Develop Focused Effort to Maximize Success

One key to maximizing your success is to be sure that you stay focused. Not only should your focus be on taking the neccessary incremental steps to reaching your goals, but on limiting your efforts to those that are key to reaching your goals. You need to learn to stop. Stop putting too many sticks in the proverbial fire, and focus on just a handful of key activities.

So many of us suffer from physical, emotional, and mental burnout because we focus on too many things at the same time. No matter how energetic we feel, or how badly we may be compelled to do everything at once, we need to limit our activities to those beneficial to the overall outcome. We need to prioritize our efforts. First things should by nature come first. Don't let extraneous tasks overwhelm you. Keep in mind that it doesn't matter how many activities that you initiate, but rather how many you actually complete successfully. Don't dabble in everything, isolate a few key working points and go after them, focusing in turn your entire effort on those few things. This way you will get more done and you will in turn be able to stay encouraged by seeing those incremental successes along the way. 

This point again highlights the importance of setting and adhering to goals. You need to have both long-term and short-term goals to maximize your efforts. Your short-term goals should build up and support the attainment of the long-term goals. Figure out what you need to do to reach those short-term goals. What incremental steps will you take to reach them. What goal can you reach the soonest? It is important to start achieving your goals, no matter how small, as soon as possible so that you will have the satisfaction and personal encouragement of reaching them. Keep the long-term goals out there in the future, but set some easy short term goals and reach them as soon as possible, and keep repeating, building a firm foundation for seeing the long-term goals come to reality. 

Stay focused. Stay prioritized. Stay strong. Be your best, and have a great day!

Additional reading:

Motivational Lifestyles: Bound For Success: Partnership with Your Environment

Motivational Lifestyles: Guard Your Success. Guard Your Mind

Motivational Lifestyles: Good is not Enough. Greatness is the only way to Excellence

Bound For Success: Partnership with Your Environment

Ever heard the saying, "no pain, no gain?" While this saying is quite true, many of us take this philosophy the wrong way. 

First of all, in order to stay motivated, you need to realize that your personal efforts are only half of the picture and that if your intentions are true and if you commit to respecting your fellow man and your environment, then you are bound to succeed. We need to remember daily that we already have everything we need to succeed if we have the desire to succeed.

Learn to have an open door mentality. Keep in mind that doors of opportunity are constantly opening around you. These opening doors come in the form of new people that your meet, new ideas that you have, and even in the form of difficulties that come your way. Remember, you will be successful because your intentions are true and because the universe is well-equipped to ensure your success.

An important facet of that success, however, is how clearly you have defined your goals. It is critical that you have both your long-term and short-term goals clearly envisioned in your mind. You need clear intent in your action, and all of your actions should be building and growing your success. How do your daily activities fit into making your personal goals come to fruition?

In closing, even as we know that "no pain, no gain" is quite true, we need to keep in mind that the entirety of our success is not self-originating. Despite your own personal efforts, the universe is always presenting you with new and better ways to succeed and grow. Your environment plays a huge role and you should treat it as such. Develop partnership with the universe and accelerate your personal development. Stay positive and keep an your eyes open for those doors that are opening up for you right now!

Have a great day!

Additional reading:

Greatness is the Only Way to Excellence!

Guard Your Success. Guard Your Mind

Have you ever noticed that right after watching or reading the news, which is many times very negative in nature, that you feel un-nerved, stressed, frustrated, upset, offcenter, etc? Wonder why?

As guardians of our personal success, we need to realize that there are things out there that will steal your motivation and your positive mindset. These success thieves come in the forms of all things negative.

While you don't want to be out of touch with reality, you also don't wan't to focus too much on the negative side of it. Feed your mind from more positive sources.

The news is more often than not a bad place to find a source of motivation and encouragement, as bad knews unfortunately attends to draw larger crowds.  I never could understand why people devoured bad news so much more rapidly than good news. Sometimes it seems like people think that having a positive mentality is cheesy, uncool, or the like. Go around with a smile on your face, and a few people are bound to look at you strangely. 

The truth is that negativity will most certainly slow or even halt your progression to success. In this respect, negativity can be considered the enemy. Try to develop the habit of looking on the bright side. Engage in optimism.

Here's a powerful tool that you can use to switch over to the positive mentality: habit. We are creatures of habit. And by our habitual natures we either rise to greatness, are brought to our knees in failure, or become bogged down in stagnation. Changing habits can be frustrating, however. One way to limit the frustration involved is to learn to observe your mind state. Try it now. Try to gauge how positive or negative your mind-state is right now, as if you were an unbiased third party. Now continue to observe what your routine has been like to today. Were you around positive people? Or negative? Digest positive news or negative? Is the glass half empty or half full? When you know the answer simply decide to gently steer your mind in the right direction. You are in charge, right?

You can't just decide to be positive and keep patronizing those negative and draining sources  around you. Invest less time in the negative people around you. If all  of your friends are negative and cynical, then you might try looking for a more positive bunch. Turn off the news and find a good positive book to read. There are many, many out there. I have found that it is usually good to read from a motivational book in the morning before I get going.

Sometimes during the day our minds can be so overrun with the negativity around us, that we will ourselves feel incredibly negative. We may even say that we are in a bad mood. You see, when your mind is exposed to negativity and you have left it unguarded, your mind will absorb it and move the negativity into your working memory. What happens next is that the negativity begins to affect all of your actions, thoughts, and decisions. The negativity goes straight to the subconscious processing centers of our brain and begins to affect us on every level including how we feel physically, spiritually, and emotionally. On the flip-side, positivity has the same effect. What we should do when we realize that our minds have become engulfed in negativity is to purge our minds of it. Just spend a few minutes somewhere quiet, or if there is nowhere just imagine a peaceful scene and visualize the worries and negativity slipping away freely. See your mind become calmer and calmer, relax your muscles, and breathe deeply and calmly. De-stress, remove the negativity (remember, you're in charge), then with some sense of urgency, find something positive for your mind to chew on. If you can't find anything, then decide to have a positive conversation, no matter how brief, with the next person you talk to. Think about what you will say. Will you complement them? Will you comment on how nice the day has been? Maybe you will talk about how energetic you felt this morning? Find something good, and dwell on it. 

Remember, you are the guardian of your success. Feed your mind with positivity and watch your spirit grow. 

Until next time, have a great day!!!