Focus on Today for Success Next Year

#1: Reduce Distractions

We always look for what we can add to our lives when we are trying to make improvements. How often do we think about what’s going to need to be cut out of our lives so we can achieve success?

“We become our habits.”

We all look forward to our future and want to create more value for ourselves and for our children. If one watches the news (I don’t) or pays attention to the culture around us (I do but I don’t let it define me), we can grow complacent with our dreams. It can become easy to believe that we will never have what it takes to become successful. Being well-connected, having ample finances to fund our business growth, or top-tier education may seem crucial for reaching success in business. However, anything that we are looking to achieve can be gained through smart development of our skills and going out of our comfort zone. We can become well-connected and meet new people. We can develop trust and reputation in our communities, both local and online.

You can design your future by taking action in the present. -Andrew Carpenter

If we fill our days with senseless acts of consumerism, we are simply going to be entertaining ourselves. That’s not to say that we can never watch television shows. It’s not even so much about the impact cognitively or financially, although those are factors to consider. It’s the time that really matters here. Rather than looking at how we can cram more into our days, why not look at how we can re-position our schedules, build new habits, and become as comfortable as possible with doing what we need to succeed?

A person that begins going to the gym or running is probably not going to enjoy it as much the first day as they will on the hundredth day if they stick with it. Once they start seeing their progress and getting into shape, you’re naturally going to want to continue the exercise. We need to start looking at our business pursuits more like a practice or an exercise than a set goal that we are trying to achieve. Big wins don’t come in one fell swoop. Large bears do not go down with one shot. And basketball games aren’t one with one shot either. These things take momentum and consistency.

It’s time that we start looking at what we can remove from our attitudes and from our days.

We can either use the things we need to develop as excuses for why we can’t grow our wealth and success or we can use them as guidelines for how we will develop ourselves until we reach our mission. Once you’re on the launchpad of success, you may see delays but you are still going to take off.

Productivity is never an accident. It is always a result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. -Paul J. Meyer

Most of life is preparation. We are constantly positioning ourselves and conditioning ourselves. We are working with our inner potentials for creativity and possibility. A lot of what’s necessary for success is gained through practice and developing habits through self-discipline. We must learn to manage ourselves and our time.

I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky. -Oprah Winfrey

#2 Look and Move Forward with Full Responsibility for my Attention, Thoughts, and Actions.

There is a big difference between being busy and being productive. The balance between practicing our craft and just simply being busy without being productive is not always clear. I just know that you can feel when you are putting your heart into the process and you have clearly-defined goals about how you want your business to improve your and others’ lives.

It’s great to have goals and benchmark our progress towards our goals — long and short-term. I think it’s important to have several weekly and daily goals that we can be sure we accomplish so we can make sure we’re on track with our overall process.

Having these daily micro-goals and weekly short-term goals helps us develop daily rituals and processes that keep us on track. When you focus on the actual action and detail of your everyday work, you’ll be able to focus on the little micro-gears in the machine of your success. This is vital because you need to be able to tune and tweak this process based on short-term feedback loops. Whether you’re practicing writing everyday or designing webpages or drawing, as you hone your skills, you’ll find ways to increase the quality of your work.

The present moment is where focus happens.

Focus is probably the hardest thing to get right for creatives. It’s a unique combination of attention that you hold in place and a flow of action known as a flow-state. It’s the secret behind every great creative person or athlete. It’s about being in the moment and present with the work you’re doing. You can see the pieces coming together and yet you’re able to hold your focus so you don’t become distracted or overwhelmed by the large amounts of data coming through your conscious awareness.

Tell yourself:

Focus is like a muscle and each day, as I focus, I will become able to have laser-like focus.

One thing I’ve learned helps is to focus on doing the important things earlier in the day and revisit it everyday if it’s a daily practice. You can also revisit it each day later in the afternoon or evening but I think it’s important that make sure to channel your attention and focus early in the day so you start the day with a good habit/practice. Otherwise you’re just setting the day up for ‘whatever happens happens.’

Everything you do in the morning sets the context for the rest of the day.

Usually the important things are the things that make you feel uncomfortable.

Getting into a flow-state can feel good but since it requires us to make some internal mental and emotional investments in the present moment, that can feel a bit uncomfortable if we’re not used to it.

The Present Moment is where Focus happens.

Ask yourself: “If I could do only one thing, which task WOULD I choose?”

Make a conscious decision (and a daily habit) to block out at least 2 hours each calendar day to do the 1 Critical task. (no interruptions)

Effective Goal Setting:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Action-Oriented
• Realistic
• Time-Stamped

Your goals should not be the focus. Doing the goal should be the focus.

Be a synthesizer. ‘Synthesize’ is defined as: “ combine (a number of things) into a coherent whole.” Sometimes people expect a great sound to come from the machine right away without first developing the individual tunes and then working everyday to find a process of recombining them and perfecting the effects.

