I chose the title of this blog because of an interesting experience I had recently that struck me as an apt metaphor for how to achieve success. If you will indulge me by reading this short tale, I promise you that there will be a huge payoff for you at the end.
My in-laws were visiting us to spend some time with our new baby. My father-in-law, Tom, characteristically, was looking for something he could do to help us with the house. We had a problem with our dryer vent (it stopped venting), so Tom decided that we should run a new dryer hose alongside the garage wall and then through the exterior wall.
The problem with that idea was that the wall of the garage is made out of concrete block. But Tom and I knew that concrete block is only an inch or so thick on each side and hollow in the middle, as in this picture.
Because concrete block isn’t as hard as solid concrete, we surmised that we could easily punch a four-inch hole through each side with a sledge hammer and a pointed chisel, and then run the hose out through it.
Thus began our odyssey. After hours of pounding away at the wall, we were convinced that we must have hit one of the cross-supports in the concrete block. Therefore, we moved over a few inches and started again. But still it seemed like we just couldn’t get through that wall.
That’s when I decided to call in the cavalry. I got a concrete cutting expert on the phone and he informed me that around doors, builders often pour concrete into the blocks to make a stronger supporting wall. This meant that we weren’t trying to chisel through two inches of concrete block, but rather through 12 inches of SOLID CONCRETE. Judging by the progress we had made so far, this job would have taken us longer than Andy Dufresne took to tunnel out of Shawshank prison (20 years, for those who haven’t seen the movie).
So. . . in comes the concrete expert with a device called a core drill that was nothing short of astonishing (see photo). In about 10 minutes, he had this amazing tool mounted to the wall. Core drills use a diamond-edged bit and turn at thousands of revolutions per minute.
Within 25 minutes from the time he arrived, this expert had extracted a piece of solid concrete 4 inches across and 12 inches deep (see photo). If you look closely at the area inside the black line in the photo, you can see the laughably tiny bit of progress Tom and I had made after probably six man-hours of hard, dangerous work.
The $200 I paid to the concrete expert seemed a bit high at first, but when I saw what was accomplished, I realized that it was the bargain of the century. If Tom and I valued our time at even just $40 an hour (and we would never value it that low), it would have cost us $10,000 to get through that wall without the benefit of the specialized knowledge and tools that the expert had.
So what’s the lesson here? There are actually three of them.
The first lesson is that achieving your goals is often harder than it looks. Knowing what you want is easy, but then you have to face the daily grind of pounding away at the tasks necessary to accomplish it. Isn’t that what we all do sometimes? Work, work, work, and see just a fraction of the progress that we anticipated? Maybe we’ll eventually accomplish some of our goals, but we’ll be so worn out by that time that we can’t even appreciate them.
The second lesson is that getting results in life is complicated by the lack of specialized knowledge. Tom and I didn’t know that wall was solid concrete, so our entire success strategy was faulty and doomed from the start.
The third and perhaps most important lesson is that there are experts who have the tools, skills, knowledge, and resources to help you achieve success. You can continue to pound away at your goals with a hammer and chisel, or you can bring in an expert with a diamond-bladed core drill to make light work of a hard job. This ability to recognize when you need help (and what kind) is probably the most unrecognized secret of success in the universe.
So what’s it going to be for you? Save your money and keep toiling at the activities that may not ever produce the outcomes you seek? Or invest wisely in the specialized knowledge and tools necessary to accomplish your goals quickly and efficiently?
These are big questions that you should consider carefully, because your personal sense of fulfillment and peace of mind are at stake. And the result of using the right tools and gaining the right knowledge is nothing less than unqualified success (as you define it) in virtually every aspect of your life.
To wrap up, let’s bring this metaphor out of the realm of theory and into reality. Dr. Norton and I spent years creating the Mindfluence Method business-success training system to be the diamond-edged core drill for the concrete wall that’s standing between where you are now and where you want to be.
We are convinced that it’s worth the substantial investment required, but not everyone is ready for this level of assistance. Some people are content to use the hammer and chisel for a bit longer, hoping that the wall isn’t as thick or as hard as they hoped it was. Others are ready to take immediate action to invest in their future and see results in a fraction of the time.
We invite you to join us on our journey through the fundamental business success skills that the Mindfluence Method will bring to you and the satisfaction that will be uniquely yours when you finally experience the realization of your dreams.
We’ll see you on the other side of that wall.
Bigger goals just require better tools!
