Everyone wants to succeed in life, but few have found the power of focus. If you want to make the most of life, you’ll want to do what only about 3% of adults do.
Bull’s-Eye
During my workouts I love to get in some reading. Actually, it’s really listening. I spend 15 minutes of my workout listening to audiobooks, and I use most of my driving time to do the same.
One of the more recent books I listened to was Bull’s-Eye by Brian Tracy. The short book is about the power of focus and starts almost immediately with a brilliant metaphor that demonstrates something I have shared with thousands of people through speaking engagement, workshops, books, blog posts, and videos. It’s one of the most powerful things you can know.
And it only takes a second to understand.
Hitting the Mark
In the book Tracy talks about Howard Hill, an accomplished archer. Then Tracy goes on to contemplate how even someone with amazing skill might be easily beaten.
Archery turned out to be the perfect sport for Howard Hill. Over the years, he won 196 consecutive archery championships when most people would have been happy to win one or two titles. He became the finest archer in the world. He developed his own long bow so he could shoot farther and with greater accuracy.
… At archery competitions, it was naturally assumed by everyone that Howard Hill would be number one. The other competitors only hoped for the number two, three, or four spots.
But even though Howard Hill was the finest archer in the world, you could have beat him with a bow and arrow with your current skill level as long as one condition existed: he couldn’t see the target.
Imagine Howard Hill went to an archery competition—but there was a sheet or a blanket hanging somewhere in front of the target so he could not see where it was. All the talent and experience in the world of archery would do him no good if the target was covered. As Zig Ziglar said, “The fact is that you can’t hit a target that you can’t see.”
Setting Your Mark
According to Tracy only 3% of adults have goals and those that have them on average eventually earn 10 times more than those who don’t. The power of focus on goals has a huge impact on success.
If we take money out of the equation and we just look at production, we can say that the person with goals produces 10 times the person who doesn’t. It’s a simple thing to set goals. In fact, here’s a quick, five-minute primer on setting goals. What’s more, you don’t have to do it perfectly, but just start simple. Goals show the power of focus.
If you want to be wildly successful, do what wildly successful people do: set goals. Otherwise you’re just taking a shot in the dark.
