The School of Greatness - 185 Focus On Your Gifts

Episode Date: June 5, 2015

"Focus on your gifts, not the things that take your gifts away." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at lewishowes.com/185.

This is 5-Minute Friday! It was the fall of 2002, and it was a big weekend. It wasn't just another football game. It was homecoming weekend, and this was my first season at a new school, Principia College in Elsa, Illinois, a small school with a very small football team of about 38 players, where normally football teams and colleges have around 80 to 100 players. And my family was there.

The whole school was there. All the alumni of the school were there, past legends of the football team who had been talked about in the locker room and on the field of the great feats they've achieved all came back to witness the homecoming game. I was just reminiscing about this moment the other day when my quarterback, a good friend of mine, who was here hanging out with me in LA, and we were talking about what it was like over 10 years ago to experience this moment.

And I had no clue what was about to happen. No clue about the result of the game of what we would create. And what we created that day was nothing short of magical. And it was one of those moments where everything came together. Again, I had done the preparation for every other game before that, leading up to it the exact same way. There wasn't anything I really changed that I remember. I had prepared myself. I'd done the practice. I'd done the video, the film watching. I visualized myself before every game making big plays. I would walk the field. I would watch film the night before of highlights of other wide receivers doing great

things and see myself as them achieving those great things in the game. Now, I had had incredible games before and great performances, but nothing ever compared to this game. And there's only a certain amount of time in every game, only so much you could do in that time. And it was almost like the time it extended in this game. It's like the time just continued to go on and on. And it also felt like the time was over before I knew it at the same time. over before I knew it at the same time. And as we were playing this game, I caught my first catch and I caught another catch and I keep catching the ball and I kept scoring. And it was like there wasn't even another team playing against us for a lot of the time. At least when I was getting the ball thrown to me, it was like there wasn't

even another team out there. And I remember they had one person on me at first, but after I caught a few balls as a wide receiver, and after I scored a couple times, they started to put another person on me. But I didn't even realize this. I didn't even think about it. It wasn't something that held me back. I just kept focusing on what I knew how to do best. And for me, that was running a couple of routes really well. I wasn't great at running every single route on the field, but I was really effective at running a few routes. And it didn't matter how many people they put on me or how they tried to stop me on the line of scrimmage or what they tried to do. I was able to run a couple of routes really, really effectively on this day. And the other

thing that I am, my gift at the time was my vision. I was able to see where people were on the defense and where they were going to be. It's almost like I could see in the future of how I ran something a specific way, how it would affect what the defense would react to. So I had this vision to see what was going to happen in the future, but I also had incredible vision for catching a football and I could catch it in any way. And particularly, I knew I could catch it very effectively with a few key routes that I would run. And it was the perfect timing every time.

Every time my friend threw a football to me, I caught it. I caught it every time. Every time my friend threw a football to me, I caught it. I caught it every time. And the coach kept running the exact same three to four routes to me over and over and over again, and they couldn't stop me. It's almost like they should have just thrown it to me every play because I literally think that they wouldn't have been able to stop whatever we did had we continued to do that. Now on this specific day, at the end of the game, we actually lost. We lost by a touchdown. I think it was like 35 to 42 or something like that. And I remember feeling very frustrated and a little sad and depressed. And I go into the

locker room. As I'm going back, all the, all the alumni's and my family and the student body at the school and the university are congratulating me and saying, wow, you were incredible. You had an awesome game. I can't believe all those things you did. How, how do you think you did? How many catches did you have? How many yards did you get? And I was like, to be honest, I don't know, maybe like eight or 10 catches for, you know, 150 yards, which would have been a great game for any wide receiver. And as I went back into the locker room, I put a lot of this weight on my shoulders thinking I could have done something different. I could have done something better to change the result, the outcome of this game. And I was so upset that we lost the homecoming. You know, this big moment

for our school where everyone came back to support us and we lost. And it was in the last minute when we lost. Our defense just couldn't hold them. But on offense, we were unstoppable. And as I go back into the locker room, I'm, you know, the last one in the locker room, I'm taking a long shower, nice hot shower to, to kind of like, you know, make myself feel better from all the wounds, physical and emotional. you know, make myself feel better from all the, uh, the wounds, physical and emotional. And as I'm coming out of the shower, my, my coach comes and says, you know, he, he, he wasn't really sure how to talk to me. He was like, you know, great game, but I could sell. He was a little mad. He was like, but good job. You know, you, you just broke a world record today.

