Intentional Focus Your Happiness Your Success And The Law Of Attraction

Title:
Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, and the Law of Attraction

Word Count:
1041

Summary:
What have you been focusing on lately? Most people spend much of their time thinking about their problems and wondering how they are going to solve them. The more you give your energy to one thing, the more that thing has a possibility of happening.


Keywords:
Law of Attraction, Intention, Focus, Goals, Happiness, Success, Positive, Outcome, Stress, Energy


Article Body:
What have you been focusing on lately? On how well life is going for you? Or on how much business you’ve been doing compared to last year, or how well your superiors have been rating you? Or on how much your partner loves you and how much you revel in the relationship you’re having? On the excellent state of your bank account? On your ever-present good health and slim and trim physique? Or on the joy you experience each time you sit down to dinner with your teenage children? On the wonderful vacation you came back from recently and the even more exciting one you are planning for the near future? Or on the good way you feel about yourself and all the things you are creating and doing with your life?

What You Think is What You Are

I can just hear you spluttering. “What kind of romantic thinking is this? Where do these ideas come from? I don’t know anybody who thinks like that.”

True. Most people don’t think like that. In fact, most people think the exact opposite of that. Most people concentrate on all the things that are going wrong with their lives. Most people spend much of their time thinking about their problems and wondering how they are going to solve them. Most people think about all the things that could go wrong with their lives or about the people or events that stand in the way of their success. Most people think and think and think about whatever it is that worries them, because they believe that that is the way to resolve the problem. The fact is that most people focus so much on what they are afraid of, or what bothers them, or what stresses them, or what they don’t know how to solve, that they are giving all or most of their conscious and subconscious energy to a negative outcome – the problem.

What Kind of an Outcome Do You Want?

Consider this: the more you give your energy to one thing, the more that thing has a possibility of coming into being. If you concentrate on getting a university degree, you will most likely achieve that goal. If you concentrate on writing a book, you will again probably achieve that goal. But what happens if you continually tell yourself, while you are concentrating on getting the degree, that you are not intelligent enough to pass the exams, or that you simply are incapable of understanding the course material? And what happens, if you continually tell yourself while you are concentrating on writing the book, that you will never be able to write well, or that your story is not good enough? Obviously you are not only undermining yourself and sabotaging your desired outcomes, but you may also be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Focus and Intention

So what can you do? Let’s assume you are convinced that you lack the intelligence to pass the exams. Or that you are convinced that you will never write well. You have a goal, and that goal is to get a degree or to write a book. In order to focus on that goal, your mission is to ensure that your thoughts are aligned with – or intentionally focused on - that goal. Therefore, whenever your thoughts stray from the goal into negative territory, you need to pull them back into the arena of positive results.

Goals and Fears

But focusing on a desired goal is very hard for a very simple reason: we are far too used to focusing on the fears surrounding the goal (I am so afraid I will never have a great relationship, rather than imagining in your mind’s eye the great relationship in the way you want it to be; or how will I ever get that promotion rather than imagining in your mind’s eye the way you will feel when you do get the hoped-for promotion).

How to Focus

So how do you focus? When you worry, and your mind goes around and around a problem, or some stress in your life, you are very focused on the problem. It is exactly at that moment that you need to re-focus and see your desired goal or outcome in your mind’s eye, rather than all the problems you associate with it. The more time you spend on whatever it is you want to have in your life – whether this is a material goal, a professional goal, a relational goal, or whatever – makes absolutely no difference, the more you will be in a position to achieve it, to attract it into your life. The more you think – and focus – on that goal in a positive way, the more you allow yourself to "feel" the way you would feel if you already had the results, the more likely it is that you will attain your desired outcome. This is the Law of Attraction.

Intentionally Re-focus on the Positive

Remember: the time you spend worrying about the desired outcome is time spent focusing on the opposite of what you want, so become very aware of all your thoughts and focus them in the right direction. Do this consistently each time you catch yourself thinking the negative version of your goals until intentionally re-focusing on the positive becomes second nature. This habit is like strengthening a muscle, if you do it every day, it will happen more and more frequently and naturally, and soon you will find that not only do the majority of your thoughts and feelings focus on the positive direction of your goals, but that those positive goals become part of your reality.

As A Man Thinketh

Make time to read a complimentary copy of the e-book version of James Allen’s classic As A Man Thinketh by signing up for my free monthly e-zine and begin to understand how your thoughts and your feelings contribute in immeasurable ways to the fulfillment of your goals and dreams. How they create the very fabric of your life. And how you – by taking charge of your thoughts and feelings, and by focusing with clear intention can make a very different life than the one you may currently have.

BONUS : Title:
Is There Such a Thing as Christian Goal Setting?

Word Count:
737

Summary:
Applying the Biblical word “plan” for goal setting, it’s clear that God has plans and so do people. God blesses righteous plans and blasts away ones that aren’t so righteous! Above all, goals and plans are subject to the will of God.


Keywords:
goals goal setting Christian planning


Article Body:
There sure is! Applying the Biblical word “plan” for goal setting, it’s clear that God has plans and so do people. God blesses righteous plans and blasts away ones that aren’t so righteous! Above all, goals and plans are subject to the will of God.

Is goal planning even Biblical? You bet! God gives people plans:

“[King David] gave [Solomon] the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the temple of the Lord and all the surrounding rooms, for the treasuries of the temple of God and for the treasuries for the dedicated things. (1 Chronicles 28:12)

Don’t discount goal planning as being “worldly!” Not unless you want to discount God too. But there are evil plans in this world and plans that are opposite to His will and moral will. These he will frustrate.

“He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success.” (Job 5:12)

The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples." (Psalm 33:10)

“Crafty” means the schemers, the no-good-doers, the plotters. The nations get into the act too. God works both on the individual and global planes of the world; He is sovereign! And he warns those who plot in the darkness and who plan apart from his known will.

“Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the LORD, who do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know?’" (Isaiah 29:15)

"’Woe to the obstinate children," declares the LORD, ‘to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin…’" (Isaiah 30:1)

Did I mention not making evil plans? Goal planning for unethical means is bad. So is planning goals that take you right out of the mainstream of God’s will for your life. Now be careful here  God’s river is big and wide. I don’t believe in a one-choice-or-you’re-out narrow view of God’s will for you. I believe that for the Christian, there are many paths to many good outcomes and God is there on all of them. But there is a general direction and flow to the outcomes and we can observe it if we care to.

So goals and plans can be good things!

“May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed." (Psalm 20:4)


“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)

And God has his sovereign plan! Planning and goal setting is a fine thing. But subject everything to the Lord’s guidance.

“But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations." (Psalm 33:11)

”Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails." (Proverbs 19:21)


Biblical Advice about Plans

I love the book of Proverbs. Along with great advice for faith, business and life, comes this counsel about planning:

Don’t plan in a vacuum, but run your plans and goals past other people. You don’t want to do this with every goal and at every stage in the game, but you should with big and important plans. Especially if they impact other people.

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed." (Proverbs 15:22)

Pray, pray some more, and then pray again! Surround your goals and plans with prayer and ask the Lord to bless you in their doing.

“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." (Proverbs 16:3)

Ask God for wisdom as you plan and set goals. Involve him every step of the way as you go along and chart your progress. Don’t be afraid to make mid-course corrections as necessary.

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." (Proverbs 16:9)

Don’t forget the action part of planning! None of your work and thought will make a smidgen of difference if you don’t actually do something.

“The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty." (Proverbs 21:5)

Planning isn’t only all right to do, it’s positively wonderful!

“But the noble person makes noble plans, and by noble deeds he stands." (Isaiah 32:8)