How to achieve super human drive and focus to build your business

The greatest businesses were built by someone with an intense drive and focus to do whatever it took to bring their vision to fruition:  Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, etc. These people were not born with anything you weren’t born with.  They were not born with superior skills or super human mental strength.  In this post I’m going to tell you how you can match the intense drive and focus of these millionaires.  This goes for you, whether you got straight "A"s in school or flunked out.  EVERYONE has an intense drive and focus within them.

The millionaires I listed above had their drive because they were able to align their goals with their life purpose.  They built their business for something they valued deep inside.  They built their business to satisfy a deep craving to do something great in the field they were inspired by.  Each of us has a purpose and a craving to do something great. Our purpose evolves throughout our life, but there is always something we are meant to do.

The problem is, most of us have not consciously identified our purpose.  But regardless, we’re still all hardwired to attempt to fulfill our highest purpose through our daily activities.  Subconsciously you filter all your decisions through your internal hierarchy of what is really important to you.  Unfortunately, the things that are internaly most important to you may have have conflicting internal values due to misconceptions and internal baggage you have picked up throughout your life.  Here’s an example:

You may have a very high value on excelling at your daily work, and also a very high value on exercise and fitness.  If your boss expects you to work long hours, and you associate meeting his expectations with excelling at your daily work, you’ll work long hours.  This may not leave you with enough time to stop at the gym and exercise after work.  Since exercise and fitness is also high on your value list, you are now stuck in a situation where you will become depressed or uninspired at the minimum. Your own mind has stuck you in a lose lose situation. 

The key to avoiding this trap and finding the intense drive and focus within you is to know what internally drives you.  If you can sit down and write a list of the top 5 things that inspire and drive you, you can start to organize your day in a way to fulfill all your highest values. Then you’ll be well on your way to starting your own inspiring, fulfilling, and successful business.  In other words, you have to know what your gift to the world is before you can give it.

If you are instead filling your day with activities that don't inspire you, you'll procrastinate at your job, you'll run out of energy before the day is over, and leave your "to do" lists incomplete.  You'll wake up dreading to go to your job instead of waking up enthused to live another inspiring day.  They key is starting the right business to fit your values.  Steve jobs could never have started a construction business, or built a resale retail store like Walmart.  Steve was successful because he knew himself well enough to excel by focusing on what he loved.

Knowing what inspires you will help you define your purpose, set your goals, and achieve what you were meant to achieve.   I’ll continue with this topic to discuss how to identify what inspires you most in the posts to come.