Look Eye Danielsan!
  Written By Darren

The fuel that keeps success pumping through you is the drive to get what you want. If you focus clearly on what you want, you can focus your attention and your energy to get it.

In the movie Rocky III, the boxing hero Rocky regains the feel of success by capturing the "eye of the tiger". It was a hungry resolve to win back his championship. As corny as it may seem, there's a lot that can be learned from Rocky's experience. The most important factor in capturing that success is the INTENTION to get there.

As I briefly mentioned in the last article, clear goals are more important to your success than knowing how to achieve them. I remember the days when I use to do 100 things and go 100 different directions with my own business (which was only part time back then), my 9 to 5, and other areas in my life. I was walking down a non-focused road to nowhere. I had no clear goal in mind. No destination to achieve. Heck, if I got there, I wouldn't even know it because I didn't even know where I wanted to get to in the first place.

Your thinking is the one variable in business, and life, that you can control. You can creat self-fulfilling prophecies of success by directing your full attention to what you want.

A reseacher by the name of Charles Garfield says, "The single most powerful predictor of success in the long run is commitment. The ability to stick to it longer than anyone else is often more important to success than talent."

Think about it for a moment. Don't you think the people that you feel are successful have one thing in common...discipline? They have a sense of mission. They have clear goals. These people know what they want out of life. The could see it, taste it, smell it, and imagine the sounds and emotions associated with it...whatever it is. They prelived it before they had it, and that sharp, sensory vision became a powerful driving force in their lives. They harness most of their energy, focus attention, and invest most of their time and thinking into those things that will give them the greatest payoff.

You chose how to invest your time and energy. You can give your full attention to only one thing or one part of one thing at a moment. You focus your attention on certain things and at the same time you're excluding others. Psychologists call that, "selective attention." Husbands probably bring this out most on Sunday when watching the football game. I know my wife can be talking about how she wants to decorate the flower bed or choose a new set of drapes for the living room. I don't hear a word she says. If I do, it sounds like the teacher talking in the Peanuts cartoon..."Waaah, waah, waah,waah, waaaahhh...!"

How does that help you in business or on your road to success? By focusing their attention, successful people learn to FEEL the substle shifts that take them off track, or lead them down the track at a faster pace. They're able to overpower distractions like self-doubt, fatigue and recognize opportunities that others may not. Once you've focused your attention on what you want, you're much more likely to find a way to get it. You're more likely to recognize the activities and relationships you establish that will help you achieve success. People who seem to be "lucky" in life actually attract luck because their minds are focused on well-defined opportunities. They've committed their attention to their goal.

We all struggle daily with this and that and all the distractions that life throws in our paths, but one thing is certain. You can control what you think and do, and by reminding yourself to stay focused, you'll get to your goal more rapidly than having no focus at all. You'll know the cause and effect and left and right. You'll be better tuned into making decisions even though you didn't know how to get to the end when you started.

You're responsible for your own success. "Look eye, Danielsan," says Mr Miagi. "Focus power."