Unlike most people,
you're very focused.
You scroll through your feed at 100mph, eyes flitting around like a humming-bird. Your vision rests briefly on a guru saying “Instagram is the best place to make money.” You immediately spend your day making your grid look nice.
Three people see it.
You take the next day 'off.'
You take it off’ to recover from all the ‘productive’ instagram content you made the day before. Plus you’re on your period and the kids are home from school, so obviously the day’s a write-off. Ah yes, time to binge Game Of Thrones, it’s a great relief, escapism matters, after all.
“Self-care is so important, woo-hoo!”
The following day...
...you wake up & decide.
You decide to do something different. You do not revisit your instagram. Instead you choose to post in your Facebook group “for a change.” An article you read said solopreneurs must avoid boredom, so as a focused person, you don’t want to get bored with the ‘gram. And hey, you’re psyched to get your group’s 40 members up to 50, anyway, so you start reading about ‘Group Engagement.’ You go down a rabbit-hole and by the end of the day, your member-count’s up to a whopping… 41. You crunch down your disappointment at a wasted twenty-four hours, then rationalize it away by saying “Hey, at least I got one more member.” It’s progress!
The week's halfway over.
It’s Thursday & you’ve accomplished practically nothing. Your pretty grid, GoT-binging, and Facebook Group efforts have gotten you nowhere in your biz. This annoying realizations triggers you to spend your day whining to family & friends about how hard & depressing business is. They don’t want to talk to a negative-nancy or a sad-sack, so they shut you up by saying “it’s not your fault”, then distract you with fun jokes & conversation. They provide zero proper feedback and zero help in your business. And even though the only thing you truly need right now is to make some f**king money, you still indulge in their comfort-calls because their candy-coated words make you forget 3 straight days of accomplishing nothing. You fall asleep after a hard day of fluff-convos and gossip, worrying about the rent you won’t make if this keeps up.
So, do you change something on day five?
Of course! You’re no slacker! And what’s the change? Well, you realize you’ve been living off junk food, and that’s got to be why you’ve been so unmotivated lately. Thing is, you began living off fast-food to “make more time” for your biz, but that reasoning’s long forgotten. Instead, you flip-flop on your fast-food time-management trick. Screw that. Healthy meals are what you needed all along! How is anyone meant to be a successful entrepreneur without energy, right? Fix the junkfood, fix the motivation, and get back to your long-neglected YouTube channel ASAP. That’s the ticket!
Ahhh… but that means an hour or two getting groceries first. And once that’s done, cooking will take some time. Then eating. Then washing all the dishes you made. Whew, this meal plan took most of the day, and you’re pretty bushed. Surely it couldn’t hurt to unwind with a few episodes of Breaking Bad before working on your YT channel. So Netflix it is. By the time you try logging into your YouTube account, it’s after sunset, and you’re shocked to find you’ve forgotten your YT password and been locked out of your account. Oh well, take a bath and call it a day.
There's always tomorrow.
One day’s not going to make a difference, right?
Some people would take Saturday off...
...but not you. You're a determined entrepreneur! This is the day you're really fed up. You have had it. It's time to make real, productive changes. Even if it has to be on the oh-so-sacred weekend! Time to really buckle down. So you accept the invitation to the mentorship group that you've left on 'read' in your DMs. It's free, it seems generous & valuable, and you're grudgingly admitting to yourself you might need help. As soon as you join, they shower you with love, support, encouragement and resources.
But ugh. It looks like a lot of work. They want you to actually type. "Tell us your goals," they say. And worse, they want you to share links to your stuff, but you're embarrassed of your social profiles because well, you've done absolutely nothing to polish them besides tinkering with instagram for a few hours. So, even though you could get epic mentoring that levels up your biz, personality, and life... you just swipe all their helpful notifications away and breakout the video games and pornhub. Besides, it's the weekend & you probably just need to let off steam too. Sunday's booked with your partner and fam, so you won't get any time to yourself if you don't take it now.
Anyway, there's always next week.
You do get one last notification though.
It’s a personal DM from the leader of the group. You feel touched that they’d take the time to message you personally, and send you a post they made about ‘Focus’—
Wait… are they implying you’re unfocused? Who the hell do they think they are? You came to the group for help, and all they have to offer you is an implication that you’d accomplish more if you were focused? What do they think you were doing all week? Don’t they realize you were 100% focused on getting your biz off the ground, things just got in the way. It’s not your fault. Well! You’re not standing for this kind of disrespect.
