There is a story about an Italian opera composer and singer. Luciano Pavarotti. He was the greatest operatic tenor of his time. Pavarotti worked hard to stardom under maestro Arrigo Pola as his voice trainer. Despite early signs of success in music, Pavarotti was not sure if music would be his life-long career. So, he enrolled in a teacher training college. While he was practicing music, he also attended teacher training. After graduation, Pavarotti was not sure which career path to take, music or teaching. He was at a major crossroads. He thus sought counsel from his father, “. . . should I pursue teaching or music? What should I do?” The father looked at the son adoringly, smiled, and advised him sagely with avuncular pep-talk, “If you try to sit on two chairs, son, you will fall between the chairs. In life, you must choose one chair.” The young Pavarotti chose music. With time, dedication, and hard work, genius showed up. Pavarotti shot to global stardom. Later in his career, when asked to explain key factors that led to his success in opera, the wise words of his wise father quickly came to mind. Pavarotti replied, “Commitment. I chose one chair.”
I don’t know about you. As for me, I’ve picked an invaluable lesson from Luciano Pavarotti’s story. In life, one needs to make wise choices from a range of available options, a spectrum of opportunities. One must make evaluated decisions – to choose things that produce great life. I assure you; nature will throw in your path a number of opportunities. Be discerning. Ascertain which ones to take and which ones to let go. Not every opening that comes your way is good for you. Some snares come dressed as opportunities. We must let go of some openings. You can’t be an expert in every area of life. Learn from farmers - for reasons best known to themselves, sometimes they leave the field to be fallow and at other times, they till and sow every yard of the garden. However, beware: any choice that you make in life has an opportunity cost. Be careful with your choices. Work on choices or decisions that leave you with minimum opportunity cost. The law of nature demands that you must give up something to go up. You cannot have both. Confucius nailed this beautifully when he said, “He who chases two rabbits catches none.” People who want to do one thing but have their mind fixed on something else, weaken their ability to succeed in life. They graduate into perpetual non-performers. Such people never achieve anything. They get stuck in a rut. Life throws them under the bus.
Live the let-go life. Focus on an area that gives you greatest returns. Do not complicate things. One thing at a time. You will never succeed in life if you scatter your brilliance and attention to too many choices. Choose ‘one chair.’ Stay focused. Gather and inject your energy into the task at hand. When I was in high school, my house tutor, from Scotland, used to advise us, “folks, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” At that age, his advice made sense. I no longer believe in it. I always put all my eggs in one basket and guard the basket jealously. How about you? Do you put all your eggs in one basket or in several baskets? That’s a metaphorical illustration of how our personal choices in life make or break us. When you do too many things at any one time, you end up doing nothing well. You become a below-average achiever - or worse still - a non-performer in any project that you put your hands on.
Many people allow life to throw them under the bus due to poor decisions, and unevaluated options. They over-commit themselves to too many aspects of life. They slip into their comfort zone and have no clue about getting out. Sad.
Most of us betray ourselves in the way we handle our calendars. We face each day as it comes, loaded with commitments - clueless of what needs to be done to be on the journey to success. We follow the crowd. We go along with the herd. We accept invitations to merrymaking and other social events one after another. We want to be associated with everyone everywhere every day. Too often than not, we attend social events that do not in the slightest measure add value to our lives. We attend these events because we do not want to offend or disappoint our bosses, parents, spouses, friends, pastors, neighbors, and significant others. We abandon our planned schedules and end up falling into other people’s plans. Keeping up with the Joneses becomes our motto.
The biggest problem most of us face today is that we tend to spread ourselves too thin. Too many responsibilities. Too many roles. Too many tasks. We are married to too many obligations and cannot find a way to divorce them. We make too many promises without considering whether we can keep them. We hop, every single day, from one social event to another. We have no time to sit down to weave our future. We dedicate no time to bond with family members. We are always busy running up and down like an athlete working out on a treadmill – the readings on the console of the treadmill show that you have covered 10 kilometers, 12 kilometers et cetera, when in fact you are in the same place you started from. Life can sometimes be illusory. Like a treadmill. Like a roller coaster. When things do not work out, we complain that life dealt us a bad hand. Is it not by our own making that we find ourselves in a rut?
