How Does Focus Affect Your Mental Attitude?
Maintaining a Positive Attitude
Successful people maintain a positive focus in life
no matter what is going on around them.
They stay focused on their past successes
rather than their past failures,
and on the next action steps they need
to take to get them closer
to the fulfillment of their goals
rather than all the other distractions
that life presents to them.
Where Do You Focus?
Focus is where you put your attention.
- You can focus on what you don’t want in your life.
- You can focus your attention on the people who have harmed you in some way.
- You can focus on thoughts about your failures, your disappointments, and anything else that has caused you pain, anger, and regret.
This kind of focus will create a negative mental attitude in you about your life.
Ponder what Aristotle claimed:
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
How Changing Your Focus Will Change Your Life
No matter what has happened in your life, you always have a choice to change your focus from what you don’t want to what you do want.
No one has ever demonstrated the power of positive focus in horrible circumstances more than this statement by Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning after enduring the horrors of Nazi death camps from 1942-1945.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Whatever your life circumstances, you can choose where you focus your attention and your thoughts. Consider how your thoughts affect your life.
What thoughts are you focusing on when you think? What thoughts aren't you thinking when you think. Nothing will change your life faster and better than to be very observant about your own focus, your thoughts, and your choices.
This is the life-changing secret of how to change your life. Nothing will change your life faster and better than to be very observant about your own focus, your thoughts, your choices. What you do or don't do with your life are all tied up with the idea of focus. The more you focus on what is wrong with your life, the more miserable you will be. If you want your life to be better, the more you focus on what you want rather than what you don't want, the better your life will be.
8 Things Really Focused People Do
Kevin Daum identifies eight ways that focused people work through distractions:
1. Clear the noise
You live in an overstimulated, noisy world. It can easily take control of you. People who focus start by controlling their environment. Set up space that is conducive to the task at hand. Not just your physical environment but mental as well. If you are focusing on a work project, get rid of the beeps and dings of notifications. If trying to focus on people, turn off your smartphone. Remove everything that is not helpful to your objective.
2. Create a plan.
If you don't know what to do first, you'll waste time and energy. Really focused people always have some sort of plan to follow. They have a clear picture of where they're going and a reasonable idea of how to get there. Set up a structured path for your objective. It doesn't have to be elaborate. It could be just a few bullet points in an email. That way when you veer off course, you can quickly reset and get back on track.
3. Set up clear compensation.
A big part of being unfocused stems from being unmotivated. Really focused people clearly understand why they are engaging in any form of activity. Determine early on what's in it for you so that you are excited about the task at hand. Create a reward for completion to help yourself become accountable and make the task a priority over all other distractions.
Read the rest the eight ways Kevin Daum identifies here.
Finding Meaning In Life
About Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor E. Frankl was professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School until his death in 1997. He was the founder of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology)—the school of logotherapy.
Born in 1905, Dr. Frankl received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna. During World War II he spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps.
Editorial Reviews
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