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How To Maintain Your Focus

Published May 5, 2013May 26, 2015 by Kenneth

Being successful at anything requires many attributes. Persistence, a positive attitude, people skills, and other various traits. Focus is one of the traits that will determine if your journey to success will end early or enable you to see it through. Many people lack focus. How many times have you or someone you know thought of a good idea and maybe even came up with strategies or steps to accomplish a goal and then a few weeks into the plan you stop? It sounded great when you were coming up with the plan, but lack of focus on what you were trying to accomplish caused you to stop doing what was ultimately going to help you accomplish your goals.

Having focus allows you to continue on toward your goals despite all of the white noise and distractions that life has to offer. It will enable you to continue to do the daily habits and make the little daily decisions to help you get to where you want to be. Focus crushes fear, it undermines distraction and blasts through obstacles. Focus is a major key to success.

So how do you stay focused at the task at hand or your overall career or life goal? Well, there are several ways to help you stay focused. One way that I have found very useful in maintaining my focus has been to use goal cards. I had previously written a post about goal cards that you can read about for more details. Goal cards help you maintain focus by keeping your goals and actions in front of you on a daily basis. You can simply read the goal cards over and over as many times per day as you want. This keeps your mind on what you are trying to accomplish. A very simple yet effective technique!

Another way to help you stay focused is to have a clear vision of why you are looking to achieve your goals. Put an emotional tie to those goals. Your why should be so strong that it hurts every day that you have not accomplished your goals. Knowing your why and having a clear vision of why you want to accomplish those goals will keep you taking action even when you do not feel like doing anything and would rather sit back, watch a movie and eat popcorn. Instead, you will hear the little voice in your head saying, “take action, go do what you know that you should do.”

Create a mastermind or goal group. Partner with other individuals who have similar goals or are looking to accomplish something similar to what you are striving to accomplish. The power here is that you will now be accountable to someone else other than yourself. If you goal buddy hits their goal and you don’t, then you have not been accountable to that person. Even if you don’t want to do it for yourself, you surely don’t want to let someone else down do you? This is powerful- try it.

Break your big goals into little ones. I’m sure you have heard the saying, “how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” The same is true with you big goals. Break them down into simple, easy to accomplish goals. Maybe your goal is to sell $300k in a fiscal year at your job. Instead of just having $300k on your goal card/board, break down what you would need to sell or do on a daily basis that will lead to the accomplishment of your overall goal. Keep it simple!

Finally, another way to help you maintain focus is to keep your goals to 1-3 at a time. Don’t spread yourself too thin or you will be all over the place trying to accomplish too many goals at one time. If you are chasing too many goals, most times you will be so overwhelmed that you won’t take any action at all. It is best to identify 1-3 goals that you can accomplish and then move on to the next one(s).

In my 10 Day Blueprint, I have also identified other tips and principles that will help you to accomplish your goals and lead you to your journey to success.

Stay focused and achieve your dreams!

Ken Cloutier

The Importance of Goal Cards

Published January 22, 2013May 26, 2015 by Kenneth

Are you in the pursuit of a goal? Have you set goals in the past that don’t ever seem to really get off the ground, or you forget about them completely only to find out that you have not moved on towards completing your goal?

If you answered yes to any of these situations, you are not alone! Welcome to the world of the ambitious!

Picture this: You have been inspired at a business conference or a work-related workshop and upon leaving you are ready to set the world on fire! You have great goals that you are excited about accomplishing and have a game plan ready to put in place on Monday morning. For the first week you work diligently towards achieving your goals with some successes and some failures. About 2-3 weeks into your journey, you begin to get a little lackadaisical and don’t necessarily follow your game plan like you did the first week. Can you relate to this scenario? Does this sound familiar? “How can I fix this?” you may ask. The answer is really actually quite simple. In fact, it is so simple that some of you reading this will disregard it and keep on being frustrated and wondering why you are not reaching your goals.

The simple answer to this is: Goal cards. Yes, Goal cards.

Goal cards are a simple, yet very effective way of keeping your goals in front of you. The whole premise of goal cards is that you write down exactly what you want to achieve as though it has already happened. For example, if one of your goals is to make one sale per day, you would write, “I make one sale per day everyday.” Notice the way that this is written? It is not, “I try to make one sale per day everyday.” You must write down your statement and say it as though it has already happened, not that you will try or hope that it happens. There is a very important element at work here by making a statement that you already have what you are seeking.

The element at work is your subconscious mind. You see, your subconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is not. By you stating something that you want as though you already have it, your subconscious mind will do everything possible to make whatever you say happen. So, in the example of, “I will make one sale per day everyday.” When you speak and tell your subconscious mind this statement on a daily basis, your mind will begin to figure out different creative methods or ways to get your goal accomplished.

Writing out the goal cards helps to keep your mind on your goals. By reading your goals out loud several times per day you are programming your subconscious mind to attain them. Making goal cards is very easy. Simply write out your goals as though you already have them on some index cards and carry them around with you. Write out one statement per card. It may feel funny at first taking index cards out of your pocket and reading them out loud, but after a few days, you will get used to it and it will actually feel pretty good saying positive things about yourself and what you are achieving. I am a huge supporter of goal cards. When my wife and I were looking to hit some goals in our business, we used goal cards and spoke out loud exactly what we wanted to happen and how we wanted our business to come together. Several years later I came across them and it was so cool to see that EVERY single goal that we had written down on the cards came to pass!! It really does work!

I sincerely hope that you do not blow this concept off as some hocus pocus and really make a commitment to use goal cards.

In addition to using goal cards, you may also find my 10 Day Blueprint video series helpful. In this free series, I cover some other key principles to help you on your journey to success.

To your continued success!

Ken Cloutier