She had talked with a friend, one of those marathon conversations where rumination is acceptable, it’s the thread that draws the conversation along. The topic was business success. Her friend was lamenting her lack of progress. Then my wild-eyed friend said something very wise to me regarding her conversation, “She’s so organized, she always has to have all her ducks in a neat little line.” This brought us around to a very important conversation; accepting chaos while you strive towards your vision without missing vital details along the way.

I would like to say that while I’m building my business that my house is neat and clean, that I have control of my money every moment of every day, and that I feel happy and relaxed. But I can’t say these things. While I’m building my business my house is trashed; dishes piled in the sink, mounds of clothing heaped next to my bed, my dogs begging for a walk. I didn’t balance my books for an entire month, I never get enough sleep, and relaxation is an enigma as I push to create products and courses that my clients seek. 

But even in the midst of this there is a deep pulse, the rhythm of my vision, alive like a being of its own, pushing to break free and becoming an independent living organism. I am its tool, the mechanism through which it will come to life, and I feel that with everything I do. At each junction during the day I have a choice to make; succumb to the uncomfortable chaos and return it to order or continue to work towards the vision. I always make the choice for the vision. When it’s grown it will sustain me, sustain others, and at its foundation make the world a better place. How do I make this choice every time? Sometimes I wonder myself. I think it’s that the reward in the end is so motivating that it’s worth any little suffering I might have to endure today.

Interestingly, the  lesson about making right choices came storming down on me this week. One of the things I do with my wild-eyed friend is apply my knowledge-base to her vision. By combining our visions we are doing something very different; we are creating an elite physical training system for humans and their four-legged companions. For months we have been training her dog on this system and we ran into a snag. For some reason, the system we created stopped working. We reached a learning plateau. We discussed the entire history of our method, when it had worked, when it hadn’t. We talked about psychology learning theory and motor learning theory. Then we talked about motivation and drive and this is where the eureka moment lit up my mind.

If we set up goals and we simply run with all our might towards those goals, will we be successful? In my own life, putting all I have towards my vision with blind motivation has not made me successful. What’s lacking in this method is SKILL. For each new task – building a business or training for a world competition – the psychological and motor skills required must be LEARNED. Without learning we struggle blindly towards our target, missing our marks and giving up our success for speed.

On the other hand, moving meticulously towards our vision bogs us down. Details are arduous, time-consuming, and they act like a dam which holds back the powerful current of a vision. To keep a vision alive, the creator needs to build momentum and excitement in others so they will be drawn to the vision. Attending to details is something entrepreneurs should hire other people to do. To an entrepreneurial spirit herding ducks is just plain silly (what the hell are ‘ducks’, anyway?).

I’m laughing now as I write this because actually learning skills is very difficult in the midst of chaos; but, it’s not impossible. What makes it possible is this: 1)  the vision is the driver, the motivator, the heart of everything that happens – anyone who believes in your vision, including your ducks and their hired herder, will be carried along by the current; 2) there are thousands of tiny little steps that must be successfully completed before the vision will come to fruition – running the steps will trample the vital details; 3) learning which steps can be skipped and which steps cannot is a SKILL and learning this skill is something that takes BRAVERY, EFFORT, and TENACITY – getting knocked on your ass is required and quite helpful in the bravery department; 4) requiring yourself to take every step is a meticulous and ridiculous method – ducks do not like to be in a row, go to the zoo and check it out – it will demonstrate clearly why someone else should do this job; 5) understand that it appears the steps to success are linear, but this is an optical illusion – like an Escher lithograph there are redundancies and these provide the opportunity to modify the course.

Accepting chaos while not missing vitals details on the undulating sometimes rocky sometimes grassy path towards your vision requires surrendering unconditionally to the unknown; if you are a soul that is uncomfortable without organization, you may need to go back and unlearn a few terrible habits like I had to do. Because, you see, chaos is the way of the world – entropy is a natural law. And scientists have found there is a mysterious organization to it all. So let go of trying to figure it out; any inkling of control is an illusion, a method for avoiding the big picture, a way to snuff out the vision in your mind.

