How Changing Your Focus Can Finally Get You What You Want!
By Laura K. Bryant
What do you choose to focus on during the day? Your future?
The present? Fear and anxiety? Do you even know?
Your focus can impact your thoughts and actions. It can hinder
your progress and keep you stuck or allow you to achieve amazing
results. The key to getting what you want is to focus on:
- What you want, not what you don’t AND
- The present, not the mistakes you made yesterday
or the life you want in the future
What You Want
What do you do? Do you concentrate on what you want and determine
the actions that will help you get there? Or do you spend your
time fixated on how to avoid what you don’t want? Many of us spend our time and energy on what we don’t want
and
make decisions out of fear or avoidance. For example, you want
to become financially independent. Yet, your fear of running
out of money keeps you from investing it; keeps you in a low-paying,
dead-end job; and keeps you from doing what is necessary to become
independent. Your thoughts, actions, and even beliefs, when focused
on the fear of losing your money, are completely different from
the thoughts, actions, and beliefs you need to have to become
financially independent.
Another perfect example is for those who want to lose weight.
When you fixate on your weight, or how fat you are, or how much
you don’t like your body, you make decisions that are different
from those when focused on your health and treating your body
with the respect it deserves. The same is true whenever you concentrate
on what you don’t want.
The Present
The next key to getting what you want is to focus on the present.
This doesn’t mean you can’t analyze what you did in the past
to learn from your mistakes, or that you don’t want to set goals
for your future. What it does mean is you want to concentrate
your efforts on what you can do today, right now to meet your
goals for the future. It’s easy to obsess about whether what
you did yesterday will get you where you want to be or to daydream
about the life you want, but doing that will keep you from what
you need to do right now. “…the future is created in the present.” Deepak Chopra
Action Exercise
- If you haven’t done so previously, write out your
goals.
- Once you’re finished, make sure all of the goals are
focused on what you want and not on what you don’t. For
example, instead
of writing, “I will not allow my paperwork to pile up on
my desk,” you write, “I will organize
my desk at the end of each day.”
- Now, answer why you want what you want. The more compelling
whys you can come up with, the more motivated you will be to
stick
to doing what is necessary to get what you want.
- Determine what you can do right now to meet your
goals and get going! The right focus, with persistent, consistent
action,
will get you what you want. •
© 2005 Laura K. Bryant
About the Author
Laura K. Bryant is a speaker and
author of, “Trust
Yourself to
Transform Your Body: A Woman’s Guide to Health and Weight
Loss
Without Diets.” She combined her over 20 years of research
in
health and fitness, her passion for empowering women, and what
she learned from her own 40-pound weight gain and subsequent loss
to form her business, Inspire Fitness, designed to help women
create their own customized plans to reach and maintain a healthy
weight. Visit Laura at www.TrustYourselftoTransform.com.
08/22/05
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