What’s your one right thing? This is your daily message from Chad number 645 and this message is dedicated to the affable Keith Knox.

If he were a country, during the four Olympics he competed in, he would have placed in the top ten. His has 23 gold medals and 28 Olympic medals in total. To put that in perspective the next highest medal winner has 9. However, he had a teacher who told him he would never amount to anything because of his inability to concentrate. However, his coach, Bob Bowman, has said his ability to focus always amazed him and was his strongest attribute. What changed? What was it that created Michael Phelps into the most decorated Olympian of all time? Phelps found his one right thing. 

When you find your one right thing, it will liberate you from monitoring everything. For Phelps, it was the swimming pool. He would spend up to six hours a day in it. “Channeling his energy is one of his greatest strengths,” said Bowman. Phelps’s protocol became simple: every day in the water. He practiced every day for almost a decade through his teenage years and the Bejing Olympics. His distractions all but disappeared because he found his one right thing. Parameters can be the very thing that liberates you from distraction.

What if you channeled your attention into one right thing? What kind of freedom would you enjoy? Email me at fromchadsmith@gmail.com. You can read this transcript and hundreds of others at fromchad.com.