Starting strong in 2017

Arthur Marara Motivation for Success —
I OPENED on Star FM this year on a topic I called, “Starting Strong in 2017”. My desire is to see more and more people taking charge of their lives and come to terms with the potential God has invested in them. Any year can be your year! You do not need anyone to tell you it is your year, tell yourself it is my year, and start doing what will make the year your year.

There is so much excitement with the coming in of a new year, but the reality is that 2017 is just a calendar year. You can make a difference if you start with a dif­ferent mental attitude. We are now in Feb­ruary, and that speaks volumes about the pace at which time moves.

2017 will not change your wardrobe, your husband, poor spending habits. 2017 is just a year like any other year. In order for real change to hap­pen in your life YOU have to change. What has to change is not the year, but you have to change

How you start year determines how you finish it. It is thus important to see how you are starting your year. Time does not wait for anyone, whether or not you are moving time is moving. I want to share with you 10 Keys that can help you start your year strong, and also even finish strong. Do not miss any part of the articles.

Key #1. The Power of Focus
“Focus is the key to accomplish what is necessary — easy word to spell, it con­tains only five letters but it is probably one of the most powerful words there are in order to move forward with confidence and with the expected results.” (Byron Pul­sifer) Successful people live their lives with great focus.

They know what they want, and they put their mind to achieve that spe­cific goal. The problem with many people is never lack of energy, or motivation, but lack of focus. A person who is going in the wrong direction does not need motivation; he needs to stop. It is quite possible to be motivated in the wrong direction. How­ever, if all your energy is focused in the right direction, success is inevitable.

We do strategic planning sessions, set goals, and leave the sessions sometimes very confident that things are going to hap­pen, but why is it that there is no change in your organisation or in your personal life? Setting goals is one thing, and achieving them. Goal setting and planning alone does not guarantee success, but FOCUSING on the execution of that particular goal and plan does.

There is power in positive focus. The challenge with most people, organisations is lack of focus. What you focus on grows, and what you neglect dies.

You can also be a hard worker, and very disciplined in all other areas, but if you are not disciplined in terms of positive focus you will not make much headway in achieving your goals. Thelma Barnes, in her book, “Practice Persistence: Applying Perseverance and Discipline to Achieve Your Goals”, captures the principle more interestingly, “Persistence only works when you are clear and sure of the objectives of your efforts. Without this focus, you can still practice persistence but it will not give you the results that you want.”

Focus brings clarity
Cheryl Richardson, in her book, “Life Makeovers” writes, “To focus means to bring your attention to the centre, to con­centrate on one thing intently in order to gain clarity.” Focus brings clarity! That cannot be competently disputed.

Have you ever connected your laptop to a pro­jector, and you see that the image that is coming out is not as clear as you want it to be. The recourse is not to complain, you simply focus the projector by mak­ing the necessary adjustments using the focusing options, and suddenly you will see the image that you want. Ask photogra­phers, who want the best shot, they know the importance of focus, if they are going to get the image that they want.

This is the same with life, if we are not seeing what we want to see, we need to start focusing on our lives, on our business, until there is clarity. Focus brings clarity to your busi­ness! How focused are you at the present moment.

Keep your eyes on the target
A story is often told about a certain Mas­ter who wanted to show his students a new technique of shooting an arrow. He told his students to cover his eyes with a cloth and then he shot his arrow. When he opened his eyes, he saw the target with no arrow in it and when he looked at his students, they looked embarrassed because their teacher had missed.

The Master asked them, “What lesson do you think I intend to teach you all today?” They answered, “We thought you would show us how to shoot at the target without looking.” The Master said, “No, I taught you that if you want to be successful in life, don’t forget the target. You have to keep an eye on the target; otherwise you may miss a good opportunity in life.” The students looked at each other in awe and admira­tion of the profound principle that they had been taught. This is what we need to do as well in our lives, to keep our eyes on the target and shoot.

Focus brings maximum results
You cannot achieve maximum results without focusing on your goal. Many peo­ple are like the students who wanted to see if some miracle would take place without the Master looking. Their curiosity did not pay off.

The lesson taught by the Master applies to us, if we want to achieve anything meaningful in life. Consistently focus on your goal as if your life depends on it, you will see the miracle of a focused life. When you divide your focus, you also divide the possibility of actually achieving the goal that you set your mind on.

Some lessons from nature on focus
Even nature teaches us the principle and power of focus. Have you ever heard of solar cookers, or you might actually be in the business of selling them? As the name suggests these are cookers that use an amazing source of energy, the sun. This is achieved by concentrating sunlight through a mirrored surface with high spec­ular reflectivity is used to concentrate light from the sun on to a small cooking area (this area is sometimes called the “focus”).

Depending on the geometry of the surface, sunlight can be concentrated by several orders of magnitude producing temper­atures high enough to melt salt and smelt metal. For most household solar cooking applications, such high temperatures are not really required. Solar cooking products, thus, are typically designed to achieve tem­peratures of 150 °F (65 °C) (baking temper­atures) to 750 °F (400 °C) (grilling/searing temperatures) on a sunny day. (Wikipedia). Interesting is it?

Imagine if you can focus on business development, quality service, customer care, personal development, execution excellence. Alan Pariser rightfully writes on the power of focus, “The sun’s energy warms the world. But when you focus it through a magnifying glass it can start a fire. Focus is so powerful!” Indeed it is very powerful.

Destruct your distractions
The world we live in, and the world you operate is full of distractions. These are the things that you face almost every day in business and in your life. Distractions are the enemies of focus! We are living in a very busy world, where everyone wants part of your time.

Messages come through social media, phone calls, and some people just want to spend the day with you so that they can tell everyone that they were with you. If you are not careful you can spend the whole day trying to sustain the distractions.

• Arthur Marara is an Attor­ney, Author and Speaker. He is also the author of the “Personal Development Toolkit”, “Keys to Financial Freedom”, and “Keys to Effective Time Management”. Send your feedback to greatness­[email protected] or like his page on Facebook, or Follow him on Twitter @ArthurMarara or Whatsapp: +263772467255.