“On Compliments & Focus” Kingston’s Journey #99

Enjoyment Vs. Focus

There are things that we enjoy doing and things which we are really good at doing. There is a difference and the difference is key.

In a previous post I had discussed how it would be nice to be good at doing a wide variety of things, a jack of all trades essentially, but a master of none.

The reality is, why do people want to be around you? Because you add value to their lives. Sure some people may interact with you out of the kindness of their hearts, but such individuals are so rare. In business they say you must answer the fundamental question of, “what’s in it for me?”

This is what gives people incentive on wanting to help you and incentive is quintessential in motivating people to either give or do the things you want them to do. Now we have already covered different variations of the topic, from relationship equity being not enough to reading to specialize on a narrow set of skills. Let’s focus this time on being essential in someone’s life and that is how do you get someone to invest their resources into you (financially specifically?)

And that is where focus on a key aspect of some aspect in life comes into play. It’s all well and good to have a generalized understanding of something, you can help those that have completely no knowledge in whatever that might happen to be but those individuals are only casually interested.

Being a Value Add

Those that are serious, that are completely committed in what they are doing and want your help in dong it better, well , they want you to be really good at it for them to be willing to give you their financial resources (a display of your commitment to you.)

That is the difference between a compliment and a focus. When you have focused on something, you will have developed such a thorough understanding of that particular topic that you can go in and make improvements in that field on the things that have issues associated with them . You will have truly understood the issue associated with the task at hand.

And wasn’t it Steven Covey that said we must first understand before being understood? Because when we have understood, that is when we have placed ourselves in a position where we can solve people’s problems. And only by first trying to solve other people’s problems will we be able to get the things that we want.

Kingston S. Lim

May 2, 2021

Nairobi, Kenya