How developing a definite chief aim has changed my life

You may have heard the term “definite chief aim” before. Best to my knowledge, it comes from Napoleon Hill.

What is a definite chief aim? It is a singleness of purpose. It is about finding a burning desire, a dream or a goal that propels you to action. Just thinking about it gets you excited.

The Transience of Definite Chief Aims

I don’t know if I’m correct in thinking this way, but I have often thought of chief aims as transient things.

What I mean by that is that it’s good to think about big-picture goals or things you want to accomplish in your lifetime, but those big goals can feel out of reach; especially if you’re starting from scratch. I have found it worthwhile to obsess over smaller goals; things that seem immediately within my grasp.

When I was first introduced to the concept of the chief aim, I was excited out of my mind. There were a lot of things I wanted to see come to pass in my life, but I knew the importance of focusing on one thing until it actually manifested.

I was having trouble financially at the time, so I always thought about being lifted from that financial pressure. I prayed and thought about getting windfalls and checks in the mail, and I imagined my debt being cancelled.

Within a couple of months, I had a phone call. It was someone in the mortgage industry, and they asked me if I had considered refinancing. I knew nothing about refinancing, nor did I know that it was an option.

Long story short I decided to refinance, and my financial pressures were temporarily relieved. It did not happen in the manner I thought it would. But it satisfied my desire at the time. I felt free to focus on a new singular purpose.

One of the important points of this story is that the solution came out of left field. It was not how I imagined the problem getting solved, but it nevertheless gave me the same feelings I was feeding to my subconscious mind through my imagination. When the solution presented itself, I had spent significant time imagining it, such that I had already experienced the feelings of having it before I ever did.