Success Salad

I’m reading a book called, “Your Heart’s Desire,” by Sonia Choquette– a speaker, writer and workshop leader that usually seems to focus on spiritual, intuitive kind of stuff.

In the book she speaks about the power of attention and intention; two terms that taste good together. Let me explain is like this: attention is where we focus our mental energy and intention is where we make a conscious decision to make something happen. In other words, it’s one thing to “wish” you had a new car, but another matter completely to “decide” you are getting that car next month.

I’ve been reading and writing about attention and focus for so long now, but it bears repeating until we turn blue in the face, if that’ what it takes to get through our thickened skulls: WHAT WE FOCUS OUR ATTENTION ON EXPANDS. This is why when I focus on not getting ketchup on my white skirt, I always do.

There’s just no way around it folks. Worried about getting fired? Might as well pack up your desk. Yes, that is how amazingly powerful our focused attention gets. In fact, the one thing that drives me batty is when I hear someone continuously complaining about how they know this or that will happen in their lives, and then when it does, they go on and on about how they “just knew that would happen.”

Well, heck yes, you knew it would happen…you gave your attention to it so passionately that it was bound to come to frutition. That’s just the way attention works. What we focus on will always come to pass. It’s like a universal law or a money-back guarantee; you can’t fight City Hall and you can’t trick the laws of nature. Slap a lazar-sharp focus on anything and it’s definitely in the works.

Intention is a whole other matter. Most of us, and I admit I am among the masses, have a hard time making a decision. I can’t even decide if I want a Ceasar Salad or chicken breast sandwich when I eat at the Cheese Cake Factory, and that’s just lunch, for pete’s sake. Seriously, we dilly dally around over simple little choices, so it’s no doubt that we meander around those big, bodacious decisions that can indeed alter life as we know it.

For instance, in my years of coaching all kinds of clients, I see the inability to make a solid decision and stick to it the biggest faux pas of all. We get scared.

What if I make a wrong choice?

What will my parents/the neighbors/the PTA, etc think?

What if I fail?

What if I suck?

What it, what if, what if. Life IS full of wrong descions, and nasty neighbors who gossip and people who fail and mess up many times. Thomas Edision sucked 9,999 times before he finally nailed his light bulb idea, and just look how that one finally shined!

History is replete with super stars whose names would not be embedded in our heads or our history books had they not sucked (i.e. failed) innumerable times before they did whatever they did that made them notable.

The key is to make up your mind.

Understanding that set-backs, scraped knees and other miscellaneous boo-boo’s are just part of life, is a start, but here’s the reality.  When you don’t decide, you are really deciding. In other words, if you are trying to decide whether to open a flower shop or a bakery, and you just cant pick, you are, in a sense, making a choice. You have decided to stagnate; and that, my friends, can be the worse decision of all.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be sure, seek counsel, do research, or tweet your pals for input, but what I am saying is that you can dilly dally yourself silly over worrying what the “right” decision is. Ultimately, whatever you decide will be right.

So make up your mind. Decide something, even something small, and stick to it. Leaders in life are quick to decide and slow to change. Don’t spend major time over minor events. Make a decision.

Next, focus your undistracted energy and attention on that decsion. Focus on the positive anticipated outcome. Do not let worry or fear or the ‘what if’s” color your thinking. Your concentrated, focused attention can create worlds, deals and dreams if you let it.

Only YOU are in charge of where you focus your attention, and that decision is completely up to you. But this you need to know: if you decide what you want without wavering, and then you apply your attention to that desire without doubt, you will create that thing in your life.

Lemmee know how it goes.
ta ta for now,
Tamara

Like self-help? listen in to my Sacramento-based radio show that focuses quite a bit on personal and professional development. You can also listen to past pod-casts. www.InLoveWithSacto.com

“Your Heart’s Desire” by Sonia Choquette, Three Rivers Press, NY

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