Thirst vs. Abundance. How’s Your Digital Doing?

I remember so clearly playing on my grandparents’ farm, trying to get the freshwater well pump to produce a consistent flow of water. In those days, freshwater well pumps were a simple siphoning apparatus that provided us our entire water supply for cooking, drinking, and so on. And if you have ever tasted the absolute freshness of earthen well water freshly reborn from hundreds of feet beneath the mid-western soil, you know then that the pure, chilling crispness of the taste of a single drop makes getting it out of the ground worth every effort. But my frantic pumping of the well handle was using every ounce of my strength; I was producing more sweat drops than I was producing drops of water into my cup. Regardless, I pumped that handle for what seemed to be a million times but never got the flow of water to fill my little paper cup.

So even though I had raw effort and determination, I still had an empty cup. Soon after my near-collapse, my father arrived with a five-gallon stainless steel bucket and placed it under the spigot. He grabbed the pump handle and gave it the same action I had given the handle but with a fraction of the effort, and the well pump quickly shot full volumes of cool, crisp water into his bucket. It took my father just seconds to fill his whole bucket to the top. He wasn’t out of breathe!

Now, how could the process of gathering water be so easy and rewarding for one and fruitless and exhausting work for another?

If gathering water wasn’t so darned needed to sustain life, we might have never have tried again! But, trying harder was not the answer. And Lord knows I tried.

My father explained that “trying harder” isn’t the solution to achieving more. Sometimes, it’s a big part of the problem. He said, “If you stake your hopes to getting what you want on just trying harder than ever, you may kill your chance to succeed.”

My father took the time to show me the technique required to get water from the well. It was the simplest thing to do. As a result, I worked a lot less, and I got lots of water.

Once my father showed me the operation of the well pump, I didn’t have to practice, nor did I have to build up, little by little, to produce the same results as he did. I let go of my old ways and began following the proven methods to success and abundance. For me, it was a quantum leap in effort and results. It seemed almost counter-intuitive to get that dramatic of the result by mapping the success techniques of others and by not giving up.

I am still humored by this anecdotal experience of mine when I observe business owners exclaim, “I tried it once, and it didn’t work!” Meanwhile, other businesses are getting abundantly wealthy by doing the very thing other companies said doesn’t work.

Perhaps it is ok for some businesses to survive on the drops of sustenance that their “givenup” attitude provides. But know this, being “thirsty” can make for busy work.

Consulting a “thirsty” business owner is very frustrating. They will try anything once and move on. Then, they actively listen and look for the next big “thing” to get them to abundance. These are the businesses that keep digging for their water everywhere, trying this spot and that spot, and never breaking through.

Said another way, these are the businesses that continuously dig one-foot wells a hundred times over; instead of digging a one-hundred footwell one time! So it’s the same amount of digging, right?

Philip Gabbard is a partner at Fat Unicorn Society, El Paso’s leading digital media company. In addition, Philip is an author, speaker, and multi-media thought-leader. For questions or comments, contact Philip at philip@philipgabbard.com.