You wrote, you broke a record for the most receiving yards in a single football game. And I was like, really, how many was that? Cause I didn't even know what the record was. And he said, 418 yards with 17 catches. You had four touchdowns. And, um, I was kind of in shock because 418 yards at the time was like, you know, half a season of yardage for one of the top receivers in the nation. You know, if you got a thousand yards in a season, you were, you know, one of the top receivers in the nation. You know, if you got 1,000 yards in a season,

you were, you know, one of the best in the country. And I almost got that in one game, half of those yards. So for me, I wasn't even like, it didn't even seem real. It didn't seem possible to be able to break that type of record from some of the greatest receivers in the world. No one had ever created that result. And I'm not talking about this to brag to you about something I did almost 15 years ago that has actually got broken a few years ago. Someone broke it and I think got a 423 or five

yards or something. And a lot of people have come close to it, but I'm not here to brag about something I did a long time ago, um, to try to make myself feel better. What I want to mention in this five minute Friday is the power of focusing on your key strengths and focusing on and asking people to set you up to win with what your key strengths are. Now, my coach didn't have me run the routes that he knew I wasn't great at. He only focused on three or four things and just did it over and over and let me do what I did great. He allowed me to use my vision and to use my body and position with a few simple routes that I knew how to run extremely well. And I was always a high efficiency in getting the result we wanted when we ran those routes.

Now, I wanted to just emphasize this, guys. There are a lot of weaknesses that I have, lots of weaknesses. And I could talk for hours of all the things I am poor at and have weaknesses and definitely not perfect at because in no way, shape, or form am I perfect? And am I great at every single thing I do? But when we stop focusing on eliminating our weaknesses and we just focus on what are we great at and how can we accentuate those strengths and then have a team around us to support us for the things that we are weak at to raise our strengths up, that's when we can create magic. And I think so many people out there are focusing on making their weaknesses better or focusing on their weaknesses and thinking about them too much when you don't need to think about them so much. Yes, you want to improve in all areas of your life

and you want to continue to improve those. But when you put your energy and your heart and soul into your strengths, and I'm talking about in business and life and your relationships, when you set yourself up to win in every situation by focusing on what your strength is, you can and will create magic if you allow it to happen. And that day, I really didn't do anything different except for my coach allowed me to focus on my strengths.

As opposed to trying to make me a well-rounded player and hit every different route to confuse the defense and make sure we're running a balanced offense. For whatever reason, he allowed me to just focus on one area and do it over and over and over again. And although we didn't win the game, we put up a lot of points. And our defense was where it was out of balance, and we weren't able to stop them. But on offense, we were unstoppable. And myself and the quarterback, my friend Chris, who was the quarterback at the time, we were unstoppable because we were focusing on our strengths. And he focused on how he could throw those routes perfectly as well.

Those were his strengths. And the timing came in perfectly. And what I want you guys to do is focus on your strengths this week. Don't worry about trying to have a balance in certain areas of your life. Yes, you want to always improve in everything. And you want to make sure you're not faulting in certain areas of your life. But use this as an analogy of how can I focus on my strengths more so that I could create magical results?

Because that's what the world needs to see is magical results, not just good or average results, but they want to be inspired by magic. And that day I really was allowing myself to be inspired by what was possible when I focused on a couple of things that I do really well, as opposed to trying to focus on making my weaknesses a lot better and just doing them to have practice at it. So I want you guys again to focus on what is that one talent, that one gift that you have that is better than everyone else or that is your best asset. Continue to dive into that talent and emphasize that. Put that out there, whatever it may be in

your business. Focus on the thing in your business that brings the most magic into the world when you do that thing, when you focus on that thing. Focus on that one skill set and that asset that you have that can bring more joy to people when you do it than when you focus on a weakness of just trying to be good enough in something else. Focus on the thing that is going to put you on the map and make your unique voice be heard. That's what I want you guys to focus on this week. Focus on your gift, not on the things that takes your gifts away. I hope you enjoyed this five-minute Friday. Thank you guys for all that you do. I love you guys so much and go focus on your gifts. Outro Music