“If you aim at nothing, you will surely hit it” – Unknown
There are many reasons why people fail to reach their goals. The most profound of these reasons is a lack of focus. Without focus, your effort to move towards your goals and achieve them gets diluted with other seemingly important activities, and soon you find yourself with the rest of the crowd being extremely busy, but failing to achieve anything in terms of personal goals.
How often do people complain that after all their toil and effort they still end up with nothing to show for it? However, upon asking them what their goals are, they cannot tell. Isn’t this one of the greatest ironies in life: that people spend their lives working hard, and still fail to reach their dreams?
If you do not have specific goals you live for, you will typically have little to show for your life. One of the key differentiating factors between highly successful people and the ordinary Joe Blog is this; Highly Successful People have clearly defined goals they aim for, and they focus their energy and recourses at achieving those goals. If you have nothing to aim for, you will easily fall into idleness, going through the motions of everyday life and never experience the profound results that the Power of Focus can deliver for you.
Lack of focus is a characteristic of a drifter, someone who moves from one venture to another without sticking it out long enough to build for himself a base for success. Once you have laid down a solid base for success through the Discipline of Focus, you are in a much better position to repeat that pattern and start to live from victory to victory, rather than from day to day.
Just ponder for a moment; How busy are you at this point in your life? Are these activities bringing you any closer to you personal goals and objectives? What are your goals and objectives? Isn’t this an indication of how distracted you are? This in turn explains why you fail to move from victory to victory.
Without focus you will soon end up being involved with a myriad of activities that fill up your time and drain your energy, but that do not bring you any closer to your goals.
How do you master the Discipline of Focus?
- Know what you want – what drives your passion.
- Have a clear vision of your goal – clarity is crucial.
- Write down your goals in specific terms as well as a due date.
- Have a plan of action that will bring you to the achievement of this goal.
- Get yourself motivated to work this plan.
- Continuously measure your progress – Stay focussed.
- Continuously remind yourself of your motive – Remain passionate.
- Master the discipline of tenacity – see it through to the end and celebrate your victory.
Barnum & Bailey stated that when a man’s undivided attention is centred on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen different subjects at once.
The Discipline of Focus will give you an edge over the rest of the crowd in the sense that it removes distracting clutter that dilutes your efforts, consume your time and drain your energy. It provides a measure of priority that prevents you from getting trapped in activities that does not contribute towards the achievement of your personal goals. It further enables you to channel your time, energy and skills in order to intensify your efforts to break out of you comfort zone and move you into action. And ultimately it enables you to stick to your objective until it’s done.
The Discipline of Focus is crucial in order to stay focused on your goal plan until you succeed. Now go, do life!