Tracy - Bulls-eye: the power of focus

Copyright 2015 by Brian Tracy

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INTRODUCTION

We are living in the greatest time in all of human history. Despite short-term economic fluctuations, there have never been more opportunities for more people to achieve more of their goals than there are today.

The fact is, you have more potential than you could use in a hundred lifetimes. And the more of your potential you use, the more potential becomes available to you. The more you learn, the more you can learn.

There is no reason for you not to be earning twice as much as you are today, or even five times and ten times as much. There are people all around you who are no more talented than you, and no better educated, who are already earning this much. And what others have done, you can do as well, if you just learn how.

You have the ability right now to achieve more than you ever have before, as long as you incorporate three essential mental skills into your life: clarity, focus, and concentration.

You must become absolutely clear about who you are and what you want. You must focus on your most important goals and activities. And finally, you must concentrate single-mindedly until you have completed your tasks and achieved your goals.

These are the three essential requirements practiced by all successful people throughout history to accomplish extraordinary results and great achievements.

Fortunately, each of these skills is learnable with practice and repetition. Just as you can develop your physical muscles through hard work and concentration, you can develop your mental muscles through continuous repetition.

Your aim in life should be to achieve all of the wonderful things that are possible for you. You want to score bigto hit the bulls-eye , the center of the targetin everything you do.

In the pages ahead, youll learn how to unleash your powers for success and accomplish more in the next few months than many people do in a lifetime. Lets begin.

ACCOMPLISH more in the next few months than many people do in a lifetime.

CHAPTER ONE

On November 13, 1899, a remarkable man named Howard Hill was born in Pennsylvania. He enjoyed sports and was excellent at baseball and football. He soon realized that, although he was talented in those sports, he did not have the ability to excel and become a champion player. So he turned his attention to archery , a sport that was not as competitive as others.

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.

With this skill, he became the greatest hunter with a bow and arrow in history. 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 beaten him with a bow and arrow with your current skill level as long as one condition existed: he couldnt see the target.

Imagine Howard Hill went to an archery competitionbut 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 cant hit a target that you cant see.

It is the same with you. Unless you are perfectly clear about what you wantyour target, and the bulls-eye on that targetyou will never be able to win championships in the great contest of life.

According to Lewis Carroll, If you dont know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Thomas Carlyle once wrote, A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the roughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road.

The greater clarity you have about who you areyour likes and dislikes, what you want, your goals and objectivesthe greater progress you will make under even the most difficult of circumstances.

What is the most valuable and important work you do? When I first heard this question, I was not sure about the answer. Then I discovered that it was thinking!

Thinking is the highest paid work you do because of the concept of consequences. This concept says that something is important to the degree to which it has serious potential consequences. Something is unimportant to the degree to which it has minor or no potential consequences.

In time management, one of the best ways to set priorities is to think about the likely consequences of doing or not doing a task. Successful people are those who spend most of their time on tasks and activities that have big potential consequences. They can have a real impact or influence on the future. Unsuccessful, unhappy people instead spend most of their time doing things of little or no consequence at all.

Of all the things you can do, the quality of your thinking has the greatest consequences of all. The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your choices and decisions. Your choices and decisions determine the actions you take. And the actions you take determine the quality and quantity of your results.

In life and work, results are everything. In the final analysis, you will be judged by the results you accomplish, for yourself and others. And the quality of your results will largely be determined by the quality of the thinking that preceded the actions you take.

Your goal should be to achieve the highest levels of success possible in every area of your life that is important to you. Fortunately, you have tremendous control over what happens to you and what you accomplish. By doing certain things in a certain way, over and over, you can dramatically increase the likelihood that you are going to enjoy high income and live an exciting life. There is a much higher probability that you will hit your personal bulls-eyes.

Here is an example. The Law of Probability says there is a probability that everything can happen and that these probabilities can be calculated with tremendous accuracy. One of the greatest discoveries is that you can increase the probability of success in any field by doing more of the things other successful people do.