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Areas of Impact – Commentary

Hi, this is A.J. welcome to the commentary for this month’s lesson. Let’s get started.

The first thing I want you to do is to identify your key areas of impact, your key strengths. Not just strengths however, there’s a little bit of a difference here between a strength and an area of impact. The difference is that a strength might be something just that you’re good at; you’re particularly good at or you’re particularly like. But, an area of impact is a strength certainly but it’s a strength that influences or impacts other people as well, not just you or has the potential to do that. It’s a key difference.

I want you to identify your key area of impact, your key strength, your key opportunity in three different areas of life.

Number one - personality trait.

So we all have personality traits. We all have different strengths and weaknesses in our personality, certain kinds of emotions or thoughts or habits or whatever in our personality that seem to come very naturally and easily. They just seem to be who we are, even from a very young age, and then we have others that maybe we see as weaknesses that we really want to develop, but they take a lot of effort and time it always feels like a struggle. I’ll give you an example of some of these.

One personality trait may be discipline. Some people are extremely disciplined. Some people just naturally seem to be disciplined from a very young age you can even see it with some children. Some are very carefree and they just want to run around and play. They don’t have much discipline at all, self discipline. But other kids even quite young, they just seem able to focus, to discipline themselves, to make themselves work hard at certain things, to study hard; they’re just far more disciplined. You don’t have to be one or the other, but you need to decide are you a very naturally disciplined person with a lot of will power or are you not? That’s just one example.

Another one is enthusiam this is one of mine, this is the one I identify as my own key area of impact in terms of personality, enthusiasm. Some people just naturally seem to get really excited about things and to become very enthusiastic about different things that they’re doing in life and that tremendous energy and excitement is a natural strength that’s again often developed quite young. There are kids who are just really excitable and they get really excited about things they’re super enthusiastic. Kids in general tend to be this way, but some are extremely so.

Other people are just more calm they’re just not as enthusiastic. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s another key personality trait. Patience is another. This is not a strength of mine okay, but some people do have this as a key personality trait that just seems to be fairly easy, fairly natural, that patience and persistence that goes with it.

It’s not that one is the right answer and one’s wrong, no. it’s finding the one that is the strongest for you it’s your key personality trait. Your key area of impact in the area of personality. So, that’s your first thing to do, you’ve got to think about this it might take awhile. Think about your childhood all the way back to when you were a kid when you were in a youth growing up and then on into adulthood. You might find a few that seem to come out that your like oh, yeah these are my key personality traits and then identify the one that is strongest. That’s your area of impact. That’s the one that can really have a big impact on yourself on your life and on other people if you develop it to a high level. So, that’s area number one personality traits.

Area number two – “Fields of knowledge, areas of knowledge”.

What are things that you just seem to learn easily or love learning about that just come quite naturally? There are some people who, for example, just naturally seem to enjoy math/mathematics. The British say maths with an ‘s’ at the end I don’t know why, but we say math without the ‘s’. Math, so there are certain people who just seem to have a natural inclination they just seem to love it. They like learning about it. Others really love to learn about some area of science maybe the natural world… biology, plants, animals something like that. Others love to learn about astronomy, physics. Others it’s more about sociology and people.

There are, of course, countless fields of knowledge out there, but you probably have a few that you have been interested in for a very long time, that you just seem to have a natural attraction to. Again, I want you to make a list and then identify the one that you feel is the big one the one that you really have a super strong attraction to and have for quite a long time.

What is that field of knowledge that just seems to click for you? For me it’s psychology. It’s the way the brain works. I’ve always been fascinated by that from a fairly young age and I can continue to be fascinated by that and love learning about it.

Finally, the third area I want you to find your area of impact for your strength is the area of skills.

What’s the difference between knowledge and skills? Knowledge is sort of information, things that you learn, its kind of learning about something. Skills are your actual abilities to perform, to do things, to perform. So, I want you to find what are your skills? What are the things that you just seem to do very well? Then see if again you can identify one that is particularly natural for you, particularly easy for you.

Some people have a natural skill for a certain sport(s). Some people have the mathematics example again. Some people have not the interest in, but the ability to do it, it just seems to come naturally they can do it quite easily. For some it’s writing, they can write well and that seems to come fairly easily to them. It may be a very specific job skill like computer programming. I don’t know what it is you know what it is so identify it what that is. Then you’ll have three things you’ll have a personality trait, you’ll

have a field of knowledge and you’ll have a skill. They might be related they probably will be you might see connections between them.

Let me give you an example that’s very clear, because it’s physical. A lot of times if we look at some of these ideas in the physical world it’s simpler to understand them and to really see them, it’s very clear.