Success is about all the little layers and parts that get stacked and mixed on top of each other.

#3. Perception Creates your Reality

It may sound counter-intuitive to someone that wants to ‘change the world’ or ‘make it big in business’ but it’s actually important to foster a state of gratitude and contentment in some form and fashion in our current life. If we’re constantly looking outside of ourselves, even if it’s at our future, without building a successful mindset and emotional state in our present attitude, then it’s like we’re telling ourselves that we’re not yet good enough to make these achievements. Or if we are looking at these far-off goals without developing the daily practices and rituals that will build-up into bigger successes and wins, it’s like we’re trying to reinvent a wheel without spokes or create a clock without gears. We can’t forget about the small inner pieces hidden behind the scenes of success.

Success is a state of mind.

Video on how to change your mental state by Tony Robbins

How to Improve your state:

• Smile
• Water
• Exercise
• Gratitude
• Sunlight
• Journal
• Envision positive inward motivation
• Start with the most uncomfortable task

If you want to truly change the results you are getting, you have to break out of old mental routines and old habits that aren’t serving you and aren’t serving others. The beautiful thing about making micro-goals and daily practices an important part of your creative or professional lifestyle is that you are able to see the fruits of your effort each and everyday and that is its own reward. Even if you don’t immediately see monetary results or increased connections with people, you are gaining valuable insights into how you work, the art of your profession, and your gaining the valuable experience you’re going to need for your success.

Keep your eye on today. Keep your eye on the mirror. Keep your mind on the inward things. You do want to look for results outwardly but those are not always the most motivating for increasing the quality of your output. If you really want to be motivated, you need to develop daily practices. Motivation is based on habit and so you may have to tweak your “why.” Winning today leads to the championship competition later. You can think about the championship but focus on today’s game.

Random fact: The word “mind” connotes “to pay attention to.” You could be highly-educated, intelligent, and creative but if you cannot pay attention then your results and interactions are going to be analogous to looking at a computer’s output through a projector with a mis-adjusted focus.

If you can’t see all that beautiful data and creativity to its fruition, what benefit does it have for you or anybody else? External focus is often connected with inward focus as well…everything in our mind will potentially connect more accurately and completely if we are teaching ourselves to use Dopamine (the reward neurotransmitter) to be tied into the everyday activities that actually build the foundations for our success.

You see — everybody’s capable of greatness. We can adapt and improve ourselves and accomplish so much if we put our mind to the task. Typically those who fail did not reach their goals because they were trying to do too many things at once. Creating something original requires original focus.

Your vision for the future is nothing without a vision for today.

Cheers to Optimization!!

If you would like to see more of my work, you can visit my Optimal Human Performance site at UHealingArts.com

Being Persistently ADAPTIVE (You are travelling THROUGH the Environment)

When on a journey of expansion or moving into new paradigms of being, we can get get tunnel vision and feel like the vision we are working to transform into existence is going in slow-motion. Those of us who identify as Type A personality can probably identify with the feeling that we are the odd one going against a lot of societal pressures and cultural norms. This is why we have to be independently strong and really believe in the vision we have for ourselves number one before anything else. We need ways of being personally validated about what we believe and being personally stabilized and persistent.

It can be an easy mistake to mix our business and culture-changing ideals with our personal sense of well-being and value as a human being. We may begin to feel as though we are victim to the cycles of business and culture which is actually far more "friendly" to our personal development process and attitude than we may realize. By friendly, I mean that the way that we experience the world and the way the world experiences us...is very dependent upon how we are living out our pattern. If we begin to believe that we should be owed more by others and the world then we are going to start placing the emphasis of action on others and upon the environment. We must take ownership of our actions and the results we get.

The wise course of action is to continually practice the art and sciences that we know are personally developing oneself as a human being on all levels of being including our spiritual self-development. The way we interface and interact with the development of our dreams and aspirations is highly-important. Many people have been close to achieving success and given up on their dreams shortly before they would have brought them to life.

Being able and willing to adapt in order to remain strong (or grow stronger and wiser) is one main key I believe is crucial to the long success game. Sometimes we feel like we just have to be more persistent. But if persistence morphs into negativity about the current state of things then it is morphing into a "give-me attitude" instead of a gratefulness attitude and positive work ethic.

Be like this water droplet that can flow as water and also refract light and shape our environment so strongly as water does. Also notice how water can cling together as a stream and also break off into a smaller bead drop and flow across a surface.

Water and light both follow cycles as well on an atmospheric, physics and biologic level which is another reason why these are both ideal analogies for how a person should ideally adapt throughout the process of creating business success in their lives and their community.

A person must have core-values and integrity and for this to exist within a person, they must believe in themselves and their value in whatever shape they take as a person. If they believe they are only valuable if they are acting in a certain capacity or way, they can become stubbornly set on a rigid view of how their life should be playing out. And that's following a script that is almost surely doomed to failure. Our actions and emotional/mental strategies should never be conditioned (or contingent) on such a fragile, singular result.

