BANG! Goes the sound of a hammer hitting the steel against the anvil. The crack of steel creates the ringing resonance in the ears. The hammer falls again, bang, and again, bang! I can see the corded muscles in the forearm of the blacksmith. The shop is hot. The steel glows red, another hammer blows against steel and the anvil. The blacksmith has a look of grim determination on his face as he lifts the hammer again, BANG! The hot steel will not yield. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Wait, did I just see the steel flinch? The blacksmith’s eyes remain focused, his head slightly tilted down and the hammer blows continue to rain down upon the steel. You see, what is vital to this process is actually what the steel is being molded by, the anvil. The anvil is the immovable object that the irresistible force expends itself upon with the piece of steel as the ambassador. The anvil will not bend and the hammer will not cease falling so the steel must mold itself to the anvil. The anvil and hammer are vital to the bending of the steel.
This visual continues to our own practices of what we are committed to bringing into existence. The steel is our everyday existence, our old habits, our false sense of self. The hammer is our ability to persist no matter what and the anvil is the harbinger of our design.
It is in the interaction of these three elements that begin the honing. I use the anvil analogy because it is synonymous with persistence.
It is not complicated but continuing to pound steel against an anvil when you are tired, bored or don’t feel like it is not easy. The question becomes, what is your anvil? What are you trying to mold your world around? What are the actions you need to take consistently that will bring your design into existence? The anvil will set you free.
Your anvil does not have to be intricate. For example, one of my clients wants to design his business around golf and fishing for the very simple reason that he enjoys those activities. He was enlightened through coaching that a person will do more of the things that he likes to do and avoid the things he does not want to do. He decided to stack his deck to win and allow fishing and golf to be his major prospecting tools instead of referral exchange clubs and the Chamber of Commerce. There is nothing wrong with those activities, it’s just that my client hates doing them. He also has a goal of gathering 100 million dollars in assets as an independent financial advisor. The anvil that he chose to mold everything around is 8 appointments per week, one fishing and one golf outing per week. He has discovered that if he gets all of his appointments in on M,T,W that frees up Thursday and Friday to golf and fish. But wait, you are likely asking ‘when does he have the time to do all the paperwork and the follow up?’ That is the beauty of the Anvil Project. It forces the business to adapt. It forces the steel to bend. He has had to update his technology, systems and structures to support him being out of the office for the majority of the week. The anvil has forced his assistant to step up her game. It is moving into the beautiful orchestration of design. Most of us are under the illusion that we cannot bend steel and that we must deal with the slag that is handed to us: get up go to work, eat, sleep, repeat the cycle. I submit that is not true. One just needs to be aware of what they want to create and choose the anvil that they will mold the steel to, i.e. their business. My client is very clear on what he wants to create from working with me. He wants a summer house at the beach but he also wants to enjoy the process of earning it. Too many of us equate hard work to suffering, hence the reason why many people do not achieve their goals. They don’t want to grind it out. As I have written about many times before imagine jumping out of bed every morning and putting your face to a grindstone? Viscerally feel what it would be like to have a rock spinning at 100’s of miles an hour now open wide and place your teeth against it! Ouch! How many days could you do that in a row? Embrace the honing, not the grinding and you will create a business by design!
