when milestones have been achieved. They will be the ones that may even reach out otherwise to see how things are going. From my experience one true friend is worth more than a thousand follower on the internet. I know that some may disagree and to those people I wish them well in their futile attempts to build a mansion out of grains of sand!
In The Midst Of A Journey 