Tina Adams Blog

Here’s a focus secret revealed for you: When you pay attention, you gain interest.

Seriously.

The more attention you pay to a thing, the more interest you gain in it. And, when your interest is in achieving a specific goal, and that interest grows, your commitment to and intensity toward achieving that goal deepens and increases.

Attention…When I looked in the dictionary for the definition of “attention“, I just fell in love with this one: attention is “appropriate treatment”.

For the purposes of this report, attention means that when you “pay attention” to something, you give that something the serious care and tending, or appropriate treatment, that it deserves.

How much attention does your goal of success deserve…to you? The reason I ask is because you will give your success goal “serious care and tending” in an amount that is exactly equal to how much you “care” about achieving that goal…to how much you desire to achieve it.

If you’re not making progress, not giving your goal proper, serious care and attention, maybe you should re-evaluate your goal because it is entirely possible you don’t care about that goal as much as you thought you did.

Interest makes you want to have or buy something, do something, be something or some way, meet some condition, or become involved with something that makes progress or that the success of is important to you.

So, when you give your goal the serious care and tending, the appropriate treatment it deserves, you begin to want to successfully achieve that goal. This want, or desire, in turn pulls your focus back to the goal at hand.

Pay Attention and Gain Interest. Just like money in the bank. 

written by Tina Adams

Generally, you will not focus upon anything you care nothing about or have no interest in.

Lack of interest is your first “focus buster”.

For example: I have a keen interest in learning copywriting. That interest is what helped me to maintain my focus on copywriting long enough to write a sample sales pitch that won me the attention of a rather big name in the copywriting industry.

My husband has an interest in building custom cabinetry. However, he has absolutely NO interest in copywriting, and when I talk about it to him, his attention wanders, and his replies to me are vague and distracted and often end in “Wha…?”

It’s the same with me when he’s talking “dadoes” and “biscuit joints” and “planers”. Wha…? I have no interest in cabinetry, and he has no interest in
copywriting. Therefore, he does not focus on copywriting, and I do not focus on cabinetry.

The second thing that robs you of your ability to focus is distraction.

With six kids, distraction is a given in my house. I sit down at the computer, and here they come. “Mama, I wanna watch a movie!” Or go outside, or draw a picture, or…something.

And the phone rings. Mom wants to go shopping, or my SIL wants me to babysit (since I’ve become so good at tending to kids and all) or…something.

The TV is always on, each kid has a different music preference, therefore there are sometimes two or more radios playing in the background. And you know what? Calgon doesn’t always work. Besides, you can’t “compute” in the tub. That’s dangerous.

So I’ve had to learn to deal with distractions. I’ll show you how in just a bit, but first, let’s talk about how you can regain your focus if it goes awanderin’ because of some lack of interest on your part, or one of those distractions I talked about a minute ago.

written by Tina Adams

A Goal

 

A goal is a target. A goal is the end result you seek to achieve. A goal is the desired condition you wish to experience, the successful achievement of which will be the object of your focus.

 

Having a goal is knowing what you want. Do you know what you want? What you really want?

 

A year or so back, I decided I wanted to get the attention of a well-known copywriter. I had emailed him time and time again, but he never answered my emails. Talk about frustrating!

 

What did I do? I changed my goal…it went from “get the attention of this copywriter” to “get a response from this copywriter“. Did it work? You bet. I knew exactly what I wanted, why I wanted it, and I did what I had to do to get it.

 

The first thing I had to do, however, was to get specific. I had to be absolutely, positively clear about what I wanted.

 

A Strong Motive

 

The next thing you need in order to make focus work for you is a strong motive.

 

Almost everyone you ask thinks “success” starts with nothing more than having goals. While I agree that goals are necessary, I have to say that success does not start with goal alone. You also have to have a motive.

 

A goal without motive is like faith without works: useless. Why? Because most people will not commit to the successful achievement of any goal without a strong motive for doing so.

 

Motive is a required element of successful achievement. Why do I say that? Just think about it. You aren’t going to go after anything without a sound, solid reason for doing so, a reason that is important to you…are you?

 

Motive is what kicks you into action.

 

Motive is the emotion or intention by which all action is driven. It is your incentive to do a thing. It is an inducement, the thing that attracts you, that tempts you, to follow some specific course of action or plan.

 

That’s why I say you’ve gotta have a sound, clear-cut, powerful, convincing, compelling motive in back of your goal…a solid reason why you plan to do something in order to move forward.

 

Motive is purpose. Motive is the reason why. Motive gives you a reason to focus.

 

There can be no goal accomplished without a motive because each step along the path to achieving your goal is an intention, and behind every intention is “intent”, or motive.

 

Therefore, you must consider “why” you desire to have a thing, or to accomplish a task. What is the reason behind the desire? The need? The intent? That reason is your “motive”.

