-Must Have Focus Daniel-San "Mr. Miyagi" in the movie Karate Kid.
The power of focus is a force that dictates our day to day thoughts, feelings and actions. In the movie, Karate Kid, when Mister Miyagi told Daniel to "must have focus", he specifically meant the focus on what he was trying to accomplish. I think we all learn lessons from things we watch and movies do have lessons in them. When you are trying to accomplish something such as your personal goals, do you focus on them or do you wander in your thoughts? What we chose to focus on, is also an important factor in the end result of our actions. If we focus on the negative, what do you think will come about that?
Having focus in the things we do and the goals we have will give us the power to accomplish them successfully if we focus on what it will take to meet them. If you let our focus drift to other things, then our focus is lost. Even though we have many things that we must focus on in our daily lives, when we spend time doing something, we must focus on the task at hand and narrow them down to the core actions and thoughts needed to accomplish them. In doing so, the actions you take will lead you closer to your goals. Focusing on the positive will also give you the power to explore opportunities but it is also important to focus on the negatives, but not to dwell in them only. Balance is key to the power of focus. What I do is focus in on my goal and what it takes to get there. In doing so, I see every angle and what it would take to get there. The negative thoughts can be turned into positives by finding out solutions for them and to prepare yourself for the worst. I then use this focus to devise an action plan or map out what needs to be done to reach that goal.
For example, if your goal is to be financially independent, what must you focus on to accomplish this goal? Lets start by focusing on what you have coming in and what you have going out. Set your goals by what it means to be financially independent. Is it free of debt? Having $30K in the bank? Whatever it is, the focus should be based upon those goals and to focus on what it would take to get there. If you spend time thinking about all the credit card debt you have and you will never be able to get past that, then the focus you have is just on the negative. This negative can be turned around into a positive by recognizing that this negative thought is something you must overcome to achieve your goal of financial independence. It might be the thing that is holding you back from reaching your goal. The power of focus then sets you in a path of actions that you must take to get past your debt, but it takes consistent focus as well as action on your part to make it happen. Our focus might overlap over one another, but that is ok because sometimes we must focus on other things to accomplish our main goal. For example, our main goal is to be debt free, so we focus on that, but to get there the many different actions will be needed to do so. We can focus on finding ways to cut our expenses and money flowing out, a budget, another temporary job...etc. the focus is changing but the core goal is still there. If you only focus on the budget, and forget about the main goal, then we are just heading on a corse that leads to possibly nowhere, because our budget decisions could be made with other intentions other than for saving more money to pay off our debt.
Time management is also important for us to harness the power of focus, because we only set amounts of time in a day to accomplish a number of things. If we take on too much, our focus will be all over the place and we will not put enough focus and attention to a number of important projects or goals that we have. In the Karate Kid, Daniel needed to learn to fight and to fight well, so his focus was to learn. He could have focused on getting out of Reseda, a higher paying job, a different girl, ignore the bullies etc., but he chose to focus on learning how to defend himself and that lesson is ongoing for all of us.
photo by:
frank weusterfeld
