Am I hunting antelope or field mice?
Every now and then I read the newsletter I receive from Tim Ferris and in this particular one I was happy to hear this story he shared regarding how we choose to live our days.
He said he had lifted this question from former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich; one of the most successful political leaders of our time. Yes, we disagreed with virtually everything he did, but we’ve got to give Newt his due. His strategic ability — his relentless focus on capturing the House of Representatives for the Republicans — led to one of the biggest political landslides in American history. Now that he’s in the private sector, Newt uses a brilliant illustration to explain the need to focus on the big things and let the little stuff slide:
The analogy of the field mice and the antelope.
A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope.
The distinction is important. Are you spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you’re going to die.
So ask yourself at the end of the day, “Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?”
Another way Tim often approached this is to look at the to-do list and ask: “Which one of these, if done, would render all the rest either easier or completely irrelevant?” In other words, which is the antelope?
Why, having been endowed with the courageous heart of a lion, do we live as mice? — Brendon Burchard
I also feel relevant to this article are these words from;
The Declaration of Personal Power
Excerpted from The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard
“There comes a time in the lives of those destined for greatness when we must stand before the mirror of meaning and ask: Why, having been endowed with the courageous heart of a lion, do we live as mice?
We must look squarely into our own tired eyes and examine why we waste so much time sniffing at every distraction, why we cower at the thought of revealing our true selves to the world, why we scurry so quickly from conflict, and why we consent to play small. We must ask why we participate so humbly in society’s frantic race, allowing our- selves into its mazes of mediocrity and settling for scraps of reward when nature has offered unlimited freedom, power, and abundance to the bold, the determined, the creative, the independent — to each of us. We must ask if our desires to feel safe and accepted are in fact enslaving us to popular opinion — and to boredom. We must ask: When will we be ready to ascend to another level of existence?
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to ask such questions and to dissolve the beliefs and behaviors that have limited us, assuming once more the full powers of our being to which God and the laws of nature have entitled us, a decent respect to humankind requires that we should declare the motives that impel us to exert our strength and to separate ourselves from those who stunt our vitality, growth, and happiness.
We must declare our personal power and freedom”.
You can read the full nine declarations here
Hope this can benefit your days
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