Monday, September 28, 2015

Focused Leadership Part 2, The Power Of “No”


The key to focus can be found in keeping it simple. “No” can be your greatest asset during the journey to a more focused life. Every “Yes” you make must be defended by a thousand “No’s.” Without the ability to say no, you will never allow yourself the focus and dedication needed to truly accomplish great work. Always use deep thought before making any “Yes” commitments. Ask yourself will this new commitment get me close to my ultimate goal?
            Remember great leaders follow through on the little things, if your day is full of saying nothing but “Yes” you will be setting it up for failure.

No, the most under used word in our vocabulary
Try this experiment, start the day with this objective in mind. Count the number of times you say, “Yes” or agree to do something, be very precise and write it down. Now count the amount of times you tell someone, “No.” To a few of you this will be an eye opener and clearly one sided, though I think most of us already realize we agree upon way to many things each day, the worst part is we know deep down we will never be able to give each agreement the time and focus needed to do great work. I don’t know about you but I’m not striving to be an OK leader, I want to be a Great Leader. That being said we will need to be great in the small things, this includes keeping all of our promises.

The efficiency of “No”
We all are given the same amount of hours each day, why is it that some of us get so much done and others do not? The very successful among us have found the efficiency that comes with the word “No”. Don’t get me wrong walking around all day just saying no over and over is not the key to success and most likely will ruin your social life. Before you can start to use the power of “No” you must make a list of goals you want to achieve and make them as clear as possible, you will need to be very specific while creating this list, the more clearly you can see you goals the better. I suggest you make this list early in the morning in a time of peace, and before others get up. For suggestions on how to do that refer to my post “Great Leadership Begins with Great Focus.”
            No can be an important tool for refining Diligence, after you define your goals. “No” can allow you to place your time where it is best spent, this will allow you to achieve the most in return. Diligence is a major key to success in my mind, you can find more on this subject in my post “Diligence They Key to Success?.”
           
The True Power of Focus
What is the one thing you can do today that would make life easier and help you get the results you want to achieve your goals? Ask you brain this question everyday. The key here is to keep it simple!
Whatever aspect of your life you want to improve, look and find the sweet spot or the target area that will give you the most return on your time, by doing this you will see huge returns on your efforts, so much so it will eventually bleed over into many other areas of your life. In the beginning progress may seem small but over time you will be amazed at what you can achieve. I recently read about the domino effect and I believe it is a great illustration of this phenomenon, and gives you a way to picture and realize your true potential.
I’m sure everyone has held a domino in their life and can picture the size of one. A domino has the ability of knocking over another domino 50% larger than itself, this may not seem impressive at first, but when you think about it if you keep that up by the time you reach the 23rd domino you will be knocking a domino over the size of the Eiffel Tower! The 31st domino will reach the size greater than Mount Everest, and the 53rd domino would be tall enough to reach the moon. Now think about your effort and what it can do in the long run, it should give you goose bumps!

Question of the Day
What could you put more focus on to improve you life tremendously? What steps will you take to ensure this happens?


“See You At The Top”
Tom McConnell
@MGN_CEO On Twitter
TomMcConnell@mentalgiantsnutrition.com

As always a video by Eddie Pinero. Check out his website YourWorldWithin, you won't be disappointed.

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