This site evolved from my monthly newsletter, “Relax –
Focus – Succeed” – A Newsletter For A Successful Life. That
newsletter has been produced off and on since 2002.
The newsletter contains commentaries, hints, tips, and inspirational notes for
improving your life. Notice I didn’t say business life or professional
life or personal life: Your life is your life. It includes all aspects
and the key to true success is balancing these aspects so that
you lead a life you want to lead.
Relax? Focus? Succeed?
Chances are you, don’t think of these activities
together — You don’t see them as being related to one another. Perhaps
Focus and Success. But Relaxation?
The Philosophy: My
premise is simple but powerful: I believe the fundamental keys to
success are Focus, Hard Work, and Balance. “Success literature” is full
of Focus and Hard Work but shy on emphasizing Balance. Without
Relaxation, without balance, work cannot be successful. Sometimes you
have to not work. Sometimes you have to give yourself the gift of
enjoying your life. And when you do this, consciously aware that you’re
giving yourself this gift, then you achieve clarity: Your Focus
becomes sharper, your work more meaningful, and your Success that much
closer.
I place Relax first because it is the most
important and most neglected element. Only when you learn to relax and
bring balance to your life will you be truly successful. Focus is
second because it is the driving force in everything we do and
everything we achieve. If you focus on watching television, you master
watching television; if you focus on your children you will be an
excellent parent; if you focus on money you will attain money; if you
focus on being a better person, you become a better person.
And if you want to be an excellent parent with
enough money to send your kids to college and retire without worrying
about paying the bills? Then we’re back to Balance — learning to relax
and bring the competing elements of your life together in harmony.
The unspoken element is Hard Work. This is
not in the title because it’s the one element everyone should know
about. I say “should.” Unsuccessful people think they can attain their
goals without working. They believe they can get rich quick, read a book
and straighten out their relationships in an afternoon, or lose weight
by taking a sugar pill. I suspect these are the same people who buy hair
in a spray can and order diet cola with their super-sized Mondo Burger.
The final element is Success. Success is
not money, although having money is one kind of success on which we
frequently focus. Success is attaining your goals. Money is often
a means to attaining goals, but reflection will tell us that money is
never a goal unto itself. Money helps us take vacations, buy toys, enjoy
our hobbies, lavish gifts on the people we love, take time for
ourselves, contribute to our communities, and attain our goals.
It takes relaxation–and focus–to create and understand the balance in our lives. Relaxation and Focus are absolutely essential to the process of defining, seeking, and attaining our goals. In other words, without relaxation and focus there is no success. Read on and let me know what you think.
Enjoy
— Karl P.
