What You Focus On Expands

I will guarantee you that every single champion in all arena of life will say that "focus" is paramount to their success. Unfortunately for me, it was one thing I severely lacked in my life. Fortunately,  I am a work-in-progress. One of the quote that has impacted me so much in the past year is what I always hear T. Harv Eker say, "what you focus on expands". Whatever the dominant thoughts in your mind are, will dominate your physical reality. Very simply, the more you focus on anything, the truer it becomes.

It is very typical to hear "Emergency Funds" in most envelope budgeting system. For years, we focused our budgeting in the realm of emergency funds. Among the first step in Dave Ramsey's envelope system is to complete the first $1000 on the emergency funds right away. There's no arguing that preparing for the rainy days is a smart and responsible thing to do. However, because we focused on saving for emergencies, that's exactly what we keep getting. Either a car breaks down or an unexpected bill arrives just in time for our newly-funded emergency funds to get depleted again. Have you ever had that situation when you thought you could get ahead of your savings account only to find something very important to spend it on? That was us!

After realizing that what we focus on truly expands, we started shifting our focus. We graduated from Dave Ramsey's envelope system to T. Harv Eker's Money Jar. The money jars represents the envelopes, only more visual. The only difference is that the most important of the jars is the "FFA" or "Financial Freedom Account". Part of the jar is the "contingency jar" as I try to avoid the word emergency. The tiny shift of focus has worked magic for us allowing us to become financially independent. Its amazing how an exact amount of money managed with a slightly different focus can have a better result. Guess what, we definitely had fewer emergencies.

Truly understanding that whatever your focusing on expands is empowering. Sad to say my focus towards my life vision isn't exactly laser light today. I am distracted even more now with more wonderful opportunities coming my way. With my innate enthusiasm, its easy to loose focus. The good news is that both focus  and success are learn-able skills. So I am going back to the very basic by forming the right habits.

Since I want to inculcate success in my habit, I've decided to start a success journal. This allows me to focus on being successful on a daily basis. At the end of each day, I will right down successes I've had that day and at the end of each week, I will write down 2 major successes. Journaling about my small daily successes not only helps me focus on being successful, it also motivates me to do something worth celebrating. Today is day 5 of my success journal. I taught an SAT class, something I've been doing for years now but because of my success journal, I prepared myself better and taught the class with a higher energy just so I can celebrate this success today. Notice how a shift of focus can make a huge impact. Same activity, different focus, different result.

I encourage you to observe yourself and your dominant thoughts in the next few days. Pinpoint your key focuses and examine if it is supporting your vision and goals in life. How do you know if your focus is not supportive to your goals? Its simple--look at your results. Are you anywhere close to your goals? If not, maybe its time to shift to a better perspective. Shift your focus from focusing on the  problem to the solution itself. Use helpful tools like journaling and the jar system.

Truly understanding the power of focus is liberating. Within one year of shifting our focus to a more solution-oriented perspective, Marlon and I have accomplished things we only dreamed of years ago. We now know to channel our energy and focus only on things that supports our vision. Its amazing how a small shift of focus from "emergency funds" to "financial freedom funds" changed our lives exponentially.