Have you ever set out, with great enthusiasm, on the path to achieving an important goal, only to find after several months or even years that you are not much closer to your goal?

Perhaps you decided to make money by joining the Internet gold rush, but after several years you now find yourself in credit card debt and wonder what happened.

What happened? A distraction probably occurred and she couldn’t get past the distractions long enough to focus on his target. Or she may have just gotten tired of working hard with little to show for it.

You may have become discouraged by the lack of results and your self-image has changed from being a winner to being a loser. You no longer felt like someone who could triumph over difficulties.

However, most of the above problems can be overcome if we take control and take steps to avoid distractions. If we keep working long enough with a renewed focus, we’ll start to see some results, and our self-image will change along with our success.

Focus and hard work can help you get good at something and being good at something is a great motivator. Of course, you may need to focus on the activity or skill in question for half a year or more, and work hard for at least an hour a day for the same amount of time.

Hopefully after two to three months you will start to enjoy the increasing level of skill you are achieving and this will motivate you to push yourself even harder and focus on further developing your skills.

However, the universe or some of the people in it seem hell-bent on avoiding focus. All kinds of distractions are thrown at the person who is trying to focus on their main priorities in life.

When I was in school, I worked hard in all subjects except two or three, where I was too easily distracted by things like the following:

In one lesson, students in the front rows were occasionally showered with spit by an enthusiastic teacher. This made concentration difficult.

In another lesson, he wasted time discussing the rumor that the teacher had a cork replacement for part of his butt. Part of his back was rumored to have been shot off in WWII tank warfare.

In another lesson, I sat next to a friend telling jokes while the teacher tried to explain mysterious things about the square on the side of the hypotenuse.

If I’d had more common sense, I wouldn’t have sat in the front row of the enthusiastic teacher and worried too much about that cork butt!

I would also have avoided the company of my talkative friend in math lessons. In other words, I would have had the wisdom to concentrate or focus my mind on the subjects we were supposed to study.

Grafting or hard work often leads to increased motivation. The more you work at something, the better you will be and the more you can enjoy the respect and admiration of others. Once you have that respect, you don’t want to lose it, and you’ll be motivated to work even harder to keep it.

Most of us want to work less to achieve our goals. We want to become experts who can achieve goals without apparent effort. But to achieve this state we will probably have to work more to begin with!

We may have to get up early or stay up late and get things done, but once the ball is rolling, it takes less effort to keep it rolling.

The abundance school of thought is rightly very popular today. It teaches that if you think straight and tune your subconscious mind to the power of the universe, you will achieve your goals with much less work and effort.

However, even if you become proficient in abundance thinking, there is always a need at some point for effort and hard work of some kind. There will always come a time when you have to force yourself to work on what you don’t feel like doing.

You may not feel like listening to those tapes that will program your mind into believing that you are already rich and successful. Then you will have to make an effort to put aside the distractions and find a place where you can be quiet and listen for half an hour or more to the tape in question. This is not easy.

If you live with a family, it’s downright difficult!

Even if you live alone, you’ll need to turn off the TV, unplug the phone, and pay attention while the tape is playing! Even after you’ve controlled what you think, there are actions to take. This is work even if it is less work.

I notice that the gurus, who make millions and then tell you how easy it was, seem to do vast amounts of hard work themselves. Perhaps they have become so used to doing this work that they began to believe that the work involved was minimal.

Possibly, the pleasure of the rewards that have followed their hard work has made them forget the harsh routine they endured before the rewards began to arrive.

Once you’ve put the focus, time, and effort into developing the skills you want, you won’t need as much motivation as you used to.

Your own ability, self-confidence and new self-image will become a self-renewing source of inspiration and motivation. You will be able to relax more, and relaxed effort is often more productive than tense effort.

You will have an image of yourself as a hard worker capable of resisting all kinds of distractions and overcoming all kinds of problems and obstacles.

So then; take urgent steps to avoid distractions, even if it means losing a friend, upsetting a relative, or upsetting a teacher.

When I started martial arts, I trained Kung Fu in the morning and Karate in the afternoon. My instructors did not approve of this arrangement.

My Kung Fu teacher just looked down on me when I told him that I was practicing Karate as well as Kung Fu. My karate teachers told me not to chase two rabbits because he wouldn’t catch any of them.

They were right. I finally moved on to Taekwondo!

Be willing to work very hard and focused until you see some results and start to believe in yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson makes clear the importance of work:

“Without ambition one does not start anything. Without work one does not finish anything. The prize is not sent to you. You have to win it.”

If you can focus on a project until it’s complete, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and develop the kind of confidence and determination that will help you focus on your next project and get it done, too.

Aim high so that your new image of yourself is that of a winner who is the best in class in everything you do. This will create a clear distinction between the old image you have of yourself and the new, victorious image you have of yourself.

This will clearly mean working harder than everyone else. Get up early or stay late if you have to and do more than you’re asked to do instead of complaining about how much you have to do.

Realize that once you believe in yourself and have a new image of yourself, you will be able to work harder and smarter. You will feel that you can handle anything and this will allow you to work with relaxed energy. At this point, everything you do will seem to have a momentum of its own.

You will no longer need as much motivation because you will know what it feels like to be a success instead of a failure. The memory of that feeling may be enough to motivate you for years to come.

Your new image of yourself will make you less likely to back down and lose motivation.

Dr. Joyce Brothers, a psychologist, has stressed the importance of a strong self-image in achieving success:

“An individual’s self-concept is at the core of their personality. It affects all aspects of human behaviour: the ability to learn, the ability to grow and change. A strong and positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success in the life. “

Add focus and hard work to that strong self-image, and you have a recipe for success—and the motivation that usually accompanies success.

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