This Week's Insight...

It’s All About Focus

Research proves that, to be abnormally happy and successful, you need to be abnormally focused.  My clients know about focus, know what it’s like to experience it and, yet, often lose focus.   Losing focus is the easiest thing in the world to do – there’s simply so much normality around that it’s extraordinarily easy to succumb to the perceived security of normality.

But, if you know about focus, understand how the universe works, have experienced what it’s like to be focused and then settle, once again, for unfocused normality, then, you’re asking for trouble – just like the business owner in this and last week’s “Normal People” column.

I’m going to devote next week’s main article to the importance of focus and the consequences not so much of losing it, but, having lost it, not bothering to do anything to regain it.   Therein lies a real and present danger.

So, don’t just get focused, stay focused – be attentive.  In other words, pay attention to the here and now.

I simply don’t know how many clients have said to me, over the last few months, that they crave leadership.    The current global economic has found national and international leaders wanting.  Governments have often scrambled, like headless chickens, to implement sticky-plaster solutions to a mess which was partly of their own making.     

At the same time, many bankers (and I know quite a few) have been in denial, blaming all kinds of external forces for the systemic collapse of the global financial system – as if we had, somehow, been attacked by aliens that had nothing to do with the rampant greed that festered in the financial markets for many years – I say “many years” because some fifteen years ago, when I was a senior banker, I recollect being implored by Ireland’s Central Bank to resist the temptation to throw away the old salary-based rules on which traditional mortgage lending was based.   The Central Bank warned that banks would create a property bubble that, like all bubbles, would sooner or later burst.   Whether it was Ireland’s runaway property market or sub-prime lending in the States, the story is the same and, of course, the rest is history.

But if you are awaiting leadership or deliverance, you are actually missing the point.   You have to be the leader of your own life – in every aspect of it.   In your career, your business, your relationships – it is up to you to take responsibility for yourself.   Indeed, if a few more people took responsibility for themselves our rise from the ashes of the current mess would be phoenix-like – we’d soar effortlessly.

At this point, it’s important to realise that, in reality, there’s only one thing in life for which you can take full responsibility – and that’s your own state of mind.   Unfortunately, so-called normal people wouldn’t know what responsibility is if it jumped up and bit them!   How could they?   Research indicates that they’re “not all there” and, whatever they might think, when it comes to their minds – well, they’re in a state all right!   The same research indicates that normal people have simply abdicated responsibility for their state of mind.    Quite simply, every moment that passes in which you are not mindful, your subconscious mind is running you – not the other way around.   The sad fact of the matter is that normal people live mindless, automatic lives – again psychological research proves this.

So, here are a couple of suggestions as to how you might take control of your mind and manage your mental state:

Number One:  Stop feeding the madness.   Every time you gossip about the latest redundancies, the latest drop in economic growth, the latest fall in share prices or how badly your pension has been hit, you are actually feeding the global economic crisis.   Quantum physics proves that energy responds to energy – put your energy into crap and crap you shall have!   But, if you stop yourself – and don’t allow anyone else in your company to wallow in the bad news – then you have changed your energy flow for the better – and universal energy will respond to you in kind.

Number Two:  Set five minutes aside every morning (some of my clients pat themselves on the back for doing their “mental exercises” Monday to Friday – what about the weekend?) to calm your mind, to set yourself up for the day ahead.  Each day brings with it its own challenges – how you respond to those challenges determines the end result for you – not what’s going on externally.   Normal people knee-jerk react and make matters worse.   So will you if you haven’t started out the day in a cool, calm and collected frame of mind.   My own clients are provided with “mental exercises” – but, one way or another, why not choose to do whatever turns you on first thing each morning.  It could be jogging, swimming, walking or meditating (I would recommend that latter) – but whatever it is, don’t start each day by saddling yourself up and getting on the treadmill.

Number Three:  Stop being mindless.   During the day, start paying attention to the here and now – use the five senses that you were born with to experience the present moment.   If you’re meeting a client, a colleague, your “better half”, one of your children – whoever it is – really be there.   This is done, quite literally, by seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting – the way a young child would do when presented with a new toy.   And children are not contributing their energy to the current global mess.

If you do start really paying attention, you will be more present in the moment than the normal poor soul.   If you are more present, you will have what normal people call “presence”.   If you have presence, you will be more impressive than normal people – because you will be different.    If you have presence and are impressive surely these are the hallmarks of any good leader.

Step up to the plate!

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