Two Ways To Develop Focus

Our society in America is full of distractions.  There are so many competing messages that if you don't make an active effort to control your focus, it can be hard to develop.  We are also a society and generations that have been raised to distract ourselves from discomfort.

Some people use food, exercise, or drugs, to distract from reality.

Largely, focus is about closing out any and all distractions to give your undivided attention to the one thing you need to accomplish.

This sounds easy enough, but in reality it can be quite challenging.  The easy part is shutting off the TV, radio, phone ringers, etc.   The difficult part is in focusing and shutting off your thoughts.

How often do you get side tracked because a random thought pops up about something you need to do.  Maybe it's about a birthday party that you need to take the kids to, or your brain spits out a solution to a key problem you are facing at work.

Whatever, the problem is you need learn to use your mind on purpose.

Meditation can be helpful here.  In sitting quietly and focusing your attention on your body's natural breathing patterns you can develop the ability to quiet those random thoughts.

Here is how to do it:

          Turn off all things that might make noise, this includes phones.
          Sit quietly, in a chair, or on a pillow on the floor (be careful not to get too comfortable, you need
               to stay awake!)
          Leave your eyes slightly open, you can close them if it's more comfortable.
          As you sit, listen to you natural breathing.  Do not force your breath.
          Sit like this as long as you can.

At first you will probably have difficulty doing this.  Your body will fidget and your mind will come up with thoughts to distract you.  When this happens, recognize that this is your mind fulfilling the distraction habit you have created.

By recognizing the thoughts and letting them go, you will slowly train your mind to know that these thoughts are valuable, but not so important that it needs to interrupt your thoughts.

Another way to help keep your mind from randomly tossing out ideas is to write things down when they come to you.  Keep a calendar or schedule that will allow you to capture anything you need to do. This includes if you need to pick up milk, or drop the kids off at a birthday party next week.  As things come up, you need to get them out of your head.

Just like the meditation, this will take time.  Your brain needs to recognize that you are doing this and trust that it works.  In order for that to happen, you will need to keep track of these things and follow them for at least a month before your brain will shut off the distracting reminders.



         

The One Thing You Can Do, Today, To Succeed!

I have spent countless hours reading books and doing audio programs to learn about success.  What I have learned is that there are several key components that many successful people have in common.  They have to be confident, aggressive, action oriented, etc.

I find that a lot of people begin to get down on themselves when they begin trying do model a successful person.  They see that this person puts in a lot of hours at the office.  They see this person taking control at meetings and acting like they own the place.  This can be very dangerous when you are just starting out.  If you have not yet reached the level of success that you want to, maybe it is because you are trying to jump ahead of where you are.

If you are a fan of poker you will see this happen every year at the World Series of Poker.  People watch video of the final table and then go out to their local tournament and try to play the same type of game and then they wonder why they don't win.

The fact of the matter is that in both of the situations above, the person is failing to see that the game has to be played differently depending on where you are at and what the situation is.

You cannot spend every hour of your day working on your business.  Maybe you have kids to take care of or a yard to mow.  The fact is you have other responsibilities.  The person who is already successful has enough extra cash to be able to pay to have these things taken care of by someone else.

If you try to play the game like a billionaire, you will be frustrated.  The same goes for the way you handle meetings or negotiation situations.  The more successful you are the less you need each individual deal.  Also, the more successful you are, the more others want to work with you.  This gives you a significant advantage when it comes to negotiations.  If you try to wield this type of power before you have it, you will lose business while making yourself look like an ass.

Is there anything you can model off of the already successful person that will help you in your game?

Thank goodness, the answer is YES!

The number one thing you can do today to begin succeeding is........FOCUS!

Have you ever seen someone who is very successful work?  Have you ever wondered how that billionaire runs 15 companies while traveling the world?  It's all about Focus.

Most people who are not successful allow themselves to be pulled in many different directions.  The secret is to control what and when your attention is pulled.  You may have 15 different things that are pulling at you.  That is ok.  By controlling what you focus on, you can complete everything and step toward success at the same time.

This is where I break a traditionally held belief:

When it comes to your focus, multitasking is VERY BAD!!!!!

