3.5 Ways To Increase Your Focus

Let’s get right to the point here: if you want to succeed either in the fight-game or in life, there are many, many things that you need to do. But one of paramount proportions is to increase your ability to focus because it literally affects every other area of your life. In the ring, if you can increase your skills of focus, your chances of getting hit, receiving a standing 8 count or getting knocked out cold diminish greatly. Likewise, in life, if you increase your capacity to focus, you reduce your likelihood to procrastinate, thus causing your chances of long-term success to grow exponentially.

That said, here are the 3.5 Ways to Increase Your Focus:

1. Focus Your Eyes- Any good fighter knows that he/she had better keep their eyes on their opponent at all times. Because as soon as they look elsewhere- bang! – they get hit! Now, you may not be looking to fight for the title anytime soon, but I’m sure that you can remember a time in your life when you took your focus off of an important goal only to find yourself suddenly far away from what you really wanted. I know scores of people who have allowed that to happen to them. They let someone or something else plan out their lives for them and years later, they felt unfulfilled and angry at themselves. All because they had lost their focus and taken their eyes off their target.

On a daily basis, you have to keep your eyes focused on what your goal or goals are, otherwise reaching them simply becomes an “I really wish I had…” statement later in your life. Fortunately, the “focusing your eyes” step is about as easy as it gets! Here a few simple ways to Focus Your Eyes on your goals:

· Write your goals on a piece of paper and keep them on your bedside table so you can see them each morning and each night.
· Tape your goals into your day planner or onto the visor in your car.
· Tape your goals on your bathroom mirror to look at each morning and evening as you brush your teeth.
· Tape your goals inside your closet door to see each time you change your clothes.
· Have your goals scrolling across your computer at work as your screen saver.
· Create your own focus exercise…..

2. Focus Your Mind- It does no good for a fighter to keep his eyes on his opponent if his mind is somewhere else. That not only gets a fighter hit, it gets him hurt! Each day your brain is bombarded with millions of different messages from other people, the media, the internet, billboard signs, etc. Companies try hard to get your attention and if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll follow just about anything! You need to be sure that your mind knows exactly what is important to you and what you need in order to achieve it. Because when your mind does know, it will literally find those things for you. Don’t believe me? Look around your room right now and look for anything blue. You found several things and very quickly too, I’m sure. Now look for red. Quick and easy again, right? This is because once you tell your mind what you want, it will literally filter-out what you DO NOT want and give you what you have deemed important. So be sure that you send as many vivid pictures to your mind as you can so that it finds the things that are most important to you. Here are a few great ways to Focus Your Mind:

· Make a Vision Board- Cut out pictures from magazines of what you want and paste them on a large foam board
· Have a Vision Board at your office or cubicle at work and paste a reminder photo on your bathroom mirror at home, as well.
· Take time to meditate alone with your eyes closed and really imagine what your life will be like when you’ve reached those goals. (The sights, sounds, smells, feelings, etc.)
· Discuss your vision with your closest friends and family members and use the best verbiage to paint as thorough a picture of what your accomplishment will look like once you’ve achieved it. The more people you tell, the harder it will be to back out.

3. Focus Your Body- You show me a fighter who waits until the week before a fight to begin his training and you would have shown me the loser of that bout! A good fighter gets himself in shape LONG before he enters the ring! So, are you physically ready? Do you go to that job interview unshaven, unrehearsed and with a booger in your nose? Are your clothes wrinkled when they should be cleaned and pressed? Are your pants several sizes too small or too big because you’ve gained or lost lots of weight? (Either way, you look stupid, err, umm, I mean unprofessional.) If you’re looking for success in, let’s say the corporate world, then you need to dress like it. Not too many sloppy people get great promotions. For example, if you’re looking to be a success in the fitness industry, then you better look the part. People who are overweight don’t make good money as fitness trainers. As much as you hear the old saying “never judge a book by its cover”, no one ever practices it. You judge someone by the way they look as much as the next person. So with that in mind, why not try to make other people’s judgments of you more on the positive side? Here are a few hints to Focus Your Body:

· Gentlemen- Trim the nose and ear hairs. Why? Because even if it’s looking like a jungle, you’ll still never be Tarzan.
· Lose weight- recent studies have documented that obese people do not get hired as often as fit people do. Why? It has been shown that obese people can actually cost companies a greatb deal of money in health insurance, sick days, time off to see doctors, etc.
· Dress for success- like I just said, if they’re gonna pass judgment, try to receive a good one.
· Get in good overall physical shape- you’ll be able to enjoy your accomplishments much more without having to stop to catch your breath!

3.5 Focus Your Actions: This step is about as simple as it can get: take action. Just as a fighter is set – eyes, mind, body - and ready to go 12 rounds, you need to be ready for success by taking the action necessary to reach your goals. That’s right, get going on what you need to do to accomplish your goals because you can write and wish all you want, but if you don’t DO what you know you need to, then you’re finished before you even start. Each day, there should be some sort of routine that you go through that will help you get a little closer to your goals. These routines might include meal plans, exercise schedules, prayer & meditation, studying, or journaling. Along with establishing routines, on a weekly and monthly basis, you should engage in an action step; take a class at a local college; get involved in networking; clean the house and car from top to bottom; balance your checkbook. Likewise, there are other important action items that need to be taken care of on a yearly basis, like getting a physical, or taking a personal retreat for a few days. If you’re not sure what your exact actions should be, here are a few great ways to help Focus Your Actions:
· 1st, write out all of your goals- 5 year, 3 year, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month, 1 week
· 2nd, write next to each goal every action that needs to be taken to accomplish that particular goal.
· 3rd, from those actions, create a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly task list.
· 4th, create a routine from that task list.
· 5th, find others who have done what you’re looking to do and see what they did to reach that level. Try to speak to them personally or e-mail them if possible.
· 6th, OK- NOW GET GOING!