How To Succeed In Life By Focusing On Super Simple Stuff

By Rich Harshaw

There’s no way it’s that simple.

Actually, the path to success is usually so simple it’s mind-boggling. In fact, the only thing more mind-boggling than how simple the path to success actually is… is how reluctant most people are to acknowledge the simple path and take it—precisely because it is in fact so darn simple.

Don’t believe me? Answer this: if you had a deadly disease and were told you could be completely healed by dipping yourself in a local river, would you do it?

Naaman wouldn’t. At least not at first. Naaman was a commander of the Syrian army in Old Testament times; he contracted leprosy—which was incurable and deadly—so he called on a prophet in Israel, Elisha, who he heard could heal him.

When Naaman showed up at the prophet’s house, instead of greeting him personally, Elisha sent a servant with instructions: Naaman would be cured by dipping himself in the nearby River Jordan seven times. Naaman was furious: he had expected the prophet to meet him personally, call on the Lord on his behalf, and strike the disease out of his body. Besides, the River Jordan was polluted and disgusting—the thought of curing leprosy by bathing in it was absurd. According to the story, Naaman turned and went away in a rage.

As they left, Naaman’s servant offered some much needed perspective: “If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saith to thee, wash, and be clean?”

Like Naaman, I think we often seem to think our problems are sufficiently complex that they require equally complex solutions.

We are on standby, ready to do “some great thing.”

But the solution, usually, is actually pretty darn simple.

But that’s an old story about leprosy and rivers. It’s not relevant today.

Okay; how about this:

Ten years ago I ran a business that recruited, trained, and provided support for marketing consultants all over the United States. It was a business opportunity—sort of like a franchise, but without as many restrictions. Each participant had paid $35,000 plus a royalty on the money they would earn for the privilege of learning and making money from my marketing methods.

Naturally, training was a critical element of each consultant’s success. In January 2004, I stood on a stage in front of over 500 consultants at a National Conference in Dallas and held up a CD set that I had just completed writing and recording. It was our flagship “Monopolize Your Marketplace” CD set—eleven hours of marketing awesomeness that detailed every key concept the consultants would need to be successful in their businesses. I had taken me nearly ten years to write it and six months to record and edit it, and it represented “The Bible” of MYM-style marketing for these consultants.

As I addressed the group, I made them a promise: If you will listen to this CD set twenty times, I promise you that you’ll have all the knowledge, understanding, and ability to handle any marketing situation you will encounter as a consultant.

Everyone I spoke to at the conference was enthusiastic to get home and get started. Makes sense, right? You would think that a marketing consultant who had paid $35,000 to have access to Monopolize Your Marketplace training and support would be ready, willing, and EAGER to listen to a CD set with such a glorious promise twenty times.

And you would be wrong. Dead wrong.

Three months later, in May of 2004, I embarked on a twenty-city tour across the country to conduct regional trainings for the consultants—two cities a week for ten consecutive weeks. During the first week, I met with eight consultants in Nashville, TN, and twenty-two consultants in Ft. Lauderdale.

At the beginning of each training session, I had them pull out a piece of paper to take a “pop quiz.” The first several questions were innocuous: What was their name; how long had they been a consultant; how many clients did they have; how much money were they making each month; what other consultants did they associate with. Like that.

Then this question: How many times have you listened to the Monopolize Your Marketplace 10 CD set all the way through? I then asked a few questions about some of the particulars found in the CD set—stuff that would have easily been absorbed after just one or two listens—to see if they were telling the truth.

Out of the thirty people that took my quiz, fourteen had listened ZERO times, eight had listened once, five had listened twice, one had listened three times, and two had (oddly enough) listened eight times each. That’s an average of 1.23 times apiece. And if you threw out the two who had listened eight times, the other twenty-eight people averaged just 0.75 times each. And they had had over ninety days to do it.

Pathetic. Discouraging. Sad. And not all that surprising.