 

By giving yourself a solid reason why you desire to focus on a thing, a goal, or a target, you give yourself a strong motivation to keep working toward the achievement of that goal.

 

You become self-motivated…and a strong motive forces commitment, which is another required element of successful achievement.

 

So what motivated me to get a response from the copywriter?

 

My frustration with his continued silence motivated me. I became determined to win a response from him. I was committed to the goal.

 

But to do that, I knew I needed something more than just a wish and a prayer. I needed to do more than send him an email. I knew I would have to do better than, “I love your work, and I wanna learn from you.”

 

What did I need? In order to achieve my goal to get a response from this guy, I knew I needed a plan. And that’s also the next thing you need in order for focus to work for you.

 

A Plan

 

Intention is planning. Intention is detailing a course of action that you plan to follow through to the end. It is something you mean to do.

 

The achievement of a goal, or the reaching of a target, is most efficiently done through the following of a plan or definite course of action.

 

If you want something, but have no idea how to get it, what good does that do you? None.

 

In order to get what you want, you first need a workable, feasible plan to follow for getting that something you desire. You need a plan of action.

 

Setting out on a journey to a place you’ve never been, you will generally have a very vital tool at your side: a map. So, too, do you need a “map” of sorts, when working toward the achievement of a goal.

 

That map is your “plan of action”, a written guide that leads you step-by-step toward the successful achievement of your goal.

 

What follows, though very simplistic and basic in form, is a definite, concrete “plan of action”. Just fill it in with your own details, and you’re set…

 

Step 1: First you will do this.
Step 2: Then, you will do that.
Step 3: Next, you will do something else, and finally…
Step 4: You will take the last step needed to reach your goal.

 

My plan of action for getting a response from the copywriter:

 

Step 1: Re-read his stuff to get to know as much about him as I could from his writings

 

Step 2: Decide what would (hopefully!), based on what I had learned about this guy, push enough of his buttons to get him to respond to me

 

Step 3: Craft a sales letter “copywriting sample”, using what I had learned about him, offering something that would appeal to him…as a buyer, but

 

Step 4. Send it to him, asking for his opinions regarding the strength of my copy rather than as a sales letter trying to get him to buy

 

Commitment

 

Once you have your goal, and your motive, your “reason why” you intend to attempt to achieve that goal, and once you have hammered out a plan of action to follow for successfully achieving your goal, you must stay loyal to the goal.

 

You must be devoted to the cause, determined to see the plan through to the end, no matter what. This is commitment.

 

These four things: Goal, Motive, Plan, and Commitment are essential to, and together, help create focus.

written by Tina Adams

Probably the most painful, most denied truth of all the truths to be revealed in this report is this one: Nothing and no one can stop you from focusing on anything under the sun, if that is truly what you want to do.

You do that yourself.

YOU decide whether or not to stick with what you’re doing, or to move on to something else, and you do so according to your own true priorities.

“Will power has nothing to do with it. It’s all about want power. Whatever you want the most, has the power. That’s where you’ll focus your attention and efforts.”

I learned this lesson the hard way.

I was forever a victim of lack of focus, until I realized I could choose…that I had been choosing all along. I discovered the blame for my lost focus does not belong to another, but rather, could be placed only on myself, on my own lack of discipline and self-control.

As hard as that truth may be for you to swallow (I do know how hard it is, remember, I’ve “been there and done that”), let me assure you here and now that there is a way to regain your focus, to reach out and grab the necessary discipline needed to maintain your focus, and in this report, I will explain one method for doing just that.

Focus really can be attained, and then maintained. What it all comes down to is whether or not you really “want” to focus…to what your true priorities are.

If you truly desire to achieve a specific goal, or to hit a definite target, or to have or become your ideal, and you know why you desire it, then you already have everything you need to successfully achieve the goal, to hit the target, to have or become the ideal you desire to be, have, do.

All that remains is for you to decide, right now, deep down within yourself, to focus upon the getting, doing, and/or being of it. Because once you’ve made the decision to focus on something, you can then use what you learn in this report as a guide to train yourself to maintain that focus.

“Align your goals with your deepest desires, eliminate distractions, and nothing will be able to stop you from achieving anything you want.”

written by Tina Adams

Focus helps create balance and control.

Ellen Ostrow, author of Setting Boundaries In The Ivory Tower, says,

“Satisfaction with life and with work, as well as emotional and physical well-being, are significantly influenced by the extent to which we believe we have some control of the events in our lives.”

Maintaining focus on your goals gives you a feeling of control over the success or failure of the achievement of those goals. And when you do maintain focus, you will achieve success more times than you would were you not maintaining focus on achieving your goals.

written by Tina Adams