The Importance of Finding Your Focus
Stay focused on your goals.
In the spin of life, it becomes easy to confuse goals with wants. “I want to be rich. I want to be healthy. I want to be happy.” Those are good things to desire, but they are not goals. Being rich, healthy, or happy are conditions that you want to experience in your life. They are not goals. There is significance when you find your focus.
What ground do you need to be standing on before you’ll feel that goal come to fruition? Or, what things have to occur in your life before you know you’ve gotten there?
Maybe that thing goes beyond money and spreads across your entire life. What is richness? Couldn’t that include feeling happy or healthy? Of course. It could be the experience of feeling loved or confident… or loving others.
Richness is living life to the full.
Given that:
- What things or conditions bring you richness?
- What actions do you need to take?
- Where should you place your focus?
Life gets busy, right? And the busyness of life brings distraction. Here’s an example: You go online, check your social media account to see what’s happening in the world with your connections, and then there’s some cute little animal video. You click to watch it… “Oh, that was cute” and BOOM! The next video started. You find yourself drawn in, watch it, and then the next one starts… and the next one… and the next one. Before you realize it, you let go of your focus and 15–20 minutes of your life disappeared.
Acknowledge Error, Then Adjust
The same is true with career or business choices. You begin with a certain level of excitement about reaching your future goals. Perhaps a little nervous, but hopeful. Then some disappointment surfaces. What happens next is essential to your results.
Many people place ownership of the disappointment upon themselves and derail their progress. In situations where you make an error, that’s not the time to beat yourself up and fill yourself with negative self talk.
We are all capable of making errors or poor business choices, but this is not the time to quit.
It’s time to focus.
Acknowledge the error and look at the situation. Identify things that worked, and those that didn’t. What could be different and how? Specifically, what needs improvement? What things take you off your path to reach your goals?
If something offsets you from the road of achieving your goal, refocus.
As a living, breathing and moving human being, you have the opportunity to live dynamically. Don’t allow yourself to remain locked in place, doing the same things day after day. There’s value in a personal feedback loop. Wherever you are in your life with personal goals, business, career, or the relationships with those around you, take time for personal focus.
- What’s working?
- What’s not?
- What needs adjustment?
Life is like writing. Sometimes we can get too close to it and we miss the little “edits” necessary to reach a successful story. Don’t be afraid to ask a trusted person in your circle to share their perspectives. They may or may not be correct. Remember, it is their viewpoint. Yet hearing that perspective gives you the advantage of having something to consider as you focus on your path forward.
How Focus Brought Change in My Business
Years ago, I started a therapy business and began helping women carrying the effects of long-term abuse. Through those sessions, we minimized the negative emotional triggers that disrupted their daily lives. It was always a joy to watch women that arrived scared and emotional, transition to confident, happy people. I’m happy to say that all of them saw levels of success. Yet, some moved there faster than others. I recall a couple of women that returned to abusive environments where their successes were chipped away by their abusers.
I realize I don’t own their home environment. It’s my belief that ethically, I cannot tell them to leave those situations. Family dynamics and economic factors often played a large part in their departure toward a better life. Those with the greatest transformation were the ones that cut the ties between themselves and their abuser.
What was Missing?
Each person’s situation had similarities, yet also many differences. I kept asking myself, “What’s missing? In a sense, I was beating myself up looking for an answer. Then, after taking time to focus on each of the cases, I realized that those women with the greatest positive transformations were goal oriented. They were fully aware that their situation was unhealthy, but they also had an idea of what they wanted their life to look like.
Goals
If a person doesn’t aim for a goal, they’ll fall back to the life they once knew. This is what happened with the two women with slower progress. They knew they were in a bad environment, but also without a life plan for success. At that time, I was working on confidence and emotional triggers.
When I incorporated goal-setting and action-planning into the sessions, I began to see even greater successes than previously. Many of these women have new careers, or achieved higher levels; some are business owners and another is writing a book.
The Reason for This Story
I tell this story because our response to challenge shouldn’t be failure, but focus. What is the goal and how do we get there? In my business, I didn’t make a lot of changes at once. Along the way, I incrementally added steps, then took time to focus on the result. I’ll likely make changes along the way, adding or dropping some things.
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⭐️ About Anthony M. Davis
Anthony M. Davis is a Leadership, Success & Stress Coach, Board Certified Therapist, and Top-100 International Travel Photographer. His free book, “Keys to Your Success” is available now.
