Focus on the goals, not to see obstacles. Let me explain why?
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”
–Henry Ford.
Suppose you will have to reach a place safely within a time-frame. And you have a well-maintained car with you. You know the kilometers you will have to drive your car safely within the time frame. So you know how fast you will drive your vehicle. You also see road conditions and time frames. On the overall level, you will undoubtedly go for safe driving. Am I right?
Now you have a goal to reach a place within a time frame. If you break up this goal, then you have three goals in front of you.
- Average driving speed: You have calculated it by dividing kilometers by time in hours to reach.
- Time frame: Suppose you need to reach by 10:00 PM. And you know your average speed. So you know when to start your journey.
- Safe driving: You will follow the safe driving rules.
If you want to achieve these goals, you will have to consider these aspects also.
- Road conditions: You don’t go for rough driving in poor road conditions.
- Weather conditions: If it rains, you drive slow.
- Your physical and mental conditions: Suppose you did not sleep much at night. So adjust your driving speed and take rest from time to time.
Any achievement needs your focussed eye and mind. By any chance, if you lose sight of any of the above goals, your attention diverts from the targets. Let me explain what happens when you lose focus on the goals one by one.
Focus on the goal of driving speed
You know that you will need to drive your car at a minimum speed of 80 km/h.
If you now drive your car at 60 km/h, you will not reach your place within the time frame. It won’t serve your purpose too.
If you drive your car at 100 km/hour, then you may fail to achieve your safe driving goal.
In both cases, you lose focus of the goals. So you see obstacles. Not reaching safely within the time frame frightens you.
The goal of the time frame
You know that you will need to drive your car at 80 Km/hour, not at 60 or 100 Km/h, and reach your place within 10:00 PM. If you fail to do so, you won’t achieve your goals. Let me tell you why.
You don’t reach your place within 10:00 PM when you drive at 60 km/h. It won’t serve your purpose too.
When you drive at 100 km/h, knowing fully the road conditions, weather conditions, and so on, then you lose focus on the safe driving target. It’s for sure, the obstacle of unsafe driving frightens you.
The goal of safe driving
You also know that you will need to reach your place safely within 10:00 PM. When you don’t consider road conditions, weather conditions, and so on and you drive at 100 km/ h, then you won’t focus on your goal of safe driving. Instead, you focus on time pressure.
What you focus on grows. So obstacles growing in size frighten you. Once fear grips you, you fail to achieve your goals. So never keep your eyes off your goals. Focus on your goals.