Whatever you are doing should have your undivided attention at that moment.  You cannot be giving a seminar while you are thinking about sales goals, kids soccer, you have to mow the law, pick up coffee tonight, etc.

Each and every activity you take action on should be the only thing in your world at that time.  I don't care what is going on.  It's not that you forget everything, it's about being able to control your attention.

By maintaining a specific focus and not letting any distraction in your productivity will increase into the stratosphere.

Learning how to focus on one thing at a time can be difficult.  We live in a society that is driven by distractions.  So much so, most people don't even realize that they are eating breakfast, while watching TV and reading news on their computer at the same time!!!  Consider driving down the road while listening to the radio and having a conversation with a spouse, all while the kids are watching two different shows on their mini-tv's and fighting over a toy.  Yeah, we are distracted!

I just learned about Squidoo!

Not sure why I haven't seen more about this, but Squidoo is actually a pretty neat idea!

If you have an area of expertise, or even if you just enjoy a subject, Squidoo can be a great easy way to make some extra cash (small amounts per topic but still money).  Be conscious of what you are writing, they are pretty strict with their Squidon't policies.

Go to Squidoo and see how it works!

On Squidoo you can make individual "Lenses."  Making these lenses is FREE.  Yes, I'll say it again this is FREE FREE FREE.  Did I say it was FREE.

If you click on the link above or below, you'll be able to do set up a free account and begin making your lenses.

Here is a link to the first lens I made:   My First Squidoo Lens

How do you make money?

Two ways, there are advertising fees that you earn as well as modules where you can list items from Amazon and if any of those are purchased, you get a commission.

There are other ways to make money on Squidoo other than Amazon, you just have to pick the module you want and you are good to go!

Go to Squidoo and see how it works!

You will not likely get rich doing this, but it's free to get going and you can make money right away.  

Think about expanding this as a business though.  For a little work on the front end you have an opportunity to make money for a long time down the road.  There is no limit to the number of lenses you can make, as long as you are making original content, the sky is the limit.  So, what does that mean?

If you have 10 lenses making $1 per month.  You make $10 per month.   If you have 500 lenses averaging $1 per month each, you make $500 per month.  It really is that simple, sign up, build a lens that attracts people and complies with the original content rules, and repeat!

It seems very interesting to me, check it out!

Go to Squidoo and see how it works!

Make Money With Ebooks!

So, I've been looking a lot lately at some new book ideas.  Just like everyone I'm in need of making extra cash.

There are a lot of books out there about making money selling Ebooks.  Frankly, I think it's funny that there are so many Ebooks about making and selling Ebooks.  Anyway, I digress.

I have written a couple books for Amazon Kindle, but since I have done exactly ZERO marketing, I've only made about $50 over the last couple years on them.  It also has to do with my writing skills.  If you read any of my previous blogs you know I can ramble.

It boils down to the fact that money was made!  So, If I can make $50 with little to no effort, what could I or you do with a lot of effort?  What would that effort look like?

What do you write about?  Well, thats actually the easiest part.  There are a lot of books that recommend you have someone write the book for you.  I don't like this.  It's really just a personal thing I guess.  What you can do is look around.  What are people interested in?  What do you know about, or what can you learn about.  You'd really be surprised at what people will buy.  For example, maybe you like baking cookies.  Well, a lot of other people do too.  What about a book on 101 recipes for great cookies!  Just research and find your favorites and you are set to go!

Sure, there are a lot of cookbooks out there, but there is a reason for that, right?!

Once you write it you can load it up to the Kindle Direct Platform.  Just Google Kdp Direct and you will be able to find a link.

Amazon will market the book for you but it's minimal and will not likely make you a large amount of money.  They also allow you to give the book away for free for a limited time.  While initially you might think that you don't want to do this, it's actually a great way to build a following.  You can go up to five days for free.  I recommend 3 days, as it's enough to get exposure.  You can do this every 90 days or so.

The goal is to get a few good reviews.  If you do, it will allow you to sell copies once you get off the free list.

Also, you can set up a twitter feed and Facebook page for your book.  This will generate sales over time and both will get stronger with time, if the book is good.

