Focus

I have very happy memories of spending time in the summers with my Grandpa when I was young. I remember walking through the tall prairie grass from one farm pond to another. In the morning, when the dew was heavy, I would look back at our tracks through the grass. I commented to Grandpa one time how I didn't walk in a straight line but how he always did. I remember him telling me his secret. I kept my head down when we walked, looking at my feet and all the grasshoppers that were jumping all around me. Grandpa didn't look at his feet. He looked far off into the distance. He focused his eyes on a point on the horizon and walked towards it. Since Grandpa was focused he didn't waste time zig-zagging through the field.

That lesson of focus my Grandpa taught me has stuck with me. There is incredible power when we focus our minds on something. A great example of focus is setting a goal for yourself. The more specific we get in our focus, the more apt we are to achieving what we have our minds set on. And the less likely we are to get distracted by trivial things. Things that can avert our attention elsewhere.

One tip I learned about goals is to be specific. I heard one man say that he used to say he wanted to get in shape. . . . after a while he realized he was in shape, the shape of a pear. He should have been more specific!