There are certain things, habits or patterns that successful people do and certain patterns or things that frustrated people follow. These habits are what define them. They are the ones that make a difference in their life. Like Elon Musk spends around an hour reading. Now, following these won’t change you or your life but focusing on what you want and directing your thoughts and emotions in such a way would enable you to get what you want.
Now, let me ask you something what is time? Since you’re investing it in reading this article. What would you say?
A lot of people say a lot of different things. They say time is a calendar. Some say time is the measure of activity. But I would say time is a feeling. Time is an emotion and we forget that. And that’s the reason we get stressed. We don’t think about our feelings. We are just machines that have tasks to complete and even when we complete these tasks, sometimes it just doesn’t give us the feeling of achievement even when we have done everything.
That feeling of accomplishment is lacked by most of us. Think about it. We all have experiences where hours seemed like minutes, specially if you’re with someone you love or you’re doing something you are passionate about. If you think technology is going to save some time then it ain’t true. Instead of we running and being masters of technology, it controls us. Today’s technology has been our master.
So how do we give ourselves time and achieve our goals? We as humans have been gifted with some power. This power is all you need to change your life. It is the power of focus. It’s things that you focus that determines the quality of our lives. Extraordinary people do extraordinary things because of the way they think. In business or in your life the way you focus your mind determines your failure or success. But there are things that grab your focus and they are things which will give you pain, things that worry us.
The second thing that tends to grab our focus is pleasure. This is because when we are stressed out they become a path to run away.
The third thing is not being grounded in what we want. When we ourselves are not aware where we want to go we get caught up in other people’s demands. So now, how do I get out of these? Here are some ways to channelize your thoughts to achieve your goals.
1.Know yourself and your journey
First of all get yourself straight. Know your journey. Know where you are headed to. The day you take your eyes off your goal, that’s the day you’ll find yourself fighting problems and unwanted obstacles. Stay focused on your goal. Know the direction you are travelling in. No matter what problems you face you got to go. That’s what is life about. Life is about moving forward towards your goal.
Once you know where you are headed to there’s a thing that stops us from giving our 100% . Those are our thoughts. Now one can’t simply stop thinking. That would be absurd. Instead of asking how to stops our thoughts, we can ask ourselves how do I channel the thoughts to achieve my goal? How do I get rid of all these negative and unwanted thoughts? Some may suggest positive thinking, yes it does help but not to a great extent. If we just make affirmations and do nothing that wouldn’t help. I personally believe in one thing. It is to see life through the eyes of reality and hope.
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and all good things don’t die rightly” said Mr. Duffrey (Shawshank Redemption). We are afraid of hoping cause it may lead us to disappointment. If we don’t hope, we kind of give up on all the good things in life.
2.Have a plan
Sometimes we tend to get distracted by some unimportant things in life and we lose focus. We think about all the unnecessary things we want and not on what we need. In these cases how do we get our focus back? The best way will be to have a plan. If you don’t have a plan then make a plan. The better the plan is, the better the focus. There’s another way to make a better plan. Focus on what you need and the reason why you need it because having a cause or a reason is going to motivate you to stay focused in whatever you want to do.
Plan your personal as well as your professional life. How are they going to be? Focus on whats important and what you need. Warren Buffet says that we focus on the things that are not needed. So here’s what he suggests. ‘Make a list of the 20 most important goals that you need to achieve in the priority order. The important ones should be first. Now select the top 5 and focus your energy and time in achieving them.
3.Mange you time
Do you spend time with distraction or you spend time doing something that’s really urgent and important? Where do you want to spend your time? Achieving goals or wasting it with distractions? Make a list of where do you spend most of your time. Is it the distractions? How much time do you spend with the distractions ? Is it more than 60%? I’m sure most of the time you spend is on unimportant things. Have a time table. Know where you are spending most of your time. See whether it really needs attention. Do the rights things. Time is precious. Don’t waste it on stupid things.
