5 Steps to Stay Focus And Becoming Successful

 Whether you are working or involved in advancing your education or wanting to achieve your ambition, the one thing you need to be successful in your venture is to stay focus in what you are doing.  This is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks that you will face as our lives are full of distractions.

Distractions come in many form.  It could be a sudden unexpected crisis that sidetracks you off your intended path of action; or a new development that throws you in a frenzy of disarray; or the usual irritations and frustrations of every day life.  Whatever the distractions may be, it is up to you to take charge of what’s happening around you and continuously re-focus back to your original goals and aspirations.  In this context you are a bit like a guided missile system.  The guided missile was an advance military technological innovation whereby the missile once fired from its silo has the ability to correct itself as it hurtle along to find its intended target.  On board the missile is complex computer equipment that measures wind velocity, atmospheric conditions and geographic barriers so that the missile can make the right contours in its course to strike at the heart of its target.  It is indeed a marvelous piece of equipment and one that you could use the same working principles in your life. 

So now the question is: how can you stay focus in whatever you are doing?  Here are five effective steps you should always keep in mind.

1.  Get Tune In

Just like a radio where you have to tune in to the station that you want to listen, you should get tune into what you are doing.  Many a time people forget to realize what they are suppose to do.  In the office, when you have to deal with the many distractions that comes your way, there is a tendency that you might go after the urgent and important things.  Although it is sometimes inevitable that you need to do this, when it becomes too frequent you will realize that you have hardly the time to do the other things you are suppose to do. 

You can get tune in by prioritizing your activities effectively and handling those that are not urgent but important.  If you do have to handle urgent and important things, do these quickly so that you can come back to what you were suppose to do.  Further see whether it would be possible to integrate your urgent and important activities into your not urgent and important activities so that you could try to kill two birds with one stone.

2.  Respond – not React

If you go to a Doctor for some illness and he prescribes you a medication, it is possible that you body does not agree to this medication.  You feel worst after taking it.  So you go back to the doctor and tell him how the medication is making you feel terrible.  The doctor answers you by saying that your body is ‘reacting’ to the medication.  However, if you take the medication and start feeling better, the doctor might now say that you are ‘responding’ well to it.  In your life to you need to respond to the challenges that you face instead of reacting to them. 

When you learn to respond to the situations that confronts you, you take charge of the challenge and you will know what to do and thus gravitate towards finding a practical solution to the issue that is bothering you.  You can learn to respond rather than react by being clear of the challenge that you are facing and instead of waiting for the situation to escalate into something worst to try to stifle it at its bud.  The best way to do this is not to procrastinate when you are faced with such dilemmas but to address them objectively and to resolve them effectively where possible.

3.  Break it Down

Whatever your goals and aspirations are, the sure fire way of achieving them is to break them down into little portions.  When you break down your goals, you will find it easier to achieve them.  It’s a bit like climbing a ladder – one step at a time.   It is important too that as you attain the little targets that you set for yourself to celebrate the minor success of achieving them so that you will feel motivated and inspired to continue in your quest.  Some times failure is inevitable in your quest.  However, when you fail there is no need to be disheartened. Rather look objectively at your failure and see what feedback you can get from it to do it better next time. 

4.  Maintaining Your Ethical Dimension

There have been many cases lately of leaders and large corporations compromising their ethics in achieving their goals.  Many individuals too in their quest for success have failed to realize their ethical dimension.  Your ethical dimension makes you what you are and who you become.  Keep in mind the real reason for you wanting to achieve your goals and aspirations.  You should be driven by a passion to achieve your goal rather than for glory. When you start trading your passion for glory you start losing your sense of direction and you just might end up some place else. You may have heard of world class athletes who pump themselves with steroids because they so intensely want to win at all costs that they loose their sense of passion and eventually fall into disgrace.

You can maintain your ethical dimensions by embedding what you are doing with strong principles based on fair-play and social responsibility.  In staying focus in achieving your goals be wary of how your actions might influence others.  Learn to be empathetic towards others and at the same time be assertive in what you do to get what you want.

5.  Carpe Diem (or Harvest the Day)

Carpe Diem is a phrase from a Latin poem by Roman poet Horace.  Although it means ‘harvest the day’ it can also mean ‘seize the day’.  There is a saying: “Stop worrying because today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday”.  Life is never a bed of roses and you are bound to have ‘bad days’ when you feel that you have reached your deepest pit and there is no more spark in you to proceed further.  This is when you should examine your values and principles and who you really are and what you want to be.

When the going gets tough you should start thinking of the real reason as to why you embarked on what you are doing.  In the navy there is a saying: “You cannot change the course of the wind, but you can adjust the sail of your ship to go where you want”.  Thus when the winds of uncertainty blows upon you, remain clear of where you are going.  Realign your life to counter the uncertainty that troubles you and stay your course. You should become tenacious when times are tough and stay focus no matter what.  Carpe Diem!