Give, Grow & Be Grateful

In today's episode, I'm going to discuss the importance of where we put our focus. I'm going to share some tactics that work for me to change my focus, and then we're going to finish by, of course, giving you a micro action to help you improve your focus going forward and maybe distract some of the negative or self-doubting thoughts that sometimes pop in your head.

I want to start with a little story I once heard, and pardon if the details are totally different than what it is out there somewhere, I'm not sure, but I remember hearing this story and thinking it was such a great analogy for the power of focus. There was this gentleman. He'd never been skydiving before, and he wanted to go skydiving. He was like mid-30s, heading up there, and was a little scared, of course, but he was trying to overcome his fear of heights and all this kind of stuff, and he wanted to do it through skydiving, so take this big leap.
Now, the day of, he got there. He got to the whole thing. They walked him through the instructions, and they did everything they needed to do. He got in the plane. He's going up there, and he's going to go solo because he's in like Mexico or something. I don't know. This story has some loopholes, obviously, but generally you have to go tandem in United States, but forever reason, wherever he was at, he was able to jump out of the plane solo.

They were giving him the lesson, and as they were going up, they were explaining to him, and they were showing him a map of where he was going to jump over. He's looking at this map and saying, "Okay, so I'm going to jump up here," and he has this target area that they want him to land over in this area. The instructor says, "Well, whatever you do, don't go towards the lake over here because you'll end up in the lake, and it's dangerous, and you could drown. Just don't go towards the lake." That's what he told him.

He's like, "All right." He kept telling himself, "Don't go towards the lake. Don't go towards the lake. Don't go towards the lake. Don't go towards the lake." He's like, "All right." He gets up there, and he gets to the side of the plane, and he is scared, and more than he's probably ever been in his life, but he takes the leap, and he jumps out of the plane. He said he looks down, and he feels this sense of joy feeling that he took the leap. He's like, "Oh." He's like, "This is amazing. I'm flying through the air," and he reminds himself. He's like, "Okay, now, don't go towards the lake."

He looks and tries to find the lake. He looks, and he sees the lake. He's like, "Okay. Don't go towards the lake. Don't go towards the lane." He's looking at the, continues to look at the lake, and he feels like moving closer towards the lake. He starts getting scared. He's like, "Okay, I can't go towards the lake. I can't ... " All he keeps focusing on is what he doesn't want to happen, but of course as he continues to focus on the lake, ultimately, where does he end up? He ends up in the lake.

Now, he was fine, and he ended up skydiving again, all that kind of stuff. He didn't drown. Everything was okay, and he enjoys skydiving to this day, so all is well, but he learned an important lesson from this. Focusing on what you don't want to do or what you don't want to happen is a sure way to make that happen. Focusing on what you don't want to do or what you don't want to happen is a sure way to make that happen.

For anyone who has kids, when you tell them, "Don't touch that," all they hear in their mind is "touch that." All they're focusing on is "touch that," so it's important the language that we use when we're thinking about where we put our focus. If we tell ourselves ... If we're focusing on achieving a goal, and I'm a, you know, Olympic doing the pole vault or something like that, then whatever I'm saying is, "Whatever I want to do, just don't hurt yourself or don't go too far,