 A vision’s emotions are like the sky; it doesn’t give a damn if the dishes are done and it knows nothing of computers and accounting. It simply IS. You can have the IS without the entropy on a yoga retreat. But if you’d like to come down from the mountain and into the chaos to create something larger than yourself simply because it’s so damn fun, you can have the IS while chatting with a fiery soul in an office you manifested from a dream you had last year while in your mind the duck swim peacefully, bobbing and wiggling their curled little tails contentedly.   

And I’ve recently come across a challenge from outside myself; resistance from those who I used to spend lots of time with. I hear words like this, “Your life sounds so out of balance, we should really talk about this.” Or the one I like even more, “How’s your dating life?”

So I’m taking the time right now to remind myself that as I grow and change in response to the changing pressures of my new world, others will want me to remain the same. This I must resist at all cost. I must stay true to my vision and say, “This is a glorious unbalanced life, and I am a dolphin-kangaroo-jumping-out-of-a-bi-plane-over-a-*&%#*- brown-river-in the middle-of-the-sea-dammit. Leave me alone! ”

Back to work.

The answer, “I work with single pointed focus.”

Truly, it has nothing to do with work ethic. I know many people who work very hard. It is simply my theory that the difference between working hard to propel forward and working hard to tread water is the result of removing one very dangerous self-destructive behavior from the mind; complaining.  

What is complaining, after all? It is the unabashed tongue lashing of unsuspecting people, circumstance, and activities and its purpose is two-fold. First, it is a relief outlet for the complainer, a way to let loose all the pent-up anger from the day. Second, it is a mental game whereby the complainer attempts to better themselves through the bashing of others; and this is just an illusion anyway.  

Here is the metaphysical problem with complaining. The Universe, this wonderful soup of possibilities we swim around in every moment of our lives, will not change because of our complaints. No, the Universe just IS, and it is perfect. Flapping bitter words at a person who doesn’t do as you wish has the same outcome as punching clouds. Why waste precious effort on fruitless tasks? And more to point, complaining is just such a damn waste of time! (And hideously boring to listen to.)

I wasn’t always a complaint-free person. In fact, I was a master complainer. My life was a mess and I’d be happy to share that with anyone who would listen.

Then I found something that changed it all; yoga. At first I thought meditation was stupid, a stagnant state of being that impaired the fire in my belly. Time wore away those edges and eventually those fantastically malleable circuits of nerves in my brain reorganized in a way that altered everything in my waking world. I had discovered the most productive state – single pointed focus.

Single pointed focus is the ability to attend to only one thing and to do it with the highest quality mind. Single pointed focus and complaining are the antithesis of each other. Focus requires the mind to relax yet remain fully alert; like a clear calm lake where the tiniest bugs can be seen crawling on rocks. Complaining stirs the waters like a vicious storm. The lake becomes thick with mud and debris and all is murky and dark. Now imagine working in this environment; it is impossible to get anything done. You can work for hours, sacrifice yourself against the hurling waters, drown yourself in effort; but still, your work will be fruitless.

After years of going through this cycle; single pointed focus/murky messy pond, my brain was finally trained enough that maintaining single pointed focus became my mind’s natural state. And this is when my work became very productive. The outcomes of my endeavors were no longer directly correlated with the amount of time I put into them, but instead were directly related to the quality of time I put in. Now, if I have good mind control, a single day can yield completion of multiple projects both creative and pragmatic.

But it’s not a permanent state. At the end of a tremendously busy week, in the midst of a family crisis, or when an epiphany arrives my nerves are frazzled and single pointed focus is just not possible. Maybe this will change with time so at some point I will keep up this focus at all times, but for now I simply recognize that these are not times to make decisions, work diligently, or expect creative bursts. Instead, these are times to seek silence until the mind clears once again.  

Now, on a sweet sunny Saturday like today, my body sleeps until it wakes. Then my hands brew the most delicious cup of coffee. Then, with the coffee cupped between my palms, my mind sits down at the computer and writes. It works, for hours, without stopping. In that single pointed focus there is no complaining, doubting, ruminating or vacillating. There is simply clarity of mind allowing creativity and abundance to flourish.

