How to Focus and Concentrate Better
Over a century ago, Clyde Beatty, a lion tamer, learned a significant lesson that can impact almost all aspects of your life today: how to focus, concentrate better, and live a healthier life.
The Lion Tamer Who Survived
Who was Clyde Beatty?
Born in Bainbridge, Ohio 1903.
Started off as a cage cleaner in his teenage years and progressed into a popular entertainer.
Famous for his fighting act where he tamed aggressive animals like lions, tigers, cougars and hyenas all at once.
In the time when most lion tamers died in the ring, Clyde Beatty lived into his 60s and ultimately lost his life to cancer, not a lion. How?
Clyde Beatty was one of the first lion tamers to bring a chair into the circus ring.
The Whip and The Chair
In a classic lion tamer image, where the entertainer holds a whip and a chair, the audience usually focus on the whip. In reality, the whips is mostly for show, it is the chair that does the important work.
When a lion tamer holds a chair in front of the lion's face, the lion attempts to focus on all four legs at the same time and when its attention is divided, it becomes confused. Therefore, instead of attacking the tamer, it freezes and wait.
Avoid the Fate of the Lion
Ask yourself:
How often do you find yourself in the same position as the lion?
How often do you have something you want to achieve (i.e. lose weight, travel more, start a blog) only to end up confused by all the options you have and never make progress?
The truth is, when you are faced with multiple options where every product, every fitness plan, every diet medical company tells you that they are your best option, you are left with conflicting information. In the end, you feel like you cannot focus or that you are focusing on the wrong thing and you take less action, make less progress and stay the same.
How to Focus and Concentrate Better
Anytime you find the world waving a chair in your face, remember this: all you need to do is commit to one thing.
In the beginning, you don't have to succeed. Just get started.
The majority of the time, the ability to commit to a task is the only thing you need to do to focus better. Most people don't actually have trouble with focusing, it is deciding that is the problem.
Managing to choose and commit to a specific task is how you make progress.
You have the ability to focus, you just need to choose what to direct it towards instead of acting like the lion and dividing your attention among the four legs of the chair.
Simplify the matters:
Want to lose weight? Start eating real food and exercise more. You don't need any packages.
Want to perform like an elite athlete? Great. Quit dreaming and start living like one. Organize your day around your training.
Want to start a business? You can! Sure, you'll be uncomfortable. Every entrepreneur is uncertain. You don't need to learn a new strategy or figure out how to focus better. You just need to commit to making it happen.
Stop Gazing at the Chair
Life isn't a dress rehearsal. Whether you know it or not, you're already in the ring. We all are.
Most of the time we struggle to decide which leg of the chair is the most important. But it doesn't have to be that way.
If you have somewhere you want to go, something you want to accomplish, someone you want to become… then make a decision. You don't have to do all of it at once but you need to get one thing started now.
Swipe the chair out of the way!
(Source: James Clear)
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