Has there ever been a time when you were stuck in traffic on the freeway? Then as you started to creep forward you realized that the traffic is because too many people were gawking at an accident on the side. Also, I bet that even though you got angry that the traffic was because everyone was focusing on the accident, you subconsciously slowed down and decided to look too! If you have ever been on a freeway, chances are that you are guilty of Rubbernecking! Our minds are consciously aware of only a few things during any given time. You get what you focus on most of the time. That means that whatever you are presently focused on is what you will perceive to be

reality right now.

Focus Focus Focus

The concept behind ‘focusing’ is so simple it can be taught to a kid. Most of you have probably played around with magnifying glasses in efforts to burn a hole through a piece of paper. The reason why the paper burns is because the rays from the sun penetrate through the magnifying glass and become concentrated into a single focal point which then causes a chemical reaction i.e. becoming hot enough to burn the paper. The point of this example is that the paper will only burn if the magnifying glass is positioned in a way for the light to have a single focus.

Negative Focus

From one of the previous blog entries I wrote about negative news, your focus can be subconsciously used to sabotage your entire career. If you are currently placing your focus on our declining economy, than more important things like your family, career, and lifestyle will all be directly affected. Yes, I understand the “need to know” of what is going on in this world, but if it alters my well being, I am not interested. Let’s say you are a real estate sales person and your job is to sell homes. The economy has substantially impacted the Real Estate Industry, but according to the reports, homes are still selling every single day. As a real estate person, your focus should be on money making activities like prospecting for business, presentations, and follow up. However, the focus for most Realtor is on money servicing activities like paperwork and other forms of “busy-work”. The money making vs. money servicing activities was a great concept I learned while working at the Mike Ferry Organization. I was taught to spend 80% of your time on money making activities and 20% of your time on money servicing activities. This format allows you to use the right amount of focus to bring in new business and take care of it.

Positive Focus

If you get what you focus on most of the time, does it not make sense to focus on something magnificent? The law of attraction blah blah blah, can come into play here, but I am referring to focusing on the right career, a project, a successful relationship, money, success. These examples are obviously too vague and focusing on something effectively requires you to narrow down your focus to the very last degree possible like the example with the magnifying glass. What is your focus? What do you want to do with your life? Is your focus to become the best sales person in your company? Is your focus to become an influencer so powerful everyone lives by your word? The power of ‘focus’ is so vast, that if you take advantage of it, you will be able to achieve almost anything you have ever dreamed of.

Exercising/ Weight Training

The concepts of ‘focusing’ does not only apply to success in business and relationships, but it also applies to physical fitness. The reason why there are hundreds of different machines or variations of exercises is because each of them focuses on a particular muscle in your body. A common challenge that most people have which results in an ineffective workout is that during the exercise, their focus is on a different muscle, watching TV, or listening to music.  When you exercise, pay full attention to the muscle you are supposed to work out because it will allow that muscle to achieve maxim effectiveness.

The Art of Multitasking

I noticed the power of multitasking a few years ago when I worked at MFO. The receptionist was able to speak on the phone, look up something on her computer, place people on hold, and write down notes almost simultaneously. Obviously doing all those tasks at once is definitely not impossible, it just requires a lot of practice. Multitasking allows you to do more and in less time. Practicing multitasking will inevitably blow up in your face at one point or another, but after the expected decline, you will be accelerating your process at speeds you thought were impossible before.

Multitasking does not mean you will be “focusing” on several different things at one time, in fact you might not be focused on one thing at all. After you master multitasking, you will be the depths of thoughts while everything your doing is just one big blur. Multitasking at a level of perfection will occur from your continuous practice of the task consciously. Once you begin to perfect the task, your mind will start to perform the task as if it were second nature. Ideally, if you practice the art of multitasking, you will learn to grow your mind’s knowledge and infrastructure at a faster pace than someone who performs each task linearly.

What are you focusing on right now? (not literally this second, but your overall direction in life)