And this is the point of it all; doing the work we are intended to do, whatever it may be. But first, we must train the mind. And then, we must practice everyday. And then, we must have gratitude and rest. Because ultimately all the joys of the world are found in the simple things in life; and working to harvest the fruits of our labors is the sweetest of those things.

At the end of the day we each stood before the crowd and gave a three minutes speech on our chosen topic. My friend, still quaking in her shoes, waiting until the very end. She stood before the crowd, a nice smile on her face, and talked smoothly and easily about her topic. Then suddenly she melted down. “Oh, I’m just doing a terrible job…I don’t know what I’m doing…I’m so nervous!”

The instructor smiled at her kindly, “From the audience’s perspective you were doing just great. You let your nerves take over.” Then he turned to all of us, “Remember, it’s always better than it seems.”

I forgot about this sweet lesson preparing to shoot the video introduction for the book. With the living room all set up, I rehearsed over and over each time catching a new set of imperfections. The only thing that stopped this frantic search for perfection was a pounding headache.

Today we shot the real introduction. As I repeated my script before the camera my mind caught and my words stopped at each imperfection. We shot twenty-five takes.   

Just now I sat down and watched the videos. And with exception of two takes, they’re good. The million little missed and incorrect details I saw in my head didn’t come across on the screen at all.   

So I remind myself what my smiling instructor taught a room full of novice public speakers, “It’s always better than it seems.”

An excerpt from Chapter fifty-seven in the Tao Te Ching by Vega:

“The more rules you have, the more unhappy people are; And the more weapons there are, the worse things happen. The more we want luxuries, the more we abandon simplicity -  And the more laws you pass, the more they are broken.

So the sage says: I do nothing, and the people come together. By leaving them alone I let them be on the path – By not using my power, they become rich themselves. And if I want nothing, they will return to the essence of their being.”

Is it possible to create a business entity that believes within each employee a seed of divinity wants to excel; not because of retribution, not by force or law, but because the feeling of having the wind in your hair from the mometum of participating in the growth of something greater than ourselves imbibes the spirit with such joy that returning to the source of that stimulation is a reward in itself?

I contemplate how to create this kind of spirit infused working environment. It seems that a few things are necessary:

Financial transparency and reward; by connecting employees to the outcome of the business, the details start to matter. Maintaining a relationship with a difficult client or adventuring out to find new ones becomes self fulfilling.  

Personal autonomy; set the reward-based goal then step back.  

Match skills with abilities; it is a well known fact that I am a terrible detail person. If my job was to do the books, we’d all go nuts. There are wonderful personality profiles that help with this. The one that has helped me the most is The Winslow Personality Profile.

A high tolerance environment; no group think. New ideas, people, and ways to complete activites are always acceptable. Set up easy to use systems to make this process well known to everyone.

Boundaries; every one must rest. I know, I am the personality who will work until I physically can’t do it anymore; fantastic for building a business, not great working for one.  Creating are martyr-free environment is needed.

Much of traditional business literature is built on the heriarchical model with the all knowing leader at the top. I’m wondering if this blocks the creative flow of information from employees that could help build business momentum. I’m beginning a little test in this regard. I’ll share the result when it’s clear.

Two days later I logged back on to get my results. I was crushed. I am, or thought I was, an exceptionally bright, motivated, organized individual who got along well with others and was naturally a good leader. The test revealed some things about my self that contradicted this image.

The test revealed that I have poor awareness of other’s needs and have little to no interest in helping others. My coach pointed out that this might make it difficult for me to understand my client’s needs. Building a business is about creating a system that fills a need and then filling that need with clarity and consistency. The test revealed I am not a detailed person and therefore am not very good at building accurate and detailed systems.

I scored very high on leadership ability but scored very low on coachability. He laughed when he read this, questioning why I would spend the money on a coaching program if I wasn’t going to listen. I pointed out that spending the money was helping me listen. But from a business perspective I knew I had to be careful; I had bull headed my way through many projects that failed. Maybe I needed to step back and ask for a little help.

