Karate Parents

Diamonds Under Your Feet.

Goal setting can be a powerful life-changing experience. There are five basic principles behind setting goals that are essential for maximum achievement. First, to perform at your best, your goals and your values must be congruent; they should fit together like a hand in a glove. Your values represent your deepest convictions about what’s right and wrong, what’s good and bad, and what’s important and meaningful to you. High performance and high self-esteem only happen when your goals and your values are in complete harmony with each other.

Second, each person has the capacity to be excellent at something, and perhaps several things. You can achieve your full potential only by finding your arena of excellence and then by throwing your whole heart in to developing your talents in that area. Your area of excellence may change as your career evolves, but all truly successful people are those who’ve found it. You’ll never be happy or satisfied until you find your heart’s desire and commit your life to it.

The Third principle of goal setting is the “Acres of Diamonds” concept. “Acres of Diamonds,” is a talk that was given by a minister named Russell H. Conwell. His talk became so popular that he was asked to give it more than 5,000 times, word by word.

Conwell tells a the story of an old African farmer who became very excited one day upon hearing from a traveling merchant of men who had gone off in to Africa, discovered diamond mines and became fabulously rich. The farmer decided to sell his farm, organize a caravan, and head off in to the vast interior of Africa to find diamonds, so he too. Could drown his life with fabulous wealth.

For many years he searched the vast African continent for diamonds. Eventually, he ran out of money and was abandoned by everyone. Alone and in a fit of despair, he threw himself in to the ocean and drowned.

One day, back on the farm that he had sold, the new owner was out watering a donkey in a stream that cut across the farm. He found a strange stone that threw off light, in the most remarkable way. He took it in to the house and thought no more of it. Some months later, the same merchant stopped for the night at the farm. When he saw the stone, he became very excited and asked if the old farmer had finally returned. No! he was told, the old farmer had never been seen again. Why was the merchant so excited?

The merchant picked up the stone and said, “This a diamond of great price and value.” The new farmer was skeptical, but the merchant insisted that he show him where he had found the diamond. They went out on the farm to where the farmer had been watering the donkey, and as the looked around, they found another diamond, and another, and another. It turned out that the whole farm was covered with acres of diamonds. The old farmer had gone off in to Africa seeking for diamonds without ever looking under his feet.

The moral of this story was that the old farmer didn’t realize that diamonds don’t look like diamonds in their rough form. They simply look like a rock to an uneducated eye. A diamond must be cut, faceted, and polished before it looks like the kind of diamond that is in the stores.

Likewise, your “acres of diamonds” probably lie right under your own feet, but they are usually disguised as hard work, for opportunities come dressed in work clothes. Your acres of diamonds probably lie in your own talents, interests, education, martial arts, schools, city or contacts. They probably lie right under your own feet if you’ll take the time to recognize them and go to work on them.