The Only Reason Men Fail is Broken Focus
by Dawn Haynes, Your Toolbox Diva™
I recently decided to do a home improvement project using pallets. I ended up opting out of pallets for this particular project and bought 1x4x12s instead. They were on sale. What can I say? I love a good deal. The trade-off was that I now had to use a circular saw to make cuts, cuts and more cuts.
Most of the time, I was only cutting to length, but there were a few times when I actually had to make 4-5 foot cuts that couldn’t be accommodated by my cutting station. I went through all sorts of mental gymnastics creating a guide so that they would be perfectly straight. It took forever. And the set up for each successive board took forever. I remember thinking, “There has to be a better way.”
With my guide set up, as I began to cut, I noticed something that I had not noticed before. Since the guide I had fashioned was keeping the saw aligned, at some point, I took my eye off of it, and found myself looking at the underside of the saw. An amazing thing happened. I noticed that it was easier to see the line I had drawn from the underside than it was trying to follow it from the top, and suddenly I didn’t need my guide.
But there was a catch. Since I was no longer using my guide—for support or alignment–it became imperative that I keep my focus on the line. It required every part of my body. My posture and positioning had to be perfect, my hand had to remain steady, and I had to move slowly and with precision as I walked from one end of the board to the other. As long as I kept my eye on the line, my cuts were perfect.
As I reveled in the fruits of my epiphany, I was reminded of something I read years ago by one of favorite teachers, Mike Murdock. He says that, “The only reason men fail is broken focus.” It was true in that moment. It is true in life. As you think about your goals—long or short term, your hopes dreams and aspirations, where is your focus?
Are you focused on where you are or where you want to be? Focusing on where we are has a tendency to draw our attention to our limitations. Focusing on where you want to be, frees your mind to dream and in so doing, to be more creative.
Are you spending your time on activities or with people who move you closer to or farther away from your goals? You don’t have to give up either of them entirely or forever. But you do have to be willing to set them aside from time to time to move your life forward.
Are you willing/able to set aside time specifically to work toward your goals? Multi-tasking is the death knell to focus. How many times have you worked on several things at one time only to find at the end of the day, that you completed nothing? My son more accurately calls this “split focus”. Better to focus on one thing at a time before moving on to the next.
Draw the line in the sand for your goals, and fix your focus on it for success.
Blessings!
Your Toolbox Diva
Building Tomorrow’s Champions Today
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In Gratitude,
Beverly Fells Jones,
The Silver Fox of Consciousness™,
The Colony, Texas
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