adminmotivational pieces.
In this piece, Mucheriwa addresses an issue crucial to us all since it can be very easy to be stuck in one place like the children of Israel, who had to be told by the Lord to move on into the Promised Land, since they had stayed too long at Mount Horeb.
Whether it’s marriage, at work, business, school, and other activities, there is need to reflect and see how best to move on, instead of getting stuck to the same old things we normally call the good old days.
If you hold a magnifying glass in the sun and focus its rays on a piece of paper, it is amazing how quickly the rays will burn the paper.
If the same paper is exposed to the same sun without the magnifying glass the result will be different. What causes the difference? Focus.
I am sure you have admired many people who are endowed with marvellous talents but wondered why most of them did not rise to prominence and remained stuck in mediocrity.
The simple answer may be the one above. Talent, there is no doubt is in abundance but a lack of a clear goal and an intended future impinges upon people’s ability to harness talent and transmute it into something significant and beneficial to mankind.
One has to have in their mind what it is exactly who they want to be and what it is they want to achieve. Remember the order is Be, Do and Have. You first become, then do and finally have what you desire.
As long as we do not concentrate and organise our talents in terms of action there will always be a huge gap between talent and achievement. Much of jealousy and backbiting that goes around is an upshot of this gap.
When people fail to live up to their ideals they tend to be jealousy of those who succeed and concentrate on destroying rather than encouraging them. You can have amazing abilities and talents but as long as your rays are scattered in all directions your potential will not be transmuted into notable achievement.
Apart from enabling you to achieve your goal, focusing saves you a lot of time. What takes others several years to achieve, you can attain in an extraordinarily short space of time.
The potential that you have is more than the sun’s rays. Only if you focus on your chosen career and concentrate on perfecting your skills in that area.
If you want to learn a new skill – as all skills are learnable; concentrate all your energies on that particular skill and you will be amazed by the length of time it will take you to master the skill.
Napoleon Bonaparte contributed in changing the face of Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century by his military brilliance.
The historians ascribed much of his success to his ability to focus and concentrate on his enemy’s weakest point. According to one historian, “He would gather his soldiers, hurl them upon the enemy and launch an onslaught like an avalanche until he made a breach.”
He was said to be an enigma to his contemporaries mainly because he knew how to focus and what to focus on.
Imagine, with all that you know, if you focus on building that business, starting that organisation, putting together that band, writing that book, making that trip, how you will shut the yelling voices of the naysayers.
The Bible has a story of David and Goliath confronting each other in battle. David was rather a small boy but possessed an extraordinary skill and ability to engage in big battles.
David’s skill enabled him to take on particularly fast moving animals, which meant that giant Goliath relatively slow in movement presented an incredible opportunity for David to notice a weak point to capitalise on.
Regardless of the heavy combat worn by Goliath, David concentrated on his weakest point, which was his slow speed and forehead’s exposition.
You are faced with many obstacles that stubbornly stand in your path to stall the wheels of your progress but those challenges always have their weak points.
It is your duty then to find those weak points, focus on them and thereon capitalise. Concentrate on attacking those weak points, at the same time working on improving your areas of strength and see how you will surmount your obstacles.
The same concept applies even in selling. Concentrate on the prospect’s greatest need and look for ways to address those. Provide genuine goods that will surely meet the prospect’s need.
Highlight their need to them and show them how your product is going to provide the solution and meet the need. Most sellers try to make lies fascinating whereas true selling is making the truth fascinating.
Vilfredo Pareto’s Pareto Principle mainly applied in Time management states that 20 percent of what we do account for 80 percent of what we achieve.
In business, 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of sales. It might not be exactly 80/20 but the idea is to focus on the most important things.
Jim Rohn said in a space of ten years, a man has bought two tonnes of doughnuts and only two books. Both books and doughnuts are good but the problem is, too much money and resources have been allocated to the wrong thing.
Too much time is usually allocated to fruitless exercises. One guy is spending many days sleeping. Another is spending time that should be allocated to productive thinking in a state of drunkenness.
One writer called it a chasing after the wind. Think of the areas of your life that you certainly know will contribute significantly towards your progression and focus on those.
How effective can you become if you increase your concentration on those tasks? Conversely, 80 percent of your troubles emanate from and are contributed by 20 percent of your actions which are your bad habits.
Mucheriwa writes from his website http://www.motivcenter.com/ and can be contacted on [email protected] or skype:ozymucheri
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter