The way we position ourselves in life may be the difference between living a fulfilling life or being unfulfilled and chasing smoke. In this post, we will explore the idea behind positioning yourself for success in life by looking at some practical steps that, when applied, will greatly assist you in reaching your goals.
The main themes discussed in this series are:
Your outcome is determined by your focus.
Take a stance of thankfulness.
Take charge of your environment.
Some years ago I took up boxing as a form of exercise. While I had no desire to be pounded by other people, I enjoy the workouts and heavy bag routines. I soon learned starting (mostly by watching youtube instructional videos I might add) that your footwork is key. Your footwork, or in other words the way you position yourself, contributes not only to your offensive ability, but it also determines your flexibility to defend and counter-attack. In the first couple of months, I worked tirelessly on making sure that my feet were positioned for maximum impact. The results were slow but sure. The better I got at positioning my feet, the more I saw and felt the difference in my movements and the results of my workouts.
I believe that we can learn a lot from boxing in our daily lives. Hard work and perseverance without position may cause a lot of frustration and even failure in reaching your outcomes. The strange thing of positioning in our lives, as in boxing, is that we can feel or sense that something is a little off, even if we cannot quite put our fingers on it. The three themes of this series will assist you in positioning yourself to succeed and overcome challenges. Let's take a look at getting focused.
Your outcome is determined by your focus
In staying with our boxing analogy; it would be counterproductive to stare at your feet while trying to strike and defend. In fact, I can guarantee you that you will not be winning a lot of battles if you stare at your feet while trying to box. You would constantly miss your target while leaving yourself wide open to attacks if your eyes are not focused on your target.
When we apply this principle to life; keeping our eyes on the day to day tasks, we will quickly find ourselves running aimlessly chasing tasks and dealing with low-level goals, instead of focusing on high or ultimate goals. The result is that we are always busy not knowing what we were busy with or how that busyness contributed to our ultimate goals. Now if keeping busy for the sake of being busy is your ultimate goal, I would encourage you to keep your focus on the immediate, but if you have a desire to be fruitful and to reach your ultimate goals - start by realigning your focus. By realigning your focus to the ultimate goals that you have set out, your ultimate goals will determine your everyday tasks and not the other way around. You will become productive building towards, instead of drifting away in the stream of endless tasks wanting your attention. Another benefit of focusing on your ultimate goals instead of your daily routine is that it will give you the necessary boundaries by which you can effectively manage your time. You will, in other words, learn to say no to the distraction, from your ultimate goals and yes to those things that will bring you closer to them.
Powerful questions that will assist you in finding focus.
What are my ultimate goals?
The main goal by simple definition is an ultimate end, not a means to an end. A quick example would be spending time with my wife. This is a mid-level (means to an end) goal, the ultimate goal is to have a fulfilling, intimate marriage. You would normally have three or mostly four ultimate goals in life.
What am I currently doing that is causing a drifting-away effect in my life?
Every activity that causes you to drift away from your ultimate goals will over time become your ultimate goal. A helpful question to ask yourself while doing this exercise is, why am I doing this? If you ask the why question enough, you should end up at your ultimate goal.
In closing, at first, like training feet to be positioned in the optimal place while boxing, it will also take some time and practice to realign your life with your ultimate goals. And please remember even NASA had to constantly realign their spacecraft to ultimately land safely on the moon. We have to ask ourselves from time to time, the above useful questions to make sure that we are focused on the ultimate goal in mind. Doing these exercises on your own can be difficult and even overwhelming at some stages. With this in mind, I want to recommend you to contact me for a personal one on one coaching session. It will jump-start the process of getting focused on your ultimate goals.
This has been the first part of a three-part series on positioning yourself for success, please keep an eye out for the other two components or subscribe to our blog post to keep from missing out on future posts.
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