There is obviously a lot more that you can do with this and you could really take it to the limit.  If the book begins to sell, you could make videos showing each recipe step by step walk-through.  Then sell the videos as a package.

Its important to look and see as much opportunity as you can.  We have a tendency in our society to not see opportunity until it jumps up and bites us, or until we accidentally stumble across it.

Here are links to three of the top kindle books on how to make money selling ebooks.  They are definitely worth a look if you are new to this!

Amazon Prime

For those that haven't tried it, Amazon Prime is a pretty good deal.

Here is a link for a free no strings attached trial:

http://amzn.to/15egIhX

Enjoy!

Taking action!

Well, I picked up my new running shoes and did my mile yesterday.


I cannot say how good that felt.  It was really amazing.  I always think I feel good when I'm laying on the couch....I am wrong.  Yes, it's relaxing, but it is only relaxing in the moment.  But the amount of "feel good" that walking and running created AFTER I finished the activity, was huge!

This is a shift from present moment thinking to future thinking.

By focusing on activities that have more pay off later, I can build future pleasure and reach my goals easier than trying to stay comfortable and relaxed now and still reach my goals.

Come to think of it, how can I reach my goals if my main goal is to be comfortable.

The human body and the life experience is funny that way.  Sometimes you have to lose to win.  If you want to be comfortable and be able to relax, you need to experience temporary discomfort.

Interesting....

Where to go from here?

I am very dissatisfied with where I am.  It's strange, overall i have so much to be happy about, but there are some very big things in my life that suck on a perpetual basis.  Namely: finances, physical health, and friendships.

Now, I know I have control of these to some extent.  This makes me believe that there is some habit or thing that I am doing that is causing these area's to falter and continually be a problem.

So, what are the specifics.

First, let's talk finances.  Financially we are in debt.  But that's been the case for the last 13 or more years.  I never seem to be able to chip at it.  Some times things go well and we bring it down, other times we don't.  I've settled that the main problem is a cash flow issue.  We have an income problem.

I like to ask questions that help guide my thinking, my question now is, "How can I act to increase our income?"

Second,  Physical health.  Overall, I am healthy.  I quit smoking years ago and don't drink a lot.  But I have been overweight since the 5th grade.  It fluctuates, but after I quit smoking I added a bunch of pounds that never seemed to go away.  I have tried adjusting my food and exercise, but it never really seems to help.  One note here is that back in 2004 I ran a half marathon.  In the 4 months I was training to run that I began to tone up a bit.  It was slow, but I could see some progress.

Question:  What can I do to reduce my fat levels to normal?

Lastly, friendships.  Well, this is the elephant in the room.  I'm not sure if I don't have a good understanding of what a friendship is, or if everyone just already have enough friends and don't need anymore.   My view of friendship is a person or group of people you connect with and get together with on a regular basis.  It doesn't have to be daily, but maybe a group that you see once or twice a month for pleasure.

Question:  How can I re-define friendships so that my interactions with others fulfill my connection needs?

So, how should I approach these?  I think that they will inherently affect each other.  They are truly connected.  First, increased fitness will increase financial income will increase friendship.  You could really put them in any order and they will increase each other.  This is where some of my past reading comes into play.

In years past many of the books I have read talked about building habits and how to create good ones and destroy bad ones.  I think this is where I need to start.

I will start with my second area of concern:  Physical Health.

This will increase my energy, mental frame of mind, and overall outlook.  This will naturally carry many benefits.  So, how do I do this?

Since I had good experience in the past with running, I think approaching that with the idea of forming a habit of running on a daily/every other day basis will significantly increase my health.  So what are my steps:

1. Get new running shoes
2. Begin walking/running regularly.  My only constraint here will be that I have to run/walk at least   every other day.  Every day is good, but if I miss a day, that is fine as well.
3. I'll start with a mile, until I can run the entire way.  Once I can run a mile, I will sign up for a 5k run and begin training. 
4. After 2 or 3 5k runs, I will again move to 1/2 marathons.  My ultimate goal will be to do a full Marathon in 2014.

So, This seems like a good plan to get started.  I'll note how I am doing here and I will also indicate when I feel I have the habit established.  Again, the thought is that increased physical health will increase the other areas naturally.