Most revealing of all was the conclusion that stated it would be important for me to really consider these test results in any endeavor. I had some hard choices to make. If I was going to build a successful business I needed to both improve my weaknesses as well as seriously consider bringing people onto my team who could make up for my deficits. In this way a business team would be whole and complete, having many different minds approaching problems from many different ways. As a leader I would have to listen carefully to other people’s input, consider the ideas in a serious way, and then make choices that matched the vision and direction of the business.

Today I’m practicing diligently how to identify my team’s strengths and weaknesses. For some, details are their gift. Being detailed means they work in a different way; more slowly and methodically that I could ever move. But this difference must be honored. In this way people feel appreciated for the work they do, my business receives the detailed care and attention it deserves, and the clients are better served.

This practice of understanding strengths and weaknesses is another ego smasher. But what rises out of this is a group of people working together in different ways towards a common purpose. If they can do this feeling appreciated for what they bring to the business vision, it may make for better long term team stability.  As for my part, it’s a bit of a relief to know I don’t have to be good at everything. If I want my business to be world class, I need the best people working on the vision; the vision that I created in the long hard hours of early entrepreneurship, hours for which I’ll never need recognition; so said the Winslow Dynamics Profile.

Before we could even get to the working backwards part, I was lamenting that I didn’t even know how to imagine being rich.  My coach laughed (he did that a lot) and said very simply, “Fake it until you make it.” So, I pretended I knew what in the world I was doing and built my vision board complete with the love of my life, exotic vacations, African volunteer trips, and one very fast little red car. And then, because I strongly believe that we get what we give, I also put a family trust on the board, a fund to help someone in need once a year. 

Christmas 2008 I took the trust idea to the family. We’re a small scattered group of nine adults with interests so varied we talk about sports at dinner. So I thought it might be a good project for us, a way to connect by doing something good once a year. We all agreed and my father started the account.

This week we made our first annual family donation; $850 accumulated as cash donations in lieu of gifts we never wanted anyway. Fake it till’ you make it works; and it works fast. I’m headed to Africa in September.

My sister’s Doberman, Diesel, came running in the house after agility, sat hard on his haunches, and began scratching his back madly. As nature would have it, this eighty-five pound creature is a self-proclaimed ‘lap dog’. Not wanting to fight mother nature he scratched his way onto my lap where I was stretching on the floor.  And I did what I do all day as a physical therapist; I put my hands on the itchy spot and started doing some manual therapy. I assesses for tightness, felt for trigger points, and somewhere so deeply ingrained in my brain that I didn’t even think about it – I stretched the dog.

It was at the apex of this luxurious stretch, his front leg reaching forward in a long graceful line, his deep sighs of contentment puffing through his lips, that my sister walked around the corner from the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

Diesel jumped up.

“I’m stretching your dog.”

She held Diesel by the collar and walked him back to me, “No one has ever done it like that before; do it again.”

And that was it.

That moment on the living room floor turned into a desk top published book that was accepted by a publisher, was for sale world-wide two years later,  received five-star rating from national magazines, has been featured on national radio shows and endorsed in national newspapers. And just out this week, has been nominated as one of the top three contenders for Best Health and Care Book by the Dog Writer’s Association of America.  All in the span of nine months.

Here’s where I put forth the effort:

I wrote the book.

I edited the book after second and third reader feedback.

I worked with the publisher to create a beautiful end product.

I e-mailed every dog loving company on earth to let them know the book was on its way. (The publisher sent them gallies when they arrived.)

I wrote scripts for interviews months before the interview requests ever arrived.

And now I send quarterly newsletter to my clients.

The rest of it; the reviews and interviews and ratings and contests, all out of my hands.

The lesson: Put for deliberate and highest quality effort in the areas in which you have direct control. Everything else, let it go.

How often my mind wants to wait until all circumstances are perfect to act. But this self limiting behavior had to be left at the curb along with a host of other failure inducing actions when I made the choice to become independently wealthy. Because of Newton’s First Law, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” I had to replace failure inducing perfection for something else…growth stimulating failure. By changing my actions, the reactions are now different, opening and expanding the world in ways I could not have imagined.

