How to Focus Your Life with Goals?
Life can sometimes be overwhelming. Without a clear direction, you will most likely wander around the planet in a helpless state.
You will not know what to do or when to do it. You’ll almost follow through with a million dollar idea.
You’ll almost do everything you ever wanted to do. However, this is definitely no way to live. Luckily there is another way, a much better way, in fact.
In order to live the life you choose, there must be structure. Your life must have ordered if you want to succeed. The best way that has been proven to work is through the use of goal setting.
Without a goal, you will be unhappy and live an unfulfilled life. With a goal, you will zero in on exactly what you want. You will be happier and more fulfilled.
Did you know that only about three out of every 100 people ever actually decide on their goal?
Many people go through life without any clear direction and they get exactly what they prepare for.
They may say, “I wish I could buy that car.” This is quite different than setting a goal to by the car by a certain date.
One method will get you the car and the other one will leave you standing outside the dealership window crying.
Which one would you rather use?
Is it any wonder that such a small percentage of the world’s population controls a vast majority of the wealth? This minority is the goal-setters of the world. They ask for what they want and then they receive it.
How can you begin to set a goal?
There are a few criteria that must be followed. First of all the goal must be clearly defined.
You can’t say, “I want a new car”. You must say “I want a brand new black Mercedes with tinted windows and chrome 20” rims.”
The picture must be absolutely crystal clear in your mind.
Next, you must give yourself a time limit. If you never nail yourself down to a time limit, you will probably never achieve the goal.
You must be held accountable. You must also believe that you can get it. Without belief, nothing is possible.
Lastly, you must make an irrevocable commitment that you will achieve the goal. There is no turning back. If you change your mind at every obstacle, you will never get what you want.
Make up your mind and go for it. What have you got to lose?
Do You Need Focus To Achieve Your Goals Faster?
Let me ask you another question
What is the shortest distance between two points?
This isn’t a trick, the answers very simple yes it’s one that you were taught at school
…A straight line!
So what does this have to do with you achieving your dreams in the shortest possible time, before they fade away and you lose sight of them?
Simple, you need to be traveling straight towards them at all times. That way you’ll get there as quickly as you can.
So why don’t you always head straight in the direction of your goals, why doesn’t everyone always do that?
There are lots of reasons why people don’t always head towards their goals. Maybe they make excuses like:
“I just don’t have the energy”
“My cat/dog/goldfish was ill”
“I was too busy” (watching the television…)
“I was going to but my friend/distant aunt/uncle/cousin phoned”
“I had other things on my mind”
Or sometimes they get confused. There are just too many options to choose from.
Or they actually start doing something and following a path and then some new fad comes along and they switch to that and then the next one and the next…
In the end, they run around in circles getting nowhere. So many people flit around from idea to idea never accomplishing anything.
Or maybe they just over-complicate things, adding lots of extra steps to get from where they are to where they want to be.
How many of these things have you done? Go on be honest…
Occasionally there are things that just can’t be avoided – major dramas, serious illnesses and accidents and these will demand your attention, slow you down for a while.
But so often people let these events stop them completely.
None of these things have to happen. They are choices. We let ourselves get distracted.
Whatever your favorite form of distraction the result is that you lose sight of your goals and you waste your time and energy getting nowhere.
Until eventually discouraged and disheartened you give up ever trying to reach that goal.
The Habit that can Save the Day
So how can you avoid the pitfalls of distraction?
There’s one very important mental habit that can make a difference, one learned by all successful people in all walks of life – business, the sciences, the arts….
FOCUS
Focus your mind and your energy on your goals. Don’t let problems and distractions get in your way. Remember what you focus on is what you get.
If you choose to focus on distractions then you’ll get nowhere. If you choose to focus on your goals, then you will get there.
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Focus is a habit that you should practice daily.
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Take time every day to remind yourself where it is you want to go.
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Have a well thought out a plan that clearly states where you want to go and how you are going to get there – make it believable so that you don’t feel tempted to change horses mid-stream.
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Everyday plan the time you are going to use that day. Make sure you know when you are going to do the things you must do to get you moving forward that day.
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If distractions do come up, pause, take a deep breath. Remind yourself about your plan. Ask yourself does this thing help me or hinder me? Only do the things that help you.
Use the Right Tools
If you aren’t in the habit of focus it can be very difficult to do. You will need to work to change your habits.
Remember there are lots of tools out there that can help you to improve your focus.
For example writing a simple “to-do” list every day helps a lot of people. If this isn’t enough there are a lot of personal development tools you can find to help you focus better. Find some tools that work for you and start using them.
How to Focus on Your Goals?
