The Power of FOCUS: How to Hit Your Business,
Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute
Certainty
by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt
****
“We all need an education in the
obvious.” This observation is attributed to Oliver
Wