FBC – 229 – A Valuable Lesson From The Most Unexpected Place…

A Valuable Lesson From The Most Unexpected Place…

Today, I am going to tell you about a critical lesson that I got from an activity completely unrelated to business. Sometimes the most important lessons can come from the most unexpected places.

Tune in to hear what that lesson is and where I got it from.

So the thing I absolutely love about life is that you learn every single day. And one thing I try to do is to get learning experiences from anything that happens. OK? It doesn't have to be business related. There is always a lesson that you can get out of something, regardless what it is.

And that's the beauty of this, because today I got a valuable lesson. So it just reminded me of the very, very valuable lesson with something that has nothing to do with business. So this is one thing that most people will have completely ignored and never would have seen the importance and the significance of tiny little details in it.

I have this game. It's called risk. I played on my iPod. And the thing is I never actually play games, like never, ever. People have games on their phones and stuff. I don't. But this game is kind of special for me because it is a board game originally. And I used to play this game with some of my friends.

For those who know this game, you have a bunch of soldiers and stuff. So you have territories and a world map. So on each territory, each country, you might have like two soldiers, three soldiers and stuff. And every turn you get, you add more soldiers and you have to conquer other people's land. You're like a general or something. You need to formulate some sort of strategy.

In the game, what happens is that, you know, when you're trying to conquer other people's land, you can end up in the situation if you worry too much about what the opponent is doing, which can lead you to your doom. OK.

So today I was in the situation where there was this guy driving me insane. And he kept conquering the continent. So he will get bonuses and stuff. And my first instinct was, you know what? I am going to make sure that you don't get that continent so that you don't get your bonus. All right. So my energy was devoted to preventing this guy from getting the continent.

And after a while, I realized something. I was like, dude, you’re trying to prevent someone else from doing something instead of building your own stuff. Right. So every turn, I wasn't trying to build my empire. I was trying to sabotage his empire while he was trying to build his empire. So I don't know if you if you actually see the point I'm trying to make here.

So while you are trying to sabotage someone else's empire and this person is working to build theirs so they have an edge over you. OK. Because his progress makes my life harder. So when I analysed the situation, I realized that, you know what? If you look at it objectively. So forget about the game now, like we're not in the game anymore. We're talking about real life, you know, business and stuff.

Let's say, Bob. He's trying to build a company and you want to build a company as well. But you hate Bob's guts because he married Susan and you were in love with Susan. So you are going to devote all your energy trying to sabotage Bob. And then afterwards, you have to go and build your own business.

So in essence, you're doing twice the job that he is doing. As if building your own business wasn't hard enough. You're wasting valuable energy trying to sabotage someone else's business. All right. And when I say twice as hard like a, I think it's more because there is some resistance.

Bob is going to resist a little bit. So I would say it's like three times harder than if you focus just on your stuff, man. Just focus on your stuff and stay in your lane. I mean, because, you know, it is a waste of energy, like positive energy to go and look at what other people are doing and just be jealous. I think we already discussed this.

Right. But this came when I was playing, you know, at some point I was like after a few days, I was like, dude, what am I doing? Why am I wasting my time trying to sabotage this guy? I should go and build my business and I will grow my business. And at some point I will take over the whole map or something.

So it turns out that, you know, I started focusing on my stuff because I was in bad shape, bro. But once I started focusing on building my own, you know, territories and stuff, what happened is that my territories, let's say my business grew exponentially. But he was facing other competitors.

So while I was focusing on building my army and stuff, he was being attacked by the other dudes. Right. So instead of, like, focusing on that much, just focus on my stuff.

And next thing you know, you know, three, four turns later, I had to two new continents and I started making mad, mad money and all that stuff and eventually won the game easily. Right. And this is something I really recommend you do. All right.

A Valuable Lesson From The Most Unexpected Place…

So the game was just a like a reflection of stuff that actually happens in real life where you’re too caught up and too worried about what your neighbour is doing, that you forget what you need to do for your business.

Don't look at other people, right? It's hard, right? Sorry. Especially nowadays when you see, you know all these like Instagrammers showing you their life is so awesome.

Something you have to understand is, you know, very, very often, those people that you see showing off on Instagram telling you that there are very good life is better than yours and all that stuff. Most of the time it's B.S.. I know a lot of these like influencers and stuff. So when you see them, you're like, oh, man, is living a life is like a billionaire or something. No, it's really not the case.

But that was a very good example. And it had nothing to do with business, you know, because some of these things are universal concepts that you can apply to anything else. You can apply to business. You can apply it to, you know, friendships. You can apply to like love and stuff. So if you're too focused trying to have Bob and Susan breakup for whatever reason, you're not out there, finding the person you actually want. Right.

It's very easy to fall into that trap. This simple game was very revealing.