Focus is the single most important factor that will determine whether your dreams come true or not. Depending on what your dreams are, there are so many rivers to cross.
Some hurdles look quite formidable, and a lot of folks give up at the first sign of a setback.
Focus helps you put your act together. It helps you mobilize your resources and channel them in one direction. That way, you make progress consistently in the direction of your goal or milestones.
Imagine the lamps in the front of your car. Most models use the same size and bulb and wattage. What makes a full beam is a focus. Driving on a dark road at midnight, you can see up to a kilometer ahead.
If the beam is focused further, it can generate heat. Focused further still, it cut through some materials. That is the power of focus.
To fulfill your dreams, you have to break it down into actionable segments, goals. Fulfilling the dream involves achieving the goals that make up the dream. Focus enables you to meet your goals.
Without focus, you become distracted. You lose direction. Your priorities get messed up. You start to look in different directions.
This may involve beginning other projects when the one at hand has not been pursued to a logical conclusion.
The cycle continues, and the net effect is that you litter the landscape with abandoned projects. If you consider the time, energy and resources committed to these abandoned projects, put together and focused on one project, results would have been achieved.
Keep your eyes where you are going, and you will get there. Keep your eyes where you are, and you will get lost.
Have you ever wondered what the difference between a magnet and a nail is? They are both made of carbon steel. It is in its molecular structure. Each has a north and south polarity.
In the magnet, all the molecules are in perfect alignment, all north poles pointing in one direction (to make the north pole) and all south poles pointing in the opposite direction (to make the south pole).
This is what accumulates to constitute the magnetic force.
In the nail, the alignment is haphazard. They point in all directions. The net effect is that the electromagnetic forces cancel themselves and the resultant magnetic force is nil.
If you bring a nail within the magnetic field of a magnet, it sucks it in. While still attached to the magnet, the nail becomes a magnet too, and can magnet other metals.
What happens is the magnetic force of the magnet forces the molecules in the nail to put its act together and line up in one direction. If you remove the nail, its molecular array returns to its former state, and it becomes a non-magnet one more time.
The magnet is a focused guy. He pulls its resources together and achieves. The nail is a confused guy. He deploys its resources in all directions, jumps from project to project and cancels out whatever progress he would have made.
As a shrewd manager of your time, energy and resources you need to plan and focus. You may have a thousand ideas. Create an idea bank in your computer and store them for safekeeping. Each idea has its time.
Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. If you run before time, you wear yourself out and add your idea to your database of abandoned projects. Instead of the idea motivating you, it now becomes a source of discouragement.
Each well-run army knows its strategic strengths, and how many theaters of war it can prosecute simultaneously. If it overstretches itself, it sets itself up for defeat.
It may be time step back to review your current ongoing projects. Take a second look at your short term and long term goals.
Do you still believe in your dream? If so, look at projects that are on the critical path to the fulfillment of your dream.
Suspend projects that distract you from getting to where you are headed. If all your ongoing projects are relevant, assign priorities to them, continue with the most critical, and keep the others in view. Pursue one project to its logical conclusion.
It may not necessarily mean staying permanently on one project. You can push it to a stage that it becomes self-sustaining or delegate-able to others, then delegate and move on. It will continue to thrive, as you break new grounds.
Also, you can take on other projects, if and only if they do not distract you, or slow down your primary thrust.
It does not make sense to complain that you don’t have enough time to do the things you need to do, simply because you got your life cluttered with so many things that are nice, but not absolutely necessary.
It is great to start. Most folks don’t. But starting alone is not enough. Finish what you start. The laurel belongs to those who finish, not to starters.
The end of the matter is better than the beginning thereof. If you remain focused long enough, you will get to the finish line.
Some of the focus activities that you can use:
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Write down your goal and review it frequently. Immerse yourself in it.
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Surround yourself with associate items, pictures, smells, feels, and/or tastes.
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Think as if it’s on layaway, it’s in the bank, and confidently pay the price.
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Create future references by visualizing you have received them already.
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Talk about them all the time, and record my own enthusiastic voice to listen to.
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Control your focus by crowding out the negative, overwhelming it with positive.
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Break down your actions to the ridiculously simple, be specific.
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Committed to yourself, your wife, and everyone you cared about. (built up importance)
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Set your mind to ‘win’, there is no other option to consider.
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Have faith that this will happen, use the peak to peek principle.
One focus to success. Build momentum in all things instead of a distraction. It is all about focus. You can make this work for you too.
The real question to ask yourself is this:
How can I take these 10 ‘focus’ strategies, use them as a checklist of sorts, apply them to my most important goal, make them work for me, and enjoy the process?
Well, how can you? And will you? You Can Do It! Go for it!