So, there I was in the gym lifting weights, lifting heavy weights, at least weights that were heavy for me and I was desperate to get bigger and stronger. I decided I needed to have more muscle to be stronger. I was tired of being skinny and weak. So, I had a lot of discipline and I went to the gym regularly several times a week, kept doing the exercises lifting weights, lifting weights and in fact my strength improved. I did get stronger. It was painful, especially in the beginning, a lot of soreness. I was really tired after each workout, a lot of effort. Sometimes a lot of frustration. Sometimes some pain.

The thing is tho that after months and months of doing this, six months or more, though I did get better I got stronger. I never got a lot of muscle. I never became big and strong like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I never look like a bodybuilder. No matter how much effort and energy and discipline I had, I just couldn’t do it. Nothing seemed to work, it was a constant struggle. I gained a little bit of muscle, but no one would look at me and think oh, that’s a big strong muscular guy.

By contrast, I was about midway through the Nashville marathon; Nashville, Tennessee having a marathon. A marathon is a long running race as you may know. So I was about in the middle, running along this is around mile 13, 14 something like that, I guess it would be around 20 kilos or so, kilometers and I was running along and everything felt effortless even though I’d already been running quite a long time. I was trying to run fairly fast, you know, I wanted to have a good time for my race. So, I’m running along, my muscles yeah they were sore they were tired certainly, but emotionally inside I felt a kind of happiness, giddiness, kind of extreme happiness. Everything just seemed very relaxed. Everything felt relaxed and easy. I felt like I was gliding instead of running, almost like I was just flying along through the race.

It didn’t feel like a terrible effort to me, everything felt kind of easy. It’s that feeling I describe often as effortless effort where yes on one hand you are certainly expending effort, you’re trying you’re working, but on the other hand it feels easy. It feels effortless and just seems natural. Indeed I ended up finishing the marathon with a descent time, a good time, the time I wanted to get. I realized that whole process of running that, that kind of exercise for me it’s always come fairly easy to me it’s always been fairly natural, compared to lifting weights and trying to get strong.

So this is a clear area where I can see my own strength my own area of impact, what comes naturally and easily to me and what is really not very natural for me. And for me, for my physical body type for whatever reason, it just seems more natural for me to do endurance type of activities. I’m better at those. They’re easier for me. I can

become better at them more quickly. If I give an equal amount of effort and time I will make bigger improvements as a runner or a cyclist or something like that than I will as a bodybuilder.

Now, there are other people who have exactly the opposite. There are other people, because of their body type that they seem to just gain muscle more quickly than other people. They get better and easier results in the gym than they would if they tried to go run some long race. So, the point of our lesson this month is, focus on that thing that seems to be really easy and natural for you and build that, it’s a better strategy than trying to focus on that weakness all the time.

Now we’ve discussed in past lessons, months ago, this idea of building on your strengths, but the key thing in this lesson that I wanted to focus on is that by doing that you build your impact, you build your influence so this is more than just becoming better at something. It’s also about using that skill, using that growth, using that improvement, using that strength to then influence and affect more people, because as you build your strengths your influence grows. As you gain more mastery at something your already good at you’ll start to affect other people. At the simplest level other people will become inspired by you. They’ll see your achievement and they’ll also want to achieve. And as your strength gets stronger and stronger and stronger you get better and better and better you just will naturally attract people, you’ll start to gain a little bit of a leadership role just naturally by doing that.

Another thing that happens is when you identify a few of these AOI’s, as we might call them areas of impact, and as you work on them and work on them and each one gets stronger and stronger they start to work together there’s sort of a natural synergy. Synergy is where the parts become better together than individually. For example, in my own life one of my AOI’s, one of my areas of impact, my strengths is teaching, speaking, teaching, psychology all of those things kind of together. Another is, as I mentioned, running or endurance type activities, high energy for a long time.

Now, I’ve pursued each of these individually and that’s great, but when both of them are succeeding at a high level they actually help each other. Specifically, my physical energy and training will help my teaching. It gives me more energy and that makes me an even better teacher. It’s interesting. So you’ll find that one of your strengths will actually improve the other one and that’s another reason to focus on strengths and not worry so much about your weaker points. To think of this in a way that will lead to greater influence with other people and as you do this then your overall influence in life grows. Meaning, the number of people you affect and how strongly you affect them will greater and greater.

You really become that kind of natural leader as we discussed in the character leadership lesson a while back. You do that by growing your areas of impact, your strengths, focusing on those few areas and building and building and building them not worried to much about the weaknesses, building those areas up and then connecting

them together so that they reinforce each other. That way you grow your overall influence.

So your assignment, as I already mentioned, number one identify those three areas.

A personality trait.

A field of knowledge and.

A skill.

Then for this month, I want you to focus only on those three. Focus on practicing those three, improving those three, developing those three and don’t worry about other things in your life. Those three things and make them better, stronger more influential.

Tell us about it on our social site. As usual I look forward to hearing about it. I will see you next time have a great day.

Bye for now.