I went to the gym one day to do my regular 30 minute run. As I stepped on the treadmill, someone had also started running next to me. I went on with my regular running routine, and towards the end of my 30 minutes, I noticed the person next to me running faster than I was and showed no signs of exhaustion. I couldn’t help but slow down a bit, so I could look at his display to see how far he had run, at what speed, and how many calories he had burnt. Not that it mattered, but I was curious as to how I was doing in comparison. As I tried to peek rather subtly, I swayed a bit to the left and almost tripped. I embarrassed myself in front of other treadmill-runners. So, I quickly recovered, and put on a straight face to show that I was not phased by my stupidity.
There was a lesson to learn in this. I realized that one of my problems to not achieving what I want is lack of focus. I tend to spend a significant amount of time ‘peeking’ into other people’s successful lives that I lose focus myself. A simple example is spending ample time on Facebook looking up what my friends have been up to. Profile browsing is usually followed by: ‘oh wow, so and so just got a great job’, or ‘so-and-so just passed this exam with flying colours.’ Sometimes, this ‘peeking’ goes beyond distraction and turns into dismay. When you are going through a hard time studying, you decide to log on Facebook for some distraction. What you will realize is that you will tend to check friends who are happy and who just posted pictures of them doing crazy fun things. At this moment, you will feel dismayed that your life is not easy, and that your friends have it all. Facebook creates this illusion that others are doing better than you, and this becomes especially pronounced when you are going through a hard time.
Close Facebook and open a word file. Write down what your short term and long term goals are. Your short term goal could be to pass an exam; your long term goal could be to get into engineering at so-and-so university. The next thing to do is to start a TO-DO list for your short and long term goals. This will become your reference, do not sway from it. Every time you accomplish something in the TO-DO list cross it out and feel proud that you are one step closer to your goal. This is a practical solution to keep you focused on the goal.
“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.” Brian Tracy
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