Life is full of distractions that stop you from reaching your highest potential and it can be very hard at times to know where to put your attention. In this lesson I’m going to show you a simple technique to take control of your focus so you can achieve your highest potential.
Now let’s draw a circle around you.
This represents your awareness of the world and everything that’s going on like… wars… riots… the news… negative online comments… the stock market… viruses… who’s the next president… or prime minister… terrorism… rising house prices… the future… and so on…
These are heavy topics, they drain your energy it’s always changing and in most cases are completely out of your control and do very little, if not NOTHING to affect the quality of your life. So let’s move these to the side and get them out of the way.
Now your next circle is your awareness of others and your life experience.
And is a little more tricky to deal with. These include things like… how people behave with you… a negative past experience that you keep replaying in your mind… what your misbehaving children get up to… your parents opinion of you… other people’s beliefs projected on you… your partner’s unpreferred actions… and so on…
These are things that are in your immediate experience. They CAN influence you and you can influence them especially if you live within the same household but you still don’t have 100% control of this circle. So again we’ll move these to the side.
Now let’s draw one more circle and call it your awareness of self.
This includes things you have absolute full control over… like things you want to achieve today… your thoughts… your relationship with your children… your health… what intentions you set for the future… your most important business tasks… your emotions and so on….
This circle is the one you must cultivate the most. This circle is where you should place all your time, energy and focus because you have full control over what actions you take, and what outcome you bring about and over time it will have the most impact on your life.
Now if you’ve spent most of your life watching the news, reading the papers, listening to the uninformed opinions of other people… and you love making excuses for why life didn’t turn out the way you plan, then you may be already offended by this.
But if you’re truly honest with yourself, and want to improve the quality of your life, you would pause this video and spend a little time letting this sink in and realize that there is a lot of work you need to do on yourself.
You may be quick the label the outer circles as negative, but that depends on how you use it. What you can do instead is use it as information to cultivate your inner world.
For example…
Maybe you regret doing something in the past or maybe you tried a business idea that didn’t go your way. Instead of dragging that energy into your circle, what you can do is use it as information to make better decisions for the future.
Maybe you don’t have control over what happens in the next 5, 10, 20 years and you also don’t have control over the next few weeks or months… but you do have control over what you do today.
So use your experience to make better decisions right now so you can handle the future with more confidence.
Another tricky one is your relationship to others.
Everyone has their own opinion and perception of the world and how they see you is based on their level of maturity and awareness. Your perception of yourself has to be more certain than anyone else because what others say and their actions are completely out of your control.
You can acknowledge what they do but how you respond to them is where your power is. Your only job is to tend to yourself first and strengthen the walls of your circle.
There may be times where outside events will affect your focus and then there may be times where the actions of others will affect your mood, but you must ALWAYS tend to your circle first and know when you’re stepping outside of it because that’s where you have most control.
This is not something that you can put into practice and master overnight.
You first have be aware of your habits, your behaviour, behaviour of others and even your thoughts and slowly over time, you will see things clearly and will even catch yourself when your thinking if off.
It can take years to fully develop this skill, but eventually you will get so good at this, that’s you’ll be able to block out the noise and focus on what only matters and achieve a STATE OF FLOW. This is where the real change happens.
And if you’re able to maintain this level of focus over a period of time, I promise you, you’ll be able to achieve your most important goals and reach your highest potential.
