Dear Destiny Friends,

One quality that is synonymous with anyone who has attained a level of “success” is focus. It’s an indisputable fact that every great man/woman that has ever been celebrated on planet earth was focused on their craft. You cannot achieve success without being focused. Focus is critical for any progressive being just like air is necessary for human beings to stay alive.

In the journey of life, there’s nothing like accidental success. Nobody storms into success; they strategically plan for it. One of the hardest things to do in life is to stay focused amidst many things seeking our attention and trying to distract us from the big picture. To succeed in life, you must have a mental picture of the kind of life you want to live. You must have clarity in life and most importantly you must be determined and disciplined to work on your goals and vision by being focused.

As you progress in life, you’ll soon come to realize that you don’t need crowds to succeed, all you need is the right people who share the same understanding and attitude to life with you. This is because, the top is scanty, but the bottom is crowded. The question you need to ask yourself is do you want to be at the bottom or top? The choice is literally yours.

If you want to be at the top, you will need to adopt the principle of “the less is more”. These set of people are very intentional and deliberate in their thoughts, words, and action. They have a growth mindset. They always think out of the box by improvising and being proactive. They prepare for the best and expect the worst. They don’t take anything personally. They are not defined by their failures, and nor are they distracted by the naysayers. They always believe in the possibility of their craft regardless of their challenges.

Being focused means different things to different people. Great minds always see focus as the endpoint or what they tend to gain when they achieve their goals. As a Human Capacity Coach, my experience relating with people made me realize that one of the limiting factors affecting many people from unleashing their potential is a lack of willpower to forge ahead despite the vicissitudes of life, especially in this twenty-first century where we have many things juggling for our attention like social media. I always try to use myself as a case study, for the last four years, I have been publishing enlightening and inspirational articles every Friday. It may interest you to know I haven’t missed a single article. Trust me this is not easy because it’s mentally tasking. You need to be a writer to understand this feeling, but do I give up? No. This is just an example of what it means to be focused. 

To appreciate the importance of being focused, Steve Harvey shared an interesting perspective on how being focused can be the biggest inspiration to success. He shared a story about how he loved farmers. According to him, farmers understand that everything comes with a season, every farmer knows that there’s a time to plant, there’s a time to seed, there’s a time to water your seed, and there’s a time to fertilize your plant for your seed to grow. Even if the seeds wash away, even if the floods come, even when they experience drought, the good about the farmer is that they know they’ll overcome again and again because they understand that eventually, they will harvest. That’s the attitude of success we need to have if we plan to succeed, and you cannot do this if you are not focused.

The moral implication of the story by Steve Harvey is that, for you to attain success you must plan for it and be prepared to withstand any challenge that will come your way. If the farmer didn’t believe in his seed, he won’t be inspired to do the needful when weeds, drought, and insects attacked his crops. The only way the farmer was able to overcome all the challenges was because he was focused and believed at the end of the day, he will reap the fruit of his labour. He never allowed distractions to deter him from attaining his mission.

To focus on your focus, you have to maintain your lane. When you focus on your focus(lane) other people will begin to focus on your focus(lane), but when you focus on other people’s focus, you are likely to lose focus. When you focus on the big picture, you won’t be distracted by little flies trying to get your attention. For you to reap the benefits of focus, you must be laser-focused like an eagle.

When you are focused, you’ll lose sight of other great events and opportunities demanding your attention, it doesn’t mean they are not important, it just simply means you left other good stuff to concentrate on your energy on a particular task or project which you believe will have the largest impact if it’s ultimately achieved.  

To reap the blessings and opportunities that come with being focused, you must have goals of whatever you want to achieve, you must create a plan which you must follow to the latter, and you must have an accountability partner who will work with you on this journey. You must align your goals with your values and finally, you must meditate using the S.M.A.R.T goals which stand for Specific, Measurable, Archivable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.

In conclusion, if you desire to make an impact in life, you must be focused.

 

Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He’s a Human Capacity & mindset coach. He’s also a public speaker, youth advocate and creative writer. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the author of the acclaimed book Design Your Destiny – Actualizing Your Birthright To Success and President of gloemi.com. He can be reached via info@gloemi.com