Quote of the Day
Author: RyanLaw
What I Learned from my Dishwasher about the Power of Focus
We run our dishwasher each night and one of the kids empties it in the morning. A while back we decided we wanted to leave our dishwasher open a bit during the day to let it air out. Our children decided to make it a game to see how long we could go before someone shut it all the way, which turned off the green “clean” light on the front.
The first day someone shut it shortly after it was emptied. The next few days it was shut before noon. The kids, determined to keep the light on later, were really diligent and would remind anyone by the dishwasher not to shut it. The next few days we made it later and later until one day, when I started the dishwasher around 11 PM, the light was still on.
The next day the same thing happened and since then we’ve only closed it all the way during the day a time or two.
Now clearly this is a minor thing and this post is not about the virtues of leaving your dishwasher open a bit[1]. As the title of the article says, it is about the power of focus. This experience with the dishwasher got me thinking about how we were able to change a habit and achieve a goal by focusing.
How can you use this idea to achieve on your major goals? Focus on them. Here are some ideas:
- Read and even re-write your goals each morning
- Look at your goals and think about them during the day
- Journal about your progress
- Fall asleep focusing on your goals
- Create a vision board and screensaver with a picture of your goals
Just as the Proverb says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov 23:7), or as Buddha said, “The mind is everything. What you think, you become” or Emerson, “You become what you think about all day long.”
Focus on and think about your goals and you will eventually achieve them.
[1] It turns out this is a good practice, though: http://homeguides.sfgate.com/keep-dishwasher-building-up-mold-61036.html
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Knowledge is not power. It is the wise application of knowledge that is power.
It’s been said that knowledge is power, but all of us, including me, have knowledge about something we should (or shouldn’t) be doing, but we fail to take action. Knowledge is neither wisdom nor power. It is simply knowledge until it is applied.
Here’s an example. I know I shouldn’t eat refined sugar. It is addicting, fattening, a depressant, it causes inflammation, leads to aggressive behavior, anxiety, fatigue and even cancer. I know all of that, but I continue to eat it.[i] I’ve cut back, but I still eat it.
People know that riding in a car without a seat belt or driving a motorcycle without a helmet leads to an increased chance of dying in an accident. But they still drive without a seat belt or without a helmet.
The Surgeon General has warned us for years that smoking is hazardous to your health, yet millions of people still smoke.
We think the odds are in our favor. I won’t get cancer from sugar. I won’t be in a life-threatening accident. I won’t get lung cancer.
It would probably take a trained psychologist to work out all the issues around these statements and thoughts, but the fact is that we know, deep down, that we should change.
The same is true of our finances. Personal finance is mostly common sense. Use a budget, get out of debt, save for the future, insure for major losses and plan for emergencies. We have the knowledge, it’s the execution that is lacking. If you fail to take action, though, you are going to wind up broke and frustrated.
The challenge today is simple. Turn your knowledge into power through wise application. Pick an area of your personal finances that you need to make a change in. Maybe it’s reigning in your fast food spending. Perhaps it is finally setting up a budget. Maybe you need to take a step to protect your identity. Do it today! Add it to your to-do list and get it done.
[i] Sorry if I ruined Halloween, but all of these things are true…
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