Ah, what a tricky little wicket this is! Trading perfection for failure is counter intuitive and the mind will try to tell you otherwise. “You will look like a fool,” it states emphatically, “then all will be lost.” What the mind doesn’t understand is that it needs to change its ways. Losing and letting go mold the mind into a more useful tool. To the mind, failure is a stringent task master, but it is the elixir that will amalgamate fragments of vision into tangible reality. And as Charles Haanel shares with us, failure is no reason to quit.

The mind may place the ideal a little too high and fall short of the mark; it may attempt to soar on untrained wings and instead of flying, fall to earth; but that is no reason for not making another attempt.

                                                        Charles Haanel, The Master Key System 1912

For me, accepting failure with some tasks in order to become wildly successful at others, required my ego be checked at the door like a wet rain coat. I never failed…at anything! Oh, wait. I tanked a bunch of businesses, didn’t I? Lost out in love once. In truth, it was probably at least five times.  My ego still tries to beg its way out of the closet, “It might rain,” it says with a sweet smile. “I wouldn’t want you to get chilled,” it chortles. I wonder as I walk by, why I don’t take it permanently to the cleaners.

By accepting failure the mind is released from the burden of predictable outcomes. Instead of hestitating when an opportunity arises, the body and mind move forward. What’s over there? They won’t know until they get there. When they arrive they will most likely be unprepared for the task as hand, but they will do the best they can. And when the next door opens they will be more experienced at stepping into the unknown until stepping into the unknown is second nature and they are elevated to a new way of thinking once again.

(pith) n. The essential or central part; the heart or essence

 [welth] n. A great quantity or store of money, valuable possessions, property, or other riches

In today’s uncertain economy most people live with the fear that there will never be enough. Others get rich. Having tanked six businesses, I’m no stranger to fear and failure. But the way I see it, a little education and perseverance can overcome most anything, including financial woes. The Pith of Wealth is an opportunity to share first hand the struggles of creating wealth from nothing but an unflinching belief in a vision of the future.  

Getting “There” from “Here”

Learning how to becoming independently wealthy doesn’t cost a thing. The local library is full of resources written by the wealthiest people in the world who light the path for those who choose to follow.  But it does require an untenable commitment to changing behaviors that prevent wealth from knocking at the door.

The heart of wealth is learning to make money grow. But taking earned income (money from a pay check) and buying investments instead of comforts is not easy.  For example, the average cost of premier cable in Fort Collins, Colorado is $85/month or $1020/year. If this $1020 was used to purchase well researched value stocks it could have doubled in value in the last quarter.  But, there would have been no Jon & Kate Plus 8 marathon or Spin Zone. Training the brain to value the growth of money over habitual daily comforts requires a strong commitment to a result that won’t be seen for years.

The remedy for discomfort is knowing with lucidity the reasons why it is important to become independently wealthy.  For me, I was simply exhausted from working so hard. I was taught a high powered education, no matter the cost, would take care of everything.  When I finished my professional degree I didn’t make enough to pay the rent and pay my student loans. My family couldn’t help. The overflow went on the credit cards. I was beyond frustrated. I was terrified. But I looked good. This went on the credit cards, too.  After ten years of this, I was ready to find a better way.

I am not a trained investment advisor, real estate broker or banker. I am a burned-out health care professional turned entrepreneur determined to make a better life for myself.  Following the advice of people who are independently wealthy, in  just over a year my balance sheet is tipping in a more positive direction. I didn’t do this by following the “cut up your credit cards” method or the “save, save, save,” mantra. Instead, I’ve done it by changing the way I think about money and then acting in new and often uncomfortable ways. 

The Pith of Wealth is a place to share the bitter and sweet moments on the journey to becoming independently wealthy.  My personal goal is to achieve financial freedom in ten years.  When I achieve this goal I will save myself 20 years of “working” towards retirement – twenty years!  What an incredible gift to myself. And I’ll have all the time I need to give back to the world.