Dear reader. Every time you say ‘yes’ to an invitation that you should not be attending at all, you are indirectly saying ‘no’ to important things that you need to work on that could change your life for the better. Self-betrayal is the worst crime. It’s crime against humanity. There is no greatness in dedicating time to events that add no value to your life. Do you get surprised when you don’t achieve results? The answer is just in front of you. You are not getting high-impact things done. Poor choices. Too many chairs. Too many commitments. Too many promises. The plate is ever full. What’s the point of being a jack of different trades and a master of none? If you’re not getting results, stop complaining that life is throwing you under the bus. You are betraying yourself. Manage your calendar. Your life will be much better if you learn to pause, reflect and choose one chair. It does not make sense to complain about something that you have the power to change but you are not keen to. Nothing changes until you change yourself. Make the right choice. When you make the right choice and at the right time, the results of those right choices immediately start to show up. The benefits over-run anything bad that may have happened to you in the past. I therefore implore you today: choose one chair. Forget about the other chairs. No matter how glittering they may be. Learn form Pavarotti. He was comfortable with one chair, not two.
Eldar Shafir – an eminent professor of neuropsychology at Princeton University - popularized a term that describes how the human brain works. Cognitive bandwidth. According to Shafir, cognitive bandwidth speaks to the fact that our brain has a limited amount of attention which it can make use of at any one time. The more tasks or transactions that we perform at any one time, the more cognitive bandwidth we utilize. In essence, this implies that the bandwidth of our brain gets depleted with increased tasks. An overload. This, in turn, robs us of our personal genius. Consider wi-fi data that you buy from telecommunication service providers. At any one time, you are provided with a limited amount of data. The question is – what happens when you connect one gadget to your wi-fi data platform? Performance is of high quality. Not so? But what happens when you start to increase the number of gadgets? Data gets sapped. The network becomes weak. Connectivity is poor. As a result, the performance of gadget vis-à-vis connectivity becomes undesirably awful. This is what happens with the cognitive bandwidth of your brain. A person, who focuses on one task accesses a greater amount of their cognitive bandwidth than a fella who is ladened with multiple tasks. The former produces quality work and has a higher output than the latter.
Is this not the reason that we idolize Roger Federer as a world-class tennis player? Never heard or read about Federer going out to play golf or football or squash? Rory Mcllory was knighted as MBE due to his dexterity, brilliance, and contribution as a golfer. Never seen, heard, or read about Mcllory going out for motor racing or to play badminton or judo? We knew Mother Teresa as a humanitarian. She devoted her life to assisting the poor. She addressed the United Nations general assembly. Despite her leading role and personal virtuosity, she never considered herself an expert in cyberspace or corporate governance, or football administration. No. She chose one chair and committed her effort to it. True, every history maker, titan of business, and epic performer in any field is known for their ‘one chair’ and preserves their cognitive bandwidth for their ‘one chair’ mission. What is your chair?
Many people find themselves in a rut due to their rigidity to change. You cannot succeed in life if you don’t think you can succeed. Upholding an “I can” attitude is a key prerequisite to success. Former president of the US, Barack Obama, successfully ran a presidential campaign in 2008 under the slogan: ‘Change We Can Believe In.’ Obama asked the American people to believe in his ability to change the world. In November 2018, they elected Obama to serve in the White House.
It’s not too late for you to change. If your schedule, your calendar is overloaded with unproductive events, change it. If your friends are pulling you down with their toxic behavior, relieve them of the company. If the country you live in is showing no signs of economic recovery, take the bold move, and relocate to another country. Be the alchemist of your life. Be the potter of your future. Be the sculptor of your destiny. No one will ever take care of your life except you. Heed the words of Jim Rohn, father of self-development; “if you do not design your own life, chances are that you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have for you? Not much.” Wise words from a wise man.
Two areas of your life to re-examine and change – your thoughts and what you do habitually. King Solomon, the wisest human ever, wrote in the book of Proverbs, ‘. . . You become what you think about all the time.’ Think positive thoughts. Think big. Think success. Choose high-impact goals. In his book, Built to Last, Jim Collins refers to high-impact goals as BHAGs - big hairy audacious goals. Be daring. Galvanize your thinking and actions. Mark Caine said, “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment you find yourself in.” Believe that you can do whatever you want to do. Restructure your habits. Stop doing things that you have been doing. Start doing things that you should be doing; things that give you great returns, such as reading great books, listening to motivational teachers, caring for your health, spending time with your family and friends, eating well (but not too much, please!), helping your subordinates reach their potential, facilitating masterminds, working smart, tithing, learning to tread lightly and leaving the world better than you found it. Get out of your comfort zone. Staying in your comfort zone will give you nothing but the same old results. There is no greatness in the comfort zone. The longer you stay in your comfort zone and become over-committed, the greater the odds that life will throw you under a bus. The world won’t be able to witness and enjoy your brilliance. And that’s tragedy. A Swahili adage says, “nionyeshe tabia zako za kila siku, mimi nitakuonyesha kiwango chako cha mafanikio” (show me your daily habits and I will show you your level of success). Don’t scatter your brilliance. Choose and sit on one chair.
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