You fire back your first message in the group ever: “Excuse me, I’m more focused than anyone I know, and I don’t appreciate your tone. I thought this group was for me, but clearly I was wrong.”
Then you leave the group for good measure.
That'll show 'em.
I mean, of course you're focused, you think to yourself.
They'll see. They'll all see.
You're very focused.
Aren't you?
"Always remember, your focus determines your reality."
George Lucas
112 WAKING HOURS A WEEK, ALMOST NOTHING ACHIEVED.
If you resonated with any part of the story above...
You’re probably not as focused as you could be.
1. You may overly value other's opinions.
It’s ok. Everyone over-values someone’s opinion, sometime. Myself included. The thing is, you’re meant to be valuing your own conscience. Your sense of what’s right. Your feelings of progress, momentum, and self-worth, not what society, parents, teachers, peers, gurus, etc. are nudging you towards. It’s very hard to focus on your dreams, while also caring about your ‘image’ and what others ‘think’ of you.
SOLUTION #1:
Make sure you're proud of what you do & give zero f**ks about others.
That includes fam, friends, teachers, gurus, etc.
2. You likely haven't been taught how to focus.
Most people haven’t been taught how to focus. Most kids are born to unfocused parents who easily get distracted by the stresses of life and who care what others think… so they’re a poor example of good focus. Even worse, they often teach distraction, guilt, blame, and a general lack of focus. So you end up having to un-learn bad habits first, before you can even begin to focus. It sucks, but it is what it is, so you might as well accept it and start improving.
SOLUTION #2:
Learn. Read books & articles on focus. Ask focused friends for help.
Put those Google skills to use.
3. Your focus beliefs may hold you back.
Everyone’s got beliefs knocking around in their head. Humans have about 50,000+ thoughts a day. It’s common for them to go something like: “I need a break.”, “I can only do this for a few minutes at a time”, “There’s no point, I’ll never finish this”, “This is boring”, etc. None of these are true. They’re not facts. They’re just beliefs, and they’re changeable. You can make something boring, fun. You can ‘finish’ anything you want if you put your mind to it. Even if you can only do something a few minutes at a time, you can always practice and manage to do it longer, better. It’s vital to improve your focus beliefs.
SOLUTION #3:
The best way to change beliefs is with a Belief-Wheel.
Click here for our in-depth Belief-Wheel tutorial.
4. Your emotions may be a bit volatile.
It’s not your fault if they are, but it is in your power to improve them. Take a good look at yourself. Are you triggered and distracted from your dreams by someone uttering a single word? Do you snap on social when you someone’s expressing a ‘bad’ view? Are you argumentative with friends & fam? Overly defensive? Bursting into tears regularly? This makes focus almost impossible. The people you look up to are very in tune, aware, and able to focus their emotions in healthy, productive ways.
SOLUTION #4:
Study emotional control and practice responding better.
Put those Google skills to use… again.
5. Your focus muscles are probably weak.
If you bump into someone on the street, what are the chances they have strong neck muscles? Not very high, because the neck is very neglected. Nobody cares about it. Nobody trains it. And it’s great news for chiropractors, but bad for everyone else. Same goes for your ‘focus muscles.’ Chances are you haven’t trained them. They’re rusty, out of practice, and ready to collapse. Fortunately, it’s easy to fix, because you can train them without extra time, money, or a gym of any kind. Your ‘focus muscles’ are waiting for you to use them, to practice with them, right now. The question is, will you?
SOLUTION #5:
See how long you can focus on something important.
Time yourself. Catch yourself if you slip. Do it again longer.
Achievers understand this.
The people you look up to are great focusers.
The Jeff Bezoses, The Beyonces, the Steve Jobses, of the world had fantastic focus and used it to pursue their dreams. You’re meant to join them. Meant to have everything you want in life, but no one can do it for you. It all comes down to the choices you make and how well you can remain focused on what matters.
We’ve done our best to give you a clearer understanding here, and shared information that is rarely explained… but we can’t make your journey to better focus for you. Each step is yours to make. Will you take steps to be more like the focused achievers of the world, or stand still and let them pass you by?
