The power of focus

I have previously written:

I absolutely guarantee that if you focus on your dream – THAT YOU REALLY FOCUS ON YOUR DREAM, that you believe in your dream – THAT YOU REALLY BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAM with total confidence – that you are committed to your dream – THAT YOU ARE REALLY COMMITTED TO YOUR DREAM – that if you do all this, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO YOUR DREAM.

What exactly did I mean by “focus”? What is the focus about? Why is concentration so powerful? Baseball gives us many examples of the importance of staying focused. One of those many examples is Hall of Famer Steve Carlton.

Steve Carlton, for those of you who don’t know his identity, was a pitcher who spent most of his 24-year career with the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1972, Steve was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Phillies and proceeded to win 27 games for the hapless bottom-place Phillies, whose total by Carlton accounted for almost half of the hapless Phillies’ grand total of 59 wins. That year, he won the National League Cy Young Award, which is baseball’s award for the best pitcher in the league. Steve Carlton proceeded to spend the off-season that year touring catering and doing endorsements and giving interviews and so on and so forth. The 1973 season saw a setback for the left-handed pitcher. He went from 27 wins to 20 losses! His effectiveness of him skyrocketed! What happened? Steve Carlton, in his own words, “lost” his “focus.” He didn’t focus on his job, which was throwing baseballs and winning games.

However, in hindsight, 1973 turned out to be a blessing for Steve. He went to work on his attitude. He decided that worrying about reporters and backups was a distraction from his work. They were a distraction to his career and if he allowed them to continue, these distractions would divert him from the task at hand and ultimately reduce him to mediocrity. So instead he focused only on his physical conditioning and baseball. He avoided entertaining reporters and meaningless banquets. Reporters tended to describe him as aloof, a selfish player who refused to talk to them. Fans cheered his release, but didn’t take it personally, as he stayed away from most autograph opportunities and speaking engagements. Steve Carlton, however, knew the secret. He knew his mind had to be on shooting if he was going to achieve the shooting success he wanted, if he was going to be able to further his dream.

Did Steve Carlton EMPOWER YOUR DREAM? Judge for yourself. After that disastrous ’73 season, Steve Carlton proceeded over the next 14 seasons to amass a career win total of 329, a career total of 4,136 strikeouts (the most ever by a left-handed pitcher), the second for life only behind the legendary Nolan Ryan. He became the first pitcher in Major League Baseball history to win 4 CY Young Awards. In his first year of eligibility, Steve Carlton was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Steve Carlton EMPOWERED HER DREAM of him by focusing his attention on his dream.

That’s what focus is all about. It is a mind set on your dream. According to well-known motivational speaker and late-night TV infomercial star Anthony Robbins, 80% of success is figuring out why you’re successful, directing your focus from it. Robbins claims that the “how” to succeed, the actual tasks, are only 20% of the equation. That’s what Steve Carlton learned and that’s what each of us needs to understand and employ. Eliminate distractions. Put them aside. Decide ahead of time what your desired outcome is and keep THAT the only thing on your mind. The “how” will come. Don’t worry about the “how”. The “how” is not important. The actual steps to the realization of your dream will unfold on their own if your focus is on your dream and nowhere else. Missouri is known as the “Show Me State”. Talk to a citizen of Missouri and he will tell you to show him first and then he will believe. I dare say teach me first is a formula for defeat. Show me first is a formula for losing.

Believe and then IT WILL HAPPEN. BELIEF comes first. And belief develops through focus. Steve Carlton’s teammate on the 1980 world champion Phillies, Tug McGraw, coined a phrase for the 1973 National League pennant-winning New York Mets: “You’ve got to believe!” Tug McGraw didn’t say, “We’re going to win and then we’ll believe.” Tug said, “You have to believe!” In other words, he instructed Mets fans, and then Phillies fans, focus on winning and we will win! Ya Gotta Believe was and is more than a slogan. Ya Gotta Believe is a way of life. And the belief I speak of is not a hope. It’s not a “want”. The belief I am talking about is a true and committed belief that there is absolutely no way your dream will not come true. The belief I am talking about is a true and committed belief that your dream IS a reality!

Do you want to enhance your dream? If you answered yes, then you need to focus on that dream and understand that there is no other reality. You put your eyes and your mind on that dream and the reality of that dream and allow absolutely nothing to distract you from the physical realization of your reality. That is focus. And “focus” WILL POWER YOUR DREAM!