Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Power of Focus - Balance of Power

The Power of Balance - Success Motivation.

Strategy number four for leveraging the power of focus in your life and for explosive success is learning about maintaining a system to create balance in your life. Developing a blueprint for balance is really simple but can be oh so hard to do consistently. One word: Workaholic. We all work to much, too long and to hard. Old thinking would say this is a good thing. Sure, we all have to put our time in and certainly working hard isn't bad. BUT Balance is ALWAYS good for you. Plus working isn't the only problem. There are way to many --holic's out there. 

There are "playaholics". These folks only know how to play. Thats it! Life all about play and no work. Then there's the Signaholics. This folks are similar to playaholics in that they both don't believe in working however the playaholic doesn't necessarily get a lot of free time throughout the day. The Signaholic prefers to stand on your street corner with a sign. Now some signaholics are down are their luck but you've heard the stories and seen the exposé's of people doing this because of the decent money that can be made. There are more holics without a doubt.

Then lastly there's me. I'm a learnaholic, infomationaholic or some similar sounding, nonsensical made up word such these poorly executed examples I've just give you. :) I'm obviously just having a little fun here.

This strategy of maintaining balance is one that I struggle with the regularly. My challenges are that I'm a sponge for information and glutton for activities that support all my learning interests. However all my learning interests aren't core to my current goal achievement objectives. This means that I have to establish and review learning objectives that support the advancement of my most important goals and that fuel my success motivation. Alternately I need to regularly plan other times to support learning that is enriching to me but doesn't directly or immediately advance me towards my targeted goals.

So much of my life revolves around consuming content and acting on that content to create successful outcomes. But isn't that true for most of us these days anyway? Most employment, not just Information Technology (IT) involves consuming information and using that information to create successful outcomes.

Lifelong learning is what I call it and if you are to be successful, a commitment to learning and acting on what your learning will be one of the best decisions you can make. Okay so I've given you a bit of my story and here is where it ties into the creating balance strategy. I recognized that while I had goals and discipline for learning I still needed a system that would help me easily establish reasonable balance for goal achievement.

"When you work, work and when you play, play. Don't get the two mixed up. --Jim Rohn"

There is a time and place for everything and surely having a multiple interests is a good thing. Learning is power when you act on your learning. But a inertia, loss of motivation and stagnation towards your success motivation goals can come as a result of having too many activities going. Too many activities and information overload are just two of a host of distractions plaguing our modern lifestyles these days in America that you can paralyze your momentum for goal achievement. Balancing your activities whether learning, working or playing is absolutely required for health and happiness. Too much of one thing and not enough of another can lead to loss of power in pursuing your success.

Success feeds on itself just like failure feeds on failure. What may appear to be unfair about this dynamic is hat you don't really have to do much to have failure grow and take root in your life but success will take effort and intervention and deliberate action. So what you need a simple plan to help you balance your success and motivation

Here is a really simple plan to build balance and powerful success as described in The Power of Focus.
1. Blueprint. Develop a plan that allows you to focus on what you do best. Focus on few activities the create the greatest results for your life. 

2. Action. What more can I say here? ACTION! We all need it and no one makes progress without it. The only single rule of action for ANYTHING you want to do is: ACT...THEN ACT AGAIN...AND AGAIN...AND..

3. Learning. In this day and age only the lazy person won't learn and doesn't learn. So much free information is around us that even if your flat broke you still don't have an excuse for not learning. While general access to the Internet isn't free, there are plenty of libraries and Internet cafĂ©'s around to provide you access if you can't afford it. Also, you can to a bookstore like Barnes and Nobles and pull as many books as you like off the shelves and read them all legally free and without having to pay for any them. Just remember to put the books back for before you leave. ;) 

Feed Your Need To Succeed by learning. Expand your mind and heart by reading inspirational stories, listen to success motivation audios, watch life changing videos or movies plus much more. Guard your heart and mind and learn how to be successful by building a positive vision inside of you first. Then it will translate to the outside. What goes in is what comes out as the saying goes. Learning and action provide a one-two punch for building a better tomorrow for yourself.

4. Exercise. What good is all the success and money in world if you can't get out of bed in the morning? Exercise, eat right and you will sleep well at night, enjoy clarity of mind and spirit and increase your level of energy to seize the day and your opportunities to succeed!

4. Relaxation. Give yourself a break. Relaxing is paramount to maintaining power and focus. You cannot maintain good health if you are high strung and stressed out continuously. There is nothing glamorous about being so busy with agents, schedules, meetings, etc. TV and Movie media want you see it as part of being a power player and being "ultimately important" but let me tell you that there comes a day when everyone just has to rest. If you don't take time the your body will take it for by shutting down as a result of fatigue, exhaustion or poor health. 

So if you are very busy and are challenged by a hectic schedule whether you think it's glamorous or not just know when to say "no" to a lot of activity and "yes" to yourself. You must place a priority on your "down time" so that you can recharge your batteries, get rested and recover. Taking regular breaks to re-energize is just as important to your success motivation as taking regular action towards your goals.

5. Think. Upgrade Your Mind by learning to think well. Take regular time to "think" about your life will help you create a strong finish for your life. You should reflect on your day and evaluate what is working and what us not working for you on a daily basis. Be objective and not judgmental. This is time to actually be wise and track what activities result in your personal success and what activities are not producing results according to your goals. 

This is not a time to be critical and convince yourself of what isn't working and why it isn't working. Unusual Clarity is a result of thinking regularly about your life. When was the last time you sat down and seriously focused on your life asked yourself questions about what is working and what isn't working? This is a powerful exercise in determining if you need goals in your life (and really...who doesn't need goals???) and also determining if you are staying on track with your goals. 

When what you do best and what you value most come together to create a truly compelling future through goal setting you owe it to yourself to target only your most productive activities to make your dreams happen. Most people don't pursue what they are "really" good at so don't take my saying that lightly. It takes effort, audacity, daring and vision to act on personal dreams. Isn't is funny how that happens where we may find ourselves not doing what we do best or not building something significant from something we have actually "become" significantly good at?

Well no longer! 

Do something different today to produce a different result for your tomorrow instead of just being the same as you were yesterday!" --T. L. Pierce

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