What You Focus on Expands in Your Business

Some of the best advice I’ve ever heard has come in unassuming moments in casual conversation. Moments when I was relaxed and just open to something new.

I can recall many moments like that with my grandfather. My grandfather loved birds. He used to sit for hours watching finches fly in and out of the five story bird house he built. The bird house was on the end of a pole about 30 feet above the ground. We’d lay back in lawn chairs and just watch the birds.

Every fall I’d help my grandfather take down the bird house for cleaning, repair and storage. It was huge and so high up that he’d developed a rather elaborate pulley system to bring it down.

One such day, when I was 8, we were lowering the bird house. I was holding one of the main pulley ropes. Under the weight of the bird house, my hands became strained and began to hurt. I told my grandfather, “My hands hurt, I can’t hold it.”

His response, “Don’t focus on your hands hurting. What you focus is on expands. So if you think about the pain in your hands, it’ll get bigger. Instead, focus on getting the bird house down.”

You know he was right, of course. I stopped focusing on how much my hands hurt and the pain got less. I held the rope until the bird house was safely down.

I’ve never forgotten that phrase: what you focus on expands. Through the next three decades I found it very useful. But not only useful, I’ve found it to be truth. Every time I focus on things that are negative or painful, that thing increases. And when I focus on beauty or love that’s what increases.

So how does this relate to business?

Simple, really. When you run a business you’re faced with problems and decisions all the time. Some problems can get so large that they can stop us from not only making good decisions, but making decisions at all. That’s why I consider the problem but I don’t focus on it. Rather, I focus on the solution.

It’s easy to focus on the problem - especially the large ones. They get in your line of sight and seem to become like a wall that won’t let you look through it.

But there’s always a way to look beyond the problem; to alter your focus so that you can find the space outside the problem. I focus there. Then, I focus on finding the solution from outside the constraints of the problem. I don’t let the limits of the problem hem me in to one way of thinking. Rather, I let my focus expand to the point that it contains the problem and more. And it’s in the more that I most often find the solution.

What you focus on really does matter. Give it a try and see what you think.

Have you had any experiences of an unexpected wisdom? How have they changed your life? Your business?