Chapter Four

Step 1: Focus

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

—Mark Twain

If you want to create powerful results in sales and business, it’s not enough to be efficient; you must be effective. And you do this by focusing on the right things. The vast majority of poor performance that I see in sales and business professionals does not stem from lack of ability, skill, or training. It is the direct result of people’s tendency to focus on the wrong things.

Many of us go through life just “thinking” on autopilot. We are operating out of our subconscious programming in the way we drive home from work without consciously thinking about where we are going. In this section, we will begin to turn that inclination around by “thinking about what we are thinking about.” As you begin to understand how powerful your thoughts are in relation to your sales and business success, you’ll appreciate how important it is to spend a little time thinking about the things you think about.

As the great philosopher Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Our job in this section of the book is to examine what’s currently in your box—and whether it should stay or go. Much of what’s in there has been there since childhood, so once you become an adult, it’s your choice to hoard all the contents and wallow in it or clear out the junk and organize what remains.

Step 1 in the Upside of the FEAR process is getting focused on the right things—specifically, on what ...

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