Prime, Focus, Achieve!

“Mindset fuels action and action fuels results.” ~ Heather Woodey

The most powerful asset to advance in life is focus, where your focus lies there your understanding will be also.  Focus can make or break you, it can drive you to success or it can drive you up a wall.  Focus affects every part of your mental outlook, of your approach to problems and conflict.  Napoleon Hill once said, “What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.”  That, which you focus on, you naturally tend towards.

Focus, what do you focus on?  Is it worth your time?  Yes it may have vital implications but can you affect it?  Reinhold Niebuhr faced this dichotomy of focus and prayed something profound, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  Courage to change the things I can.  And wisdom to know the difference.”  What you can change, by all means change; but what you cannot change, do not waste your time worrying about.  The power of focus is the most common, untapped resource available to those who strive toward their true potentials, however even when we are not ‘focusing’ we are still priming.

Priming is literally the act of preparation, how we prime can greatly affect how we act.  New York University Psychologist, John Bargh conducted a series of experiments on the notion of priming[1].  In one experiment from  the series, Undergraduate students were given unique ‘scrambled-sentence tests’, one type of test contained  rude words like disturb, bother, and intrude, where the other type of test was sprinkled with polite words like respect, considerate, and yield.  In both cases, the subjects thought they were taking an intelligence test.  None of the subjects picked up on the word trend but it primed them none the less.

After taking the five-minute test, students were asked to walk down the hall and talk to the person running the experiment about their next assignment.  An actor was strategically engaged in conversation with the experimenter when the students would arrive.  The goal of the experiment was to see how long it would take students to interrupt.

The effect was profound, the group primed with rude words interrupted, on average, after five minutes, but 82 percent of those primed with polite words never interrupted at all [2]. Carole Harder generalized this notion by saying, “Everything you let your mind concentrate on will influence you.”

From what music we listen to, to what media we watch; the effect of even what we subconsciously intake is massive. As Mark Batterson put it, “Our minds are subconsciously primed by everything that is happening all the time.”  So if we focus on the good, even in the little things, it can make a big difference in our attitude and in our character! 

By priming yourself daily, though conscientious focus or subconscious inlets you realign your mindset which enables you to conquer your goals with wisdom and tact.

Sincerely,

--

^“15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” ~ NIV Joshua 24:15

Jordan D. Ulmer

Cited:

1.      New York University psychologist John Bargh: Cited in Malcolm Gladwell, Blink:The Power of Thinking without thinking (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005),53-57

2.      Batterson, Mark. "The Greatest of Them All - Spiritual Priming." The Circle Maker: Praying Circles around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. 153-54. Print.