Not or Got - What’s Your Focus?

What are you dialed into?

There are so many factors that are outside our control: the economy, the weather, the football score. However, there’s one thing that you will always have control over: your focus.

Only you control where your attention goes and how the world looks to you. There’s a lot of noise in the world but you control your paradigm; you control how you see it and where you choose to focus your energy.

What’s love really got to do with it?

A lack of focus is responsible for more than you think. 50% of marriages fail as a result of what people describe as a lack of love… but I challenge that theory. People can fall in and out of love on a number of levels, however I believe marriages often fail due to a lack of focus put into the relationship. It’s easy to shift our focus away from the work of maintaining a marriage when everything else going on in our lives demands our attention. When our focus shifts too far in other directions, whether it’s a promotion at work, a new house, or a new hobby, the marriage will suffer.

“Your life is controlled by what you focus on.” – Tony Robbins

Take a moment to examine your level of focus in three areas of your life. Your relationships with your children, your spouse or significant other, your parents, your friends; pick the most important three relationships in your life for this exercise.

Of course these relationships are a focus, but to what degree? Do you carve out time? Ask yourself, have you really made each one a focus in your life? If yes, what are the actions you have taken to make those relationships a focus in your life? Lastly, would the people on the other side of those relationships agree that you make them your number one focus?

The same can be said about your focus in the workplace. Company culture, co-worker relationships, projects and assignments, customers and suppliers, and your respective team all have to be top areas of focus in order to be successful. The trick is to find the right balance.

If you asked your team, how many of them would say that company culture, for example, is truly an area of focus for you? If the answer is no, some adjustments are in order.

Where is your focus?

When examining your current state of focus, consider where your focus lies.

Are you focused on:

• Want or Need?
• Then or Now?
• Not or Got?
• Theirs or Mine?

It’s easy to get caught up focusing on wants instead of needs, on the past instead of the present and future, on what you don’t have instead of appreciating what you do, on what the other guy has or how another company does it… but when you get caught up in this web, you’re robbing yourself of your potential.

If you focus on planting a vegetable garden, a few months later you get to harvest delicious tomatoes and cucumbers. If you focus on your family, you’ll build stronger family relationships. If you’re focused on what others have or dwelling in the past, you’re only fostering bitterness and not moving forward.

Whatever you are currently focused on, I hope it brings you much happiness. Life becomes infinitely more awesome when we realize that our lives are a product of where we direct our focus.

I want to leave you with a few very important focus points in my life.

I do my best to focus on what is versus what isn’t, on giving versus receiving, and on my family and God above all.

Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts and insights – Let’s go focus on making a difference!

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