In fact, human history—and maybe even your own personal history—is littered with sad tales of unmet expectations and unfulfilled dreams.

What’s worse, we often don’t realize WHY we have failed. Or at least we’re not willing to own up to it. Do you think the dozens and dozens of unsuccessful marketing consultants ever thought to look in the mirror and blame themselves for failing to take the time and effort to listen to the CD set twenty times? Heck no! They found it much easier to blame circumstances, bad luck, poor timing, the company that sold them the opportunity, and 100 other excuses for their inability to make it work.

But it’s always the simple little things. Always.

If you find yourself failing in any important areas of your life—financial, relationships, physical, spiritual, emotional—it’s almost an absolute certainty that you’re not finding and executing the simple things.

But why? Here are five possible reasons you fail to do the simple things:

1. Lack of Belief: You simply don’t believe that the end result is possible under any circumstances, so you refuse to put any effort into trying. This could come from repeated failure in the past, or an inability to connect the dots from where you are now… to the simple things you need to be doing… to the final result. If you don’t believe in the final destination, there’s no way you’ll take that first step. This is a non-starter. Evaluate your goals and see if you really believe they’re possible. If not, reassess and shoot for something lower. I’d rather see you hit a tiny, unimpressive target than be paralyzed to inaction on square one of a big, impressive one.
2. Distractions: Some people say we live in the ‘information age’; I’d say it’s more accurate to call it the ‘distraction age’. With the Internet at your fingertips literally 24/7, it’s easy to not do anything worthwhile. Between social media, news, games, stock quotes, banking, texting, and Netflix, it’s a miracle anyone gets anything done. To break yourself of whatever distracting habits (time wasters) you have (could be TV, recreational reading, web surfing, online gaming, etc.), try FASTING. Meaning, first do a one-day fast. Then after a few days, try a two-day fast. Cold turkey. A week after that, try a three-day fast. Instead of picking up some other bad habit while your phone is buried in your backyard, try working on the simple things you need to be doing with some of that free time. The point isn’t to permanently eliminate the distracting thing; it’s to train yourself that you can go without for a while. Try this.
3. Complex Solutions: Some people go the opposite route; instead of numbing themselves with action-crushing distractions, they actively work on giant, impressive solutions that will quickly catapult them to super success. I’ve seen it 1,000 times in business: a guy starts a consulting business and wants to get his income up to six figures as soon as possible; instead of READING and LISTENING and LEARNING and taking on small clients to implement what he’s learned, he goes straight to large clients who will pay him big dollars. Inevitably, he’s unprepared for such lofty projects, and he fails. Boom. Game over. Success takes time; it’s a process. It has to be nurtured along. Don’t try to skip steps and like Naaman, look to do “some great thing.” Just start the small steps and trust the process.
4. Out of Balance: Sometimes there’s no time to work on the simple steps because your life is out of whack. You can’t get yourself in shape, for instance, because you’re consumed with your business. Or your spouse starts growing more and more distant because you’re training forty hours a week for the triathlon. Or your business is getting crushed because you spend all your mental energy on your relationships. Perfect balance is a myth; it doesn’t exist. But if any one area of your life is getting too much attention, something else is going to suffer.
5. Failure To Identify The Simple Steps: Of course, sometimes you just don’t recognize what those simple steps are. Naaman was told explicitly to dip himself in the river; I told my consultants explicitly to listen to the CD set twenty times. But more frequently, the path of “simple things” isn’t explicitly laid out in neat rows and tidy columns. You might be working on things that you THINK are the simple things when in fact you’re doing the wrong stuff.

So…. Let’s focus on some of the basics for various parts of your life. This is not meant to be comprehensive, and this is strictly my opinion. But maybe these will be a good starting point to help nudge you into the right path of success.

