There’s a saying that “What you do for one thing, you do for all things.” And the meaning is pretty straightforward.
If you put in effort and work hard at one thing, that same work ethic shows up in other areas of your life.
If you try really hard in school, you’re probably going to do really well in whatever job you get. If you are extremely regimented with your exercise routine, you’ll probably be regimented in other areas of your life. If you are competitive in sports, you’ll probably be competitive in everything you do.
Makes sense, right?
But some people misunderstand the meaning of this principle. It can be discouraging because the way it’s worded makes it sound like if you’re not good at one thing, then that means you’re not good at anything!
And that’s not the case. The real lesson here is that energy and effort transcends everything you do.
How to use this to your advantage
I’m going to take a minute to talk about my son-in-law, Zach, who has seen both sides of this principle.
When Zach was in high school, he didn’t put effort into his studies (and he’ll be the first to tell you this). As a result, he didn’t put effort into exercising, eating right, the part-time jobs he had at the time… You get the idea. And you can probably relate! This isn’t exactly uncommon for high schoolers.
So, in his case, his lack of effort in school translated to everything else he was doing. Not a good situation to be in.
But here’s how he flipped it around. Later in life, he started to immerse himself in personal development. He put all of his energy and effort into it. And guess what? That started to translate into other aspects of his life.
He started to invest more time and energy into his health. He started to put more energy into learning about business and real estate. He started putting more energy into everything he was doing, and it wasn’t a conscious effort on his part! It just started to happen as he put more energy and effort into personal development.
So, what’s the lesson here?
If you currently feel like you’re not achieving what you want, not seeing the results you’d like, or not progressing as quickly as you expected… Just focus on one thing.
If you can start putting tons of energy and effort into one aspect of your life, you will start to see changes everywhere. But if you try to change everything at once, you’ll get overwhelmed and stop. You won’t make any progress.
So remember: start with ONE thing, and the rest will come naturally.
What ONE thing will you put more effort into after reading this article?