How to stay focused and not give up

Having a plan and sticking to it is easier said than done.

I am the queen of distraction. So how do I focus on getting my work done when I’d rather be watching a Bollywood movie?

Easy – I have a goal. A goal that is important. In fact, it’s so important that getting it done is going to have a tremendous positive impact on society and the world in which we live. I am so passionate about my goal that working on it is a pleasure. So much so that taking time off to do other things is actually pretty hard for me.

In order to be successful, you have to have some idea of what you mean by success. How you define success is your goal.  I like to break goals down into primary goals and secondary goals.  My primary goals are fairly static.  Live life well and be happy. Try to make others so at the same time.

My secondary goals are way more flexible and they change over time. So – getting a degree was a goal for a while. Why get a degree? So I could live life well and be happy while trying to make the world a better place at the same time.

My current goal is to set up my business Humanist Learning Systems (https://humanistlearning.com) so I can get paid to teach people how to stop bullies using science. Why? So I can live life well and be happy while trying to make the world a better place at the same time.

See how secondary goals are in service to your primary goals? Whatever I am working on – is in service to my primary goal.

The mistake many people make is in not having a primary goal. Without that, your secondary goals have no grounding. You don’t have a good reason why you are doing what you are doing. If your goals are not grounded in a really strong reason why, then when, not if, you encounter problems, you have no real motivation or reason to keep working on them.

If you are having a problem staying focused, then consider rethinking your goals. If you need help – consider taking my course – Planning for Personal Success (https://humanistlearning.com/planforpersonalsuccess/) which will not only help you better define your primary goals, but it will also teach you how to be more strategic in your decision making along the way.

The Future

Why having a goal is important.

Having a positive vision of the future is important. I’m not in favor of unrealistic optimism, but it is important to have some idea of what you want to accomplish despite the realities of the present.

Without a goal to work towards and achieve, you have no reason or meaning in your life. I’m not saying, your goals need to be grand. Heck, there have been times in my life where just getting out to the mail box to get the mail was a major accomplishment. What I am saying is, having that as a goal, as stupid and minimal as it was, helped me to get through some rough times in my life. I might not be able to take on the whole world, but I could, at a minimum get out to the mail box. And that little victory helped me to reclaim my will to live.  I hadn’t given up. Not totally anyway.

Sometimes you just have to take it day by day. And that’s ok.  However, I find it best to have longer term goals for myself, larger projects to work towards. Projects that I can break up into smaller doable things.

For instance, my  - get myself to the mailbox today, was part of a larger goal to eventually reclaim my life and get on with living life fully. Every time I succeeded in getting to the mailbox, I was succeeding, in a small way, towards my larger goal.

Nowadays, I have big goals and big plans. These ideas and projects and goals keep me motivated and engaged and help me feel alive, even when things aren’t going as smoothly as I had hoped.

So think about the future. What do you want to accomplish? Now set out and do it! Just don’t forget to pick up your mail in the meantime. The small tasks are important too.