Louise Thompson: How to be successful at anything

Number one tip to be successful at anything: Focus. Photo / iStock

How does anyone get to be really good at anything? Look at the people you admire in any given field. Not necessarily famous people, or awards winners, just successful people. How do they get to be so successful? What's the common theme that connects them? The winning golfer and the on to it mum, the high flying exec and the leading lady? It's very simple. They focus on Their Own Stuff.

In which bit of your life are you doing really well? Guaranteed that's the area where you are focusing hardest on Your Own Stuff. Happy marriage - bet you are focused on loving communication and date nights or whatever works for you. Fit, strong body? Sure as eggs are eggs, you are focused on eating well most of the time, getting organised to put healthy meals together, and make exercise a regular thing. Beautiful immaculate home? I guarantee you make time to organise the plumber to fix the leak, pronto. You clean or get it cleaned regularly. You fix up little maintenance issues as they arise. All. Your. Own. Stuff.

Where things have gone off the rails a bit is where we are tending to spend too much time focused not on our stuff. If the bod isn't rocking we are likely prioritising other people's needs and wants before the desperate screams of our body. If our business isn't thriving in the way we know it could we are likely spending too much time on Facebook looking at other businesses skyting about how marvellously they are doing and thinking how our marketing doesn't live up to theirs. Not Our Stuff. Career not really flying like it should? Highly likely we have been too shy in stepping up or speaking up for fear of what others might think about us. Not Our Stuff.

What is "our stuff" is what we can influence today. Our stuff is figuring out the small teeny tiny actions and choices we can make each moment that bring a bit more ease, flow and joy into each moment. Our stuff is speaking up for ourselves. Our stuff is prioritising our time and choices. Our stuff is knowing we are not responsible for other people's reactions. Our stuff is taking a chance on our dreams.

Getting more focused on your own stuff turns stuff around quickly. Good questions to get refocused on your own stuff are:

Is this thing that's winding me up/stressing me out my stuff? Or not? If it's not your stuff - put it down!

How can I focus more (or differently) on this thing that is important to me that's not going as well as I'd like in order to move it towards where I want it to go?

If I weren't worried about what anyone else thought of me/this what would I do?

Is there a "should" involved here? If there is, it's usually a big fat clue that the issue in question is coming from someone else's agenda, not yours. Not your stuff.

The basic math of the equation means there are only 24 hours in the day, 525,600 minutes in a year. You get to say what quality of energy you bring to each of them. The reality is that when we have our focus split across too many things, and too much stuff that isn't ours, we don't get the success we seek in the areas that are truly important to us.