Health: We’ll start here because the path is fairly clear and certain, and relatively undebatable. It’s just as simple as getting your butt off the couch… and putting that quarter-pounder with cheese down. Casual observation of Americans would suggest that this simple advice is frequently being ignored, so maybe you should check the list of five things above before proceeding. Here’s the great thing about exercise: you don’t have to start by running a marathon (that would directly violate #3 above!). You should start wherever you are. If you’re on the couch a lot, start by walking around the block. Slowly. One time. Then do it again the next day. You might resist this based on #1 above, but do it anyway. Once you’ve walked slowly around the block a couple times a week for a month, try making two laps. Then walk a little faster. Like that. For food, my best advice is to go COLD TURKEY on ONE thing, and ONLY one thing. So make a little list of all the junk you eat now that you know you shouldn’t—the list is probably pretty long. Identify one thing on that list that you really like but could live without (especially given that you can still have the rest of the stuff on the list) and cut it out. The psychological muscle you will build with this one TINY discipline will pay huge dividends. The theme here is starting small, right? So start small.

Wealth: This is a bit trickier—there are lots of roads to wealth… and there are also lots of paths to failure, destruction, and loss. But in the vein of starting small and doing the simple things, I’d recommend you look at your own personal business, job, or financial situation, and look for the absolute smallest foundational stones you can find, and work on that. Frequently these can be found in the form of “stuff that you keep putting off doing because it’s not very fun or pleasurable.” Sales calls. Website overhaul. Whatever. Also, focus on a single number that you need to reach your goal. I wrote an entire post on this—and a follow up here. Read them both!!!

Relationships: Yikes, now I’m getting into Dr. Phil territory. But you know what, the same principles apply here as in other areas. I’ve found that the small things simply take a little discipline to do. Last year on Mother’s Day I gave my wife a gift certificate good for a twenty-minute foot rub every single day for the rest of the year. You might say, “That’s a lot of time investment!” And you’re right. But I guarantee you that if you give your spouse a twenty-minute foot rub every single day (no exceptions) something good is going to happen in your relationship. Maybe it’s not a foot rub: I committed to helping my 6^th grade daughter with her math homework any time she asked for it. That might sound like a “no duh” thing to do… but you don’t know my daughter. She wants to get EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM right, and she used to hound me from the time she got home from school until she went to bed to check her homework. My response used to be “not now; maybe later; check it yourself; go in early for tutoring” or some combination. When I finally committed to just doing it, it was amazing how much she appreciated the effort. Maybe it’s a daily compliment. Maybe it’s biting your tongue instead of speaking. Maybe it’s reading a book or watching a TV show you’re not really interested so you’ll have something to talk about. The key is consistency and commitment. Whatever it is, it will surely be simple. You just have to do it.

Spiritual: From Dr. Phil to Deepak Chopra! I’m not the Dalai Lama, but I can tell you a couple of things with certainty: First, regardless of your religious bent, spend at least ten minutes a day in prayer or meditation. Clear out your brain, and focus on the things that are important to you—without distractions. Early in the morning or late at night are best (depending on if you’re a night person or a morning person). My second piece of advice is much more subtle, but I challenge you do give it a try. Listen to that voice in your head that tells you what to do. The one that only tells you good things to do. Not the confused one; not the lazy one; not the one that rationalizes every form of illicit behavior into acceptable behavior. Find that voice that’s your Jiminy Cricket; your conscious; your best self. It’s in there, trust me. Commit to doing whatever it tells you to do, regardless of cost or circumstance. As you concentrate on this, you’ll be shocked at how often you tend NOT to listen—which almost always leads to poor outcomes. Listen as if that voice was the master key to all success in life—because it is. It’s the same voice that will tell you to put down the donut. And to get off the couch. And to rub your spouse’s feet. And to check your daughter’s homework. And to make that sales call. It’s never wrong, ever. So all you have to do is find it, acknowledge it, and follow it. The rest, my friends, will take care of itself. This is why the ten-minute prayer or meditation is so important—that’s the time when you’re most likely to hear; when you’re most likely to recognize. You’ll be surprised how simple the advice is. You just have to have the courage to follow.

It really is just that simple.

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