The Zen of Success – Focus on the Positive
Published July 16, 2010 | 
One of the key skills of the Successful that everyone should learn is how to be aware of negative thoughts, and once aware, replace them with positive thoughts. 
I learned this through running, climbing multiple floors of stairs and weight training, and there are many, many times when you absolutely feel like giving up as negative thoughts start popping up almost immediately, and trust me that if you don’t catch and overcome these negative thoughts in time, they’ll just fester and grow until you actually do give up.
Instead, you must learn and strive to focus on the positive, about how great you feel, how other people have accomplished what you’re attempting to do, and if they can, so can you, and about how good it will feel when you accomplish what you’ve challenged yourself with.
Also learn to always see the positive in just about any situation, visualize the challenges as opportunities, and you will find this results in happiness, as in my experience, because you don’t focus on the bad parts of your life, but on the good aspects, and be thankful for what you’ve been given. Here are a few more tips for developing a positive outlook and lifestyle.
- You have to first admit that there are problems, simple, but not always easy
- It’s important to make goals a valuable part of your life
- Appreciate your real friends because they are few and hard to find and keep
- Realize it is really all in your mind where you live and control everything about you
- Avoid any negative influences that can rub off on you, because life’s too short
- Find optimistic quotes each week, if not each day
- Focus your imagination and efforts on becoming that new positive person hiding within
- Create your life from within, and you will always know yourself
- Imagine that you’re already a positive person and you will see it and be it
- Smile at strangers and you smile affects you positively more than anyone
- Volunteer or help others and you are helping yourself
- Replace negative thoughts with something positive to maintain your positive vision
- Use the Law of Attraction – The law of attraction states that every single positive or negative event that happened with you was attracted by you.
Let’s say a good friend loaned you money when you didn’t have any. You attracted that, even without your awareness of using the law. Say that teacher, classmate, client, or co-worker gave you a hard time during the day. You attracted that, too. Again, we are using the law every second of every day.
The Zen of Success – Focus on the Task at Hand
Published July 15, 2010 | Let me ask a question, have you ever completely immersed or lost yourself in something you were working on, so that you become oblivious and the world around you disappears? If you have, then you know you lose track of time and are completely caught up in the task you’re doing. 
That’s known as the popular concept of Flow, and it’s an extremely important component to finding happiness.
Having either work or leisure that gets you in this state of flow will almost always undoubtedly lead to happiness, as people tend to find their greatest enjoyment not when they’re passively mindless, but when they’re really absorbed in a mindful challenge.
Now, if you are like most people, you are probably wondering just how you get into the concept of flow. Well, it does take a bit of practice, but the first step is to find work that you’re passionate about, and you might not even think of it as work, because your passion is so strong. Honestly — this is an extremely important step to find hobbies or interests that you’re truly passionate about.
Next, you need to clear away any distractions and direct your focus completely on the task at hand you set before yourself. This is the part that can take a lot of practice.
Why is Flow Important?
From my experience, I believe the ability to single-task (as opposed to multi-task) is one of the keys to true productivity. Not the kind of productivity where you knock off 20 items from your to-do list (although that can be satisfying), where you’re switching between tasks all day long and keep busy all the time.
The true productivity I’m talking about is the kind where you actually achieve your goals, where you accomplish important and long-lasting things. As a writer, that might mean I’m writing one or two important and memorable articles rather, than several unimportant ones that people will forget 5 minutes after reading them. It means getting those key projects completed rather than putting them off to answer a bunch of emails, make a lot of phone calls, attend a bunch of meetings, and shuffle piles of paperwork all day long. It really means closing those key deals, and quality production, instead of quantity.
Finally, once you’ve learned and trained yourself to focus on those kinds of important projects and tasks, Flow is how you get them done, by you losing yourself in those important and challenging tasks, and instead of letting yourself be constantly interrupted by minor things, you are able to actually focus on the tasks long enough to actually complete them, and by losing yourself in them, you really do enjoy yourself more, as you reduce stress while increasing quality output. You get “important stuff” accomplished instead of just getting “things” done, you achieve goals rather than just keeping busy, and Flow is one of the critical key components to all of that.
The Zen of Success – Focus on Now
Published July 14, 2010 | “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” - Buddha
It is important for you to understand that focusing on the present can really do a lot for you, by helping reduce stress it helps you enjoy life to the fullest, increase your effectiveness, and help you achieve goals and objectives.
In General there are Three Things that we all can Think About
- The past by reliving things we might have messed up, being embarrassed about something we did, wishing we could have something back that is gone, as well as living in memories of good times past, and being angry about things done to us. You understand the idea that the past can generate all kinds of thoughts.
- The future by worrying about things we need to do later, about what might happen, a big event that’s coming up soon, being anxious that things might go wrong, or that we might mess up, and hoping for something wonderful and dreaming of great things to come.
- The present by what is happening right now, at this moment, and what we are doing now.
