Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, and the Law of Attraction

Are you happy with the status of your bank account? On your unfailing good health and lean, trim figure? Or on the delight you feel when you sit down to dinner with your adolescent children? On your recent wonderful holiday, as well as the even more exciting one you have planned for the near future? Alternatively, you might focus on how positive you feel about yourself and all the things you’re creating and doing in your life.

What you think determines who you are.

I can almost hear you spluttering. Is this some sort of romantic thinking? Where do these concepts originate? I don’t know anybody who believes that.

That is right. The majority of people do not think in this manner. In reality, the majority of people believe the exact opposite. The majority of people focus on all of the negative aspects of their lives. The majority of people spend a significant amount of time worrying about their problems and pondering solutions. The majority of people consider all of the things that could go wrong with their lives, as well as the people or incidents that stand in their way of success. Most people think about whatever it is that bothers them over and over again, believing that this is the only way to fix the problem. The truth is that most people devote so much of their conscious and subconscious energy to what they are afraid of, what worries them, what stresses them, or what they don’t know how to overcome that they devote all or most of their conscious and subconscious energy to a negative outcome.

What Kind of Result Do You Desire?

Consider this: the more attention you devote to one thing, the greater the likelihood of that thing manifesting. You will almost certainly accomplish the target of earning a university degree if you focus on it. You will most likely achieve your target if you focus on writing a novel. But what if you keep telling yourself that you’re not smart enough to pass the exams or that you’re actually incapable of knowing the course material when you’re focusing on getting your degree? What happens if you keep telling yourself that you’ll never be able to write well or that your story isn’t good enough when you’re focusing on writing the book? You’re obviously weakening yourself and sabotaging your goals. Note that you may also be producing a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Focus and Intention

So, what are your options? Let’s assume you’re sure you’re not smart enough to pass the exams. Or that you’re convinced you’ll never be able to write well. You have an aim in mind, which is to earn a degree or publish a novel. Your mission is to ensure that your thoughts are consistent with – or deliberately focused on – that target in order to concentrate on it. As a consequence, if your thoughts wander away from your target and into negative territory, you must bring them back into the realm of positive outcomes.

Goals and Fears

However, focusing on a desired goal is difficult for one simple reason: we are far too accustomed to focusing on the goals’ fears (I am so afraid I will never have a great relationship, rather than imagining in your minds eye the great relationship in the way you want it to be; or how will I ever get that promotion rather than imagining in your minds eye the way you will feel when you do get the hoped-for promotion).

How to Focus

So how do you focus? When you worry, and your mind goes around and around a problem, or some stress in your life, you are very focused on the problem. It is exactly at that moment that you need to re-focus and see your desired goal or outcome in your minds eye, rather than all the problems you associate with it. The more time you spend on whatever it is you want to have in your life whether this is a material goal, a professional goal, a relational goal, or whatever makes absolutely no difference, the more you will be in a position to achieve it, to attract it into your life. The more you think and focus on that goal in a positive way, the more you allow yourself to “feel” the way you would feel if you already had the results, the more likely it is that you will attain your desired outcome. This is the Law of Attraction.

Intentionally Re-focus on the Positive

Remember that thinking about the desired outcome is the same as concentrating on the opposite of what you want, so become acutely conscious of all your thoughts and steer them in the right direction. Do this any time you find yourself thinking about the negative version of your goals before it becomes second nature to consciously refocus on the positive. If you practice this habit every day, it will become more and more normal, and you will soon notice that not only do the majority of your thoughts and emotions concentrate on the positive direction of your goals, but that those positive goals become part of your life.

As A Man Thinketh

Sign up for my free monthly e-zine to receive a complimentary copy of James Allen’s classic As A Man Thinketh in e-book format, and learn how your thoughts and emotions lead in immeasurable ways to the realization of your goals and dreams. How they weave the fabric of your life together. And how taking control of your thoughts and emotions, as well as concentrating with clear purpose, will help you live a life that is very different from the one you currently have.