Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Excerpts from my book (week13)

Focus determines the direction and success of any person, group or organization. It is the missing ingredient in many people’s lives and is therefore what separates champions from losers, achievers from failures. As the common saying goes, good girls go to heaven while bad girls go everywhere. This means that people who are focused know where they are going, while the less focused go everywhere.

Predators, like lions, understand the power of focus. Whenever a lion encounters a group of zebras during its hunting expedition, it immediately focuses on one zebra. And during the chase, the lion ignores the other zebras but continues pursuing the one zebra it has chosen. And no matter how fast the zebra may run, the lion continues with its pursuit. The zebra might even seem to be outrunning other zebras but in spite of its efforts, the lion would continue the chase like a missile until it catches its prey. A lion knows that whatever it focuses on, it would eventually get.

So, like a lion, focus on one zebra (projects, tasks and goals) at a time. Pursue one thing at a time. Even though your prey might try to outrun you, stick to it. Let your hunger for success be the fuel that would power you into chasing and finally catching the zebra you have been whole heartedly focusing on. Take note that the greatest asset to success is focus and the greatest distraction that leads to failure is broken focus. You will never achieve anything, if you keep on chasing everything. My mother in-law and my wife have this habit of trying to do a lot of things at a go, and what happens is that they always struggle to finish what they have started. One thing about them is that they have this mentality of wanting to see things done. Their biggest challenge is that they want to chase many zebras at a time. What has happened is that they have always battled without success even to catch one zebra. Their situation is clearly explained in a Zambian proverb which says, he who paddles two canoes, sinks. So, in trying to help them, I told my wife that they need to adopt the attitude of a post stamp and stick to one thing. What I have observed is that success and progress tend to show up when you focus on one goal at a time.

Most of the richest people, who have graced this world, learned the principle of being focused. Those who are focused are able to achieve a lot more in life than those who are not focused. By being focused, one would be able to overcome distractions. Focus brings direction and the power to pursue what is desired. Where there is focus, procrastination, confusion, stagnancy and hopelessness disappears and progress and his partner, prosperity, end up appearing on the scene. Focus helps us to concentrate our energy on what needs to be done instead of wasting our resources on things that are of less importance.

A life without focus is full of indecisiveness, distractions and misery. If you are not happy with your life, add the ingredient of focus, and before you know it, you would be empowered to pursue your dreams. What you focus on would become your reality. Employ focus as a driver to your future. Let focus introduce you to progress and prosperity. Allow focus to change the make-up of your life. Those who focus on their dreams become what they desire while those who focus on their limiting environment remain what they despise. Focus is like a physical training instructor who would help you in getting your body into shape. Don’t delay when you have the means to depart by being focused on where you are aspiring to be. Subscribe to the winners’ club and let focus be your access key to the list of successful people. Whatever you focus on whether good or bad, you will end up attracting. If you focus on what you don't like or don't have, you would remain a citizen of what you despise but if you focus your energy on what you want, you would ultimately become a path finder towards your dreams.

I have always wondered why certain people are able to overcome the storms that have destroyed others but after spending some time studying the lives of those who have managed to triumph in spite of their hardships. I discovered that successful people focus on what they are desiring and not what they are going through. They spend their time and effort focusing on the end result of their dreams and not the process of their struggles. They concentrate on solutions and not problems.

This is what the Americans learned from their Russians counterparts during their earlier expeditions to the moon. Both teams of astronauts encountered a problem of taking notes for research purposes while in space because their pens wouldn’t work at zero gravity. The problem was that no ink could flow down to the writing surface. In their bid to solve the problem the Americans spent ten years and more than 12 million dollars in developing a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater and in a temperature ranging from below freezing to over 300 degrees Celsius. And while the Americans were hard at work, the Russians without raising a sweat decided to use a pencil instead. In a nutshell, the Russians saved themselves a fortune by focusing on the solution and not the problem.

It is quite clear that if we learn to focus on where we are going we will not be derailed by our intimidating and discouraging circumstances. It is important to train ourselves to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel and not the dark tunnel that we sometimes find ourselves in, because if we want to win in life, we have to focus our attention on the place of our dreams and desires and not our current journey of hardships and hopelessness. We have to focus on the by-product of our faith and not the wind of our fears.

To sum up my order of discourse, I want you to know that your life will always be shaped by what you focus your attention on. Therefore focus on your dreams and not your struggles, focus on your success and not your failure, focus on your abilities and not your limitations, focus on where you are going and not where you come from, focus on your future and what you have to do to get there and lastly focus on yourself and not what others are doing around you.





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