Of course, it is natural and inevitable that we will think about all three, and we cannot stop ourselves from thinking about the past or the future. More importantly however, with good practice, we can learn to focus on the present much more than we already do.
Benefits of Being in the Moment
There are actual benefits from increasing your focus on the present. Here are just a few for you to consider:
Increased enjoyment of what you are doing overall, by being in the present rather than having your mind somewhere else, even food tastes better as you take time to savor the moment and flavors, as you have more fun with your family and even work can become more enjoyable.
Reduced stress by worrying less about the past and future, as being in the present is almost like meditation, where there are no worries, you are just experiencing.
Better relationships by really committing yourself to be with someone, to listen to them, you are being a better father, husband, friend, daughter, and girlfriend. You have much better conversations and develop stronger bonds.
Get things done by focusing more on what you’re doing, rather than trying to multitask or think about a hundred different unrelated things at once, you can actually complete what you’re doing, increase your job performance, and get tasks done in a timelier manner. You might not necessarily complete more, but you will complete what you set out to do, as stronger focus tends to get things done, and in my experience, when your focus is split among a lot of things, it is less powerful and much less effective.
“I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.” - Mohandas Gandhi
The Zen of Success – Focus on a Goal
Published July 13, 2010 | Experience has taught us that focus is the key component in the determination of whether you’ll achieve a goal or stick to creating a new habit, not what most people would rank as most important, not self-discipline, not rewards, not even sheer willpower or motivation (also an important ingredient, however). 
Understand that if you can maintain your focus on a goal or habit, you will more often than not achieve that goal or create that habit, and the simple fact is that if you can’t maintain your focus, you won’t achieve the goal, unless it’s such an easy goal that it would have happened anyway.
Let’s examine why focus should matter so much, and say you decide that you want to cleanup your house, and that’s your big goal for the month. So on the very first day, you’re completely focused on this goal you have set, and you get boxes and trash bags and fill them up with junk. The next day, you’re still focused of course, and you fill up even more boxes and you manage to clear most from a couple of rooms while making progress on the rest. Your routine goes on for a few more days, with your main focus being on this goal, and you make a lot of progress.
Now everything seems to be going well for you, but let’s say that a week into cleaning, you make the decision that you want to become a runner, so much so that your focus is now shifted to running, and not only do you go out to jog for a few days, you buy running clothes and an iPod with a running app and start reading running blogs and magazines. 
Meanwhile, your original focus on cleaning has shifted, and soon you aren’t doing much of it, because your focus is now on running, and to take one big step back, you’ve actually added more to clean up, because you’ve bought all the running equipment and magazines and books.
Meanwhile, if you would have been able to maintain your focus on cleaning the entire month, by the end of the month you would have achieved a nice clean house, and all as a direct result of your focus.
This is why I constantly advocate focusing on only one goal at a time until you build experience achieving goals. An important point to remember since having multiple goals actually spreads out your focus, and makes it less likely that you’ll complete any of the goals. Although it’s possible, with a diffused focus, it proves to be much more difficult.
You must also understand that even with experience and only one goal, maintaining focus can be difficult to master. You need to find ways to keep your focus on that goal. 
Here are some good focus training tips that continue to work for me:
- Research and read about your goal as much as possible, on websites, blogs, books and magazines.
- Create visual reminders everywhere including your walls, refrigerator, and computer.
- Create a schedule with timeline, and remind yourself regularly.
- Dedicate time each day to work on the goal, with reminders in your schedule each day.
- Record your progress daily.
Maintain your focus on your goal, and you’ve won half the battle to successfully achieve it.
The Zen of Success – Focus
Published July 12, 2010 | “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world” – Buddha
Though spoken more than 2,500 years ago, the words have stood the test of time and ring as true and clear today as they were when first uttered.
The focus of your thoughts determines your reality.
It’s something we don’t spend very much time thinking about, but the Successful know and understand the importance of visualizing in thought the goals and objectives they have set for themselves, even if for only one day, or the success they plan to achieve in the coming days, months and years.
- Be aware that if you wake up with half-hearted thoughts about the things you need to accomplish later in the day, you can be assured that you will most likely have what you consider a miserable day, but if you wake up and focus instead on what a gift your life is, you’ll increase substantially the likelihood you will enjoy a great day.
- Also, understand that if we let our attention randomly jump from one thing to another, we will most certainly have a busy, fractured and probably unproductive day. Yet, if we center our focus entirely on one task, we might completely absorb ourselves in that job, but it will not only be the most productive thing we do all day, our accomplishment can be very enjoyable.
- If we focus our thoughts on being tired, doing nothing, and wanting to chill out in front of the TV, we will get a lot of television watching done. If, however, we focus on being healthy and fit, we will become healthy and fit through exercise and good eating.
Although this might seem simplistic, it’s completely true, and is the magical power of focus to improve different aspects of your life.
“One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.” – Tony Robbins