The Power of Focus to Reach Your Goals

Finding
One
Center
Until
Success

I just created this acronym to give you a visual of what focus means. How often do you find yourself multi-tasking, doing several things at once only to find nothing gets completed? How many times have you set a bunch of goals, planned some action steps, only to get overwhelmed and not achieve any of them?

FOCUS means one thing at a time. Imagine a circus performer spinning 5 plates on 5 sticks. He has to get the first one spinning successfully before he can start spinning plate #2. And when that’s spinning he can tackle #3 and so on. He must focus on one task at a time until that is completed before he moves on the next task.

There are plenty of reasons you may not be using the power of focus to reach your goals. And there are as many reasons why you would be more successful if you did use it. It’s easy to get distracted from the task at hand any minute of the day. I surely know that one well. Maybe you’re writing an article for your business and you hear the ding of an email coming in and you just have to see who it is. And that email takes you off into cyberspace to see a website or a product offer, and before you know it, 30 minutes have flown by.

Or the phone rings and it’s a friend or family member with a challenge, and you feel you should take some time to help them out. Sixty minutes later, and your article is still undone. Our lives are complex and multi-faceted, however, if achieving goals is important to you, consider using the power of focus.

Focus is like a laser beam. It cuts to the heart of the matter, shows you what you need to do, and keeps you at the task until it’s done. How can you become more focused and therefore more productive and successful in reaching your goals? Here are some tips:

1. Choose one goal at a time. Maybe you have several goals you are working on. Dedicate time to focus on one at a time until you have made some progress and see some results. You don’t want to overload yourself with 10 action steps on 10 goals. Take one goal and maybe 3 action steps, and set a period of a few weeks to focus on just that.

2. Learn to avoid distractions. Know in advance what kinds of distractions usually take you away from your focus and plan in advance how you will handle them. You can turn off the ringer on your phone for a period of time. You can set certain times of the day, maybe 9am and 6pm when you will read your emails. And tell family and friends, no phone calls during work hours.

3. Celebrate your successes. If you know you will take time to enjoy the fruits of your labor when you’ve reached a point of feeling you’ve achieved what you set out to accomplish, you’ll be more likely to focus and stick with the action steps until completion.

4. Get support. Remember there are lots of ways to get support to stay focused. Work with friends who have similar goals, a mentor, or a life coach.

Thanks to Widows Quest for including this article in the Carnival of Positive Thinking, to FitBuff.com for featuring this post in the Total Mind and Body Fitness Carnival, to ImprovedLife.ca for publishing this article in the Carnival of Improving Life, to Your Finish Rich Plan for inclusion in the Rich Life Carnival, to Tip Diva for inclusion in the Carnival of Tips, and to 24 Hour Paradigm for featuring this post in the Day Shifting and Paradigm Carnival.

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