FOCUS, LOVE, TIME AND THOUGHTS
January is usually the time of year when many people take stock, review the year that’s past and look forward to the year ahead. But why wait until January? You can plan your year any time you want. In this short article I'd like to share with you a few thoughts based on my personal experiences of "consciously steering my ship", instead of being guided by the tides of chance.
I had been setting and not achieving "goals" for over 15 years. It is only in the last 2 years that I feel I now fully understand how this stuff really works. My goal for this newsletter is this: That this time next year, you will reflect back on 2008 and realise that it was your best year yet. That you managed to get more of the things that really matter done in the last 12 months than you did in the last 12 years!
Here are my findings:
1. FOCUS
Make a long list of things you’d like to get done or achieve this year. Then rank them in order. The criteria you use to establish this order is up to you. It might be in order of importance or in order of how excited each one makes you. You decide.
Next choose the top 3 or 4 and forget the rest for this year. If there is one thing I have learnt from my own experience it is that there are only so many projects you can focus on successfully. I still have difficulty implementing this one, because there are so many roles I play (husband, father, instructor etc) and so many things I’d like to achieve in each role.
I have observed that those who succeed in achieving a goal or a project are those who focus most of their attention on it. Thanks to our friend time, there is only so much you can get done in a day.
If you spread your time too thinly across too many projects the main results will be stress and frustration. Any success you achieve with your projects is unlikely to be as comprehensive as you would wish.
2. LOVE
I watched an interview with J.K.Rowling recently(author of the Harry Potter books) and she reinforced something I already knew to be true. She mentioned that she would still be a writer even if the Harry Potter books hadn’t have been successful because she LOVES writing.
I've seen this repeated so many times in successful people. I remember Sifu telling me that he enjoyed what he did so much he didn’t consider it work. Time and time again sustained success is achieved by those who are doing what they love the most.
The question is, what do you love doing? If money, time, other peoples expectations etc were no problem, what would you do?
I have discovered from my own personal experience that "force negates". I can only force myself to take action on something for so long. This is the number one reason why people don’t succeed with their resolutions, projects, goals etc. Because they are not "In love with them".
So what can you do about things you might not be "in love with", but that you know you need to be working on? E.g. becoming a non-smoker, exercising regularly etc. One way is to look at all the benefits of achieving your goal and see if you can fall in love with them. If that doesn’t work, then explore the worst case scenerios of not achieving your goal and see if you can scare yourself into taking action.
Scaring yourself into action is only a fraction above forcing yourself to do something. Especially long term. But research shows that people will do more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure.
Luckily for me I have it is far more enjoyable to be motivated into action by a big juicy carrot than a hard pointy stick! But both work.
There is a tool I use with my students that helps them to get gain clarity and increase their success in achieving their aims and objectives. You can download a copy here.
3. TIME
Time is the great leveller, what's the one thing that a beggar on the street has with the Dalai Lama, Donald Trump, Richard Branson and anyone else you’d care to think of? They each get 24 hours every day.
You get 86 400 seconds a day and what you do with them will determine what you achieve. If you spend hours of each day in activities that do not move you towards the things you say you want, then is it any wonder that you don’t get them?
My Achilles heal in this department is computer games. I don't just like them, I LOVE THEM! I have wasted many, many hours that I will never get back again sat in front of a screen blowing things up, running around and completing levels. And I loved it, until I realised that it was 3am in the morning and I'd just spent 5 hours doing nothing.
Now don't get me wrong. I still play computer games, but now I use them as a reward. If I get the important things done, then I reward myself with an hour of play. If I don't then I don't. Look closely at your life, where do you squander your precious time? Facebook? Television? Surfing the Net? Laying in bed?
The surest way to get more time out of every single day is to spend less of it on non productive endeavours.
4. THOUGHTS
Do you know that thoughts are things? Everything on this planet is made of energy, including your thoughts. Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there. As you read this sentence, the room you are in is full of radio waves, you can't see them, but you can tune in your radio and receive them just the same.
You can think of your thoughts as seeds that you plant in the fertile soil of your incredible mind. If a farmer plants potato seeds he grows potatoes, he cannot grow Roses from potato seeds. It is the same with your thoughts.
If you constantly think negative, shallow, harmful thoughts, you will grow negative, shallow and harmful results. I could talk about this subject for pages and pages, but in a nut shell it works like this: Your predominate thoughts, ultimately create your reality. Whether you want it or not is immaterial. You cannot create good health by focusing on illness and disease, you cannot create wealth by focusing on being poor and you cannot gain glimpses of cosmic reality when your mind is full of impure thought.
So here's the thing – always concentrate your attention on what you want. When you catch yourself thinking about something you don't want (e.g. worrying about your health, wealth, relationships etc), gently steer your thoughts back to the things you want. Right thinking is not easy. I’ll be the first to admit this. But it does get easier with practice.
Now you have your list of projects for the year keep your concentration on them and on how great achieving them feels.
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