Fresh from that first step of real progress with my daughter I started processing another point Lanny raised. Remember, he is an Olympic gold medalist. If there's one group of people who can talk about what it takes to achieve success in sports it is Olympic gold medalists. A critical factor for repeatable success is what Lanny calls "Passion for the Process". Winning is fun but competing at the highest levels requires a significant amount of time and dedication. Even if someone has the natural capacity to perform at an Olympic level they will not do so without tremendous effort. That level of work cannot be sustained over a long time without a deep passion for whatever you are striving to master. What are you really passionate about? It could be golf, archery, shooting sports, table tennis, or coaching youth. Whatever you engage in directly relates to you as an individual. Your level of success will be fueled by your passion. Conversely, your lack of passion for an endeavor will limit you more than the talent you may or may not have.
This was a challenge for me. There are several activities on my agenda but few of them really connect to my passions. Finding your passion can be fairly straight-forward; look at what you dream about, think about, and talk about most. If your life revolves around fishing, then that may be your passion. Separate what you want to spend money on or want to accumulate from what you enjoy working on even though you have nothing new. A person who was passionate about fishing might spend time talking to others about what's biting where, keeps the gear clean and orderly, and knows all the local types of fish, best bait, and which of their friends can be called early in the morning for a great day on the water.
Sometimes businesses diversify when they want to grow. There is an advantage to be gotten in adding new products; if one line starts to lose market share the business is poised to grow elsewhere. While humans have a diverse number of interests, and it is probably healthy to try new things to keep your mind growing, we seem unable to be totally consumed by more than one or two passions at a time. Maybe I'm wrong in this but my gut feel is that you get one passion going at a time and anything else is a distraction. Deep commitment to a diverse personal portfolio seems to weaken our performance.
So there I was, stuck with trying to un-diversify and find my passion. I've been pondering career growth options and paths lately and one wall has several sheets of brown paper with my notes about things I should do, want to do, and want to do but don't seem to have time for. "Passion for the Process" started resonating with me more clearly and up went another sheet of paper. Cut square and tilted onto a point so that it sat like a diamond, the three lowest points corresponded to another of Lanny's talking points.
What passions do you have? What things are in your life that are distractions from what you are really created to do?