Photo and blog by Sharman Dow
There is perhaps no more powerful force in the quest for business success than single-minded focus. It’s the ability to concentrate in one area and direct all attention and mindset to that one thing. This theory has been proven time and time again. Anything you want to achieve in life will take a single-minded, concentrated effort.
Having focus will allow you to have a clear mind that distinctly determines your ability to accomplish a goal. It will mean placing the center of your activity toward your goals. When you have focus, you will be able to streamline and organize your thoughts in a well-defined, concise manner.
For instance, if at some point you wanted to make a change in your career, you must clearly define your goal and develop a strategy to get there. Let’s say you have a college degree, but your end goal is to become an attorney and work for a large law firm. Your strategy to get there would be to choose a law school that is geographically located near you and find out whether it offers night classes. Researching cost and potential scholarships would be another part of your strategy.
I can go on and on, but you get the idea. You determine your end goal and then develop a strategy on how to get there. In other words, your strategy is built once you know your ultimate goal. Once your plan of accomplishing your goal is set, then focus becomes the asset to achieve your goal.
Athletes are focused on their goal at the expense of everyone else. A professional athlete must make extreme sacrifices in order to compete at the highest levels, to the point of eating special meals and eliminating things they desire. Athletes must train with complete focus, to the point of sacrificing time with family, friends and loved ones. A professional golfer, for instance, will have to play and practice their swing regularly for years, devoting hours every day to the sport. To play the professional golf circuit, the golfer’s travel agenda constantly takes away time from family and friends at great sacrifice to their personal desires. Are you willing to make sacrifices to become focused and achieve your goals?
Focus was not something that came naturally for me. Being an “A”-type personality, I had a short attention span. The advantage is that I was able to multitask. But the downside was that I had a hard time focusing on any one thing for any length of time. I usually got bored and wanted to move onto the next project. Concentration was not one of my skill sets.
However, something that occurred in sports helped me apply this principle of focus later in life to my business. I’m the type of person who has to stand in the back of a room at a seminar just to keep from falling asleep. Realizing that focus did not come naturally for me, I had to make a concerted effort to work on concentration for business matters. To improve my focus, I used a principle I learned earlier in my life in the sport of skydiving.
As you might have guessed, my problem with skydiving was the “f” word – FEAR. Fear controlled me, and it was not until I saw another women make a jump with the ease of expertise that I had an epiphany that changed my life forever. After watching her jump, I realized what was holding me back from becoming an expert in this field.
What occurred to me in the plane 10,000 feet up in the air was that I did not have control over my emotions and state-of-mind. By taking control of my mind and focusing on the jump — not my fear — I was able to overcome all the distractions that held me back. It was not long after this that I became an expert skydiver and got paid to do exhibition jumps.
I later applied this same concept in business when I started my own insurance brokerage firm. I became so focused in building my business that my ability to focus became the essential ingredient in its success. And it can for you, too! Come to the Empower Women’s Conference and learn from successful women who have learned how to focus and achieve their goals!
Sharman Dow is the founder of the Empower Women’s Conference.
