Stay Focused on Your Core Genius

This next article is part of an ongoing series here at TSB Magazine called The Success Principles. The series is based on the 64 principles laid out by Jack Canfield in his course of the same name. If youre new, I always suggest starting any series from the beginning.

Principle 39:  Stay Focused on Your Core Genius

I believe you have inside you a core genius-some one thing that you love to do and do so well that you hardly feel like charging people for it.  It’s effortless for you and a whole lot of fun.  And if you could make money doing it, you’d make it your life work.

Successful people believe this, too.  That’s why they put their core genius first.  They focus on it-and delegate everything else other people on their team. J.Canfield.

This is a lesson that I never fully understood until recently reading The Four Hour Work Week which talks a lot about outsourcing the things that you don’t enjoy doing.

I’m going to use my experience running TSB Magazine to illustrate the lesson that Canfield is trying to get across.

My core genius involves sharing ideas that stimulate personal growth.  I love writing articles that entertain and inspire my readers.  Even if every article does not succeed at this goal, I enjoy putting 100% into every article that I write.  I love reading books and listening to audio books from some of the masters at personal development, and I love exploring their different concepts via this magazine.  For me, that is not only what I enjoy, but also what I want to make my life’s work.

The times that I have faced my most challenging DIPS were the periods that I let myself get bogged down doing things that were difficult and not enjoyable for me.  These things included SEO work to get this site better indexed, design work, editing audio and video, and performing any other technical aspect of this site.

Whenever I engaged in these activities I lost my desire to continue. I would feel uninspired and uncreative.  And I often felt like I was achieving very little for the effort i was putting in.

This is why I have partners here at TSB Magazine.  Our editor Mike Stoute would much rather be doing technical and design work then writing articles.  Pete the Freshman is a master programmer and takes much of that burden off of both Mike and myself.  Each one of us are able to fully concentrate on our own core genius.

Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan once stated that all entrepreneurs are really con artists.  They get others to pay them to practice getting better at what they love to do.

If you look at the most successful people in various fields you will find this statement to be true.

Mystery, Savoy, Richard La Ruina, and a host of other dating coaches love to meet and attract women, and each has made a successful career out of it.

Anthony Robbins loves speaking and training.  He makes millions of dollars every year doing it.

Countless athletes like Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, and Tony Romo make millions of dollars every year to play a sport that they would more than likely be playing on their free time anyway.

How about all of the famous musicians earning outstanding livings playing the music that they are passionate about?

How much could you learn from the level of focus each of these individuals brings to their given profession?

The fact is, most entrepreneurs spend less than 30% of their time focusing on their core genius and unique abilities.  In fact, by the time they’ve launched a business, it often seems entrepreneurs are doing everything but the one thing they went into business for in the first place.

Don’t let this be your fate.  Identify your core genius, then delegate completely to free up more time to focus on what you love to do.