The essence of any creative pursuit is being able to see the big picture. I will add to this metaphor. It is being able to see the big, MOVING picture and being able to see it from multiple angles and perspectives. But what about when you can't? How do you move and create within a landscape when you are using imperfect maps? You have to be able to adapt to streams of information and to your surroundings as they emerge to you and be able to extrapolate extra data from limited, incomplete patterns. It also helps when you realize that preparedness is one of the greatest keys to the Universe.

We are constantly co-creating the conditions for our success. We are the creators of our lifestyle. The story we write and the movie we create is dependent upon us believing in our innate value and the value we transform in the world around us.

Launching out into the Creative Flow

There is the meme of the starving artists..those who are fanatical about creating for the sake of interacting with the creative forces, working with the beauty of natural archetypes and design patterns and such. And these are people who love to generate delight in those who view their artistry. They themselves are in love with their work. They are perhaps more in love with their work than any monetary gain. And yet the greatest business successes take advantage of the principles of artistry and delighting their customers.

When a businessperson truly harnesses the creative force within themselves and takes careful notice of the needs and desires of their target demographic..they become responsible for delivering something almost as sacred and natural as a swift summer rain at the peak of growing season. For their customers, they become the perfect answer, the perfect solution. They find the niche in the market space and they bring an energy to that space that wasn't there before.

Successful people live their personal lives this way. Whether they are conscious of it or not, they are in a kind of alignment with the forces of influence surrounding their lives and in their environment. They aren't playing victim games. The successful person sees opportunity where others would see nothing.

The successful person brings these seething forces of power and furls them into twisting vortexes of positive pulsating energy that becomes ready to burst forth with its seed and deliver value to their company and ultimately to society. And in return, as almost a natural law, there is the potential for profits to return to the creator of this value.

In fact, the successful value-creator or entrepreneur is more than a creative or a creator. They are really orchestrating these creative forces and designing larger flows of effect (or power) out of the combination and recombination of multiple smaller flows. The word "success" itself has its meaning rooted in going from one accomplishment to the next which is actually a related concept. But the true point of value here is that a value-creating individual is one who becomes adept in satisfying the needs of the many but doing so with a more generalized or efficient design pattern which is repeatable and robust.

What they are really doing is seeing the potential for transformation. The key to success is being able to have a vision for what you'd like but simultaneously being able to see past certain rigid mindsets and being able to flow "like water" around apparent obstacles. Being able to shift the mind and shift your actions..you..and your business..become unstoppable.

It's about the structure. It's about the structure but it's not. There's a careful tension..a careful balance of power that must be observed and maintained in balance and harmony. A certain amount of chaos and yet some amount of containment of that chaos. Some semblance of narrative, of routine, some absolutes. But even these are changeable.

The important thing is recognizing failure when it's there and yet not succumbing to its continuation. For that's exactly what seems like the default when you are in a failure mode, doesn't it? You're at the point where it feels like there's no return to basics. You feel invested in the way you've been looking at the problem or the goal or whatever it is that you're focusing your energy on. And it feels like if only you just put more energy into the thing you've been trying to get working that maybe you will hit success.

And this is why we need metrics..so we can see the truth of our position. If we have not map of what it means to be successful or now vision of what we are doing, we will become isolated in our ways of working and wrapped in the fears of loss..and being lost. Only when we create for ourself the surrounding vortex of power that we can come to depend upon as reckoning device..we will know high amounts of success.

It's important to have imagery in our mind to guide our way of thinking and our actions. The energy we surround ourselves with is like the clouds that cling to topographic features like mountains or along lakes and then precipitate our their various action potentials: rain, snow, thunder, lighting..Likewise, the man or woman can be surrounded with emotions that take him or her to the depth or height of his or her choice. Being persistent to send out value to your workspace and into the market and building connections of value..with sincere close friends, with potential customers, with other businesses that may tie in somehow with your field of choice..these are avenues--streams--pathways--by which you can channel a dynamic flow of energy. A stagnant energy doesn't have the capacity to create value. A stagnant energy cannot bring you a return on value delivery because it lacks the deliver and lacks the return.

There's a very real level of passion that must be kept in constant motion and yet be under a kind of control or containment. For each person, each business..this will be a different synthesis, a unique formula for your success. Every successful person and business goes through stages and lifecycles where the conditions for success change and the metrics change. If you run into failure, sometimes you need to find new ways of thinking and working.

Unlock your success. I hope this encourages you.

P.S. It's not all about the perfect process, perfect grammar, or a perfected synthesis or discovery of ideas that you can somehow package into the "one right answer" or "the way." It's also about the delivery of value. The sun comes up many different ways. The clouds rain many kinds of drops. And there are lots of different kinds of snowflakes. Make your successful process repeatable but not frozen.