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An axe is striking a tree trunk outdoors, with wood chips flying. The sunlit background features blurred greenery and hints of autumn colors.
Strategy

Sharpening the Ax: Why You Can Take All the Action in the World and Still Not Have Success

By Marisa Murgatroyd

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Abraham Lincoln famously said, “If I had six hours to chop down the tree, I would spend four hours sharpening the ax.”

Here’s the thing: When you take the time to get clarity on your direction, when you really tune in to the business that you’re really here to build, the business that’s going to feed your soul — everything becomes easier. Otherwise you’re just someone with something to sell.

As a mentor for the past six years, I’ve seen that it’s so easy to spend so much time and so much effort trying to build something. But if you’re building it from your head — if you’re not following your heart — it’s a real struggle.

So it’s important to take the time to drop down and really listen in to what it is that you want, what you’re here to do, what’s going to be fulfilling.

If you’re thinking: Let me just make money now and then I’ll be able to get on with my purpose… some day. That purpose may never come.

So one of the principles that I’ve learned that’s helped me be successful in business is to slow down in order to speed up, slow down for long enough to really look into yourself, really get clear about what it is that you want, drop from your head down into your heart and figure out: what am I here to do? What is it that I really want? And operate from that place… Because when you do, everything becomes so much easier.

If you’re building just from your head it’s going to be hard to make the money or if the money comes it’s not going to stay. But when you align yourself with what you’re really here to do it becomes so much easier.

So listen to Abraham Lincoln. He’s got wisdom for you: “If you’ve got six hours to chop down the tree, spend four hours to sharpen the knife.”

But it’s a balance because so many people are sitting waiting for lightning to strike from the sky and have that moment where they understand — with crystal clarity — everything they’re supposed to do. And it doesn’t work like that. It’s more like following a trail of bread crumbs than it is about waiting for lightning to strike.

You don’t want to sit around for too long. You don’t want to slow down so much that you stop. You want to slow down in service of speeding up and that’s my message for you here today.

So what have you been procrastinating on? What have you been running around so frantically trying to achieve that you’ve forgotten to tune into your heart and get that clarity of what you really want and what you’re really here to do?

So go out there and Live Your Message, make it happen and slow down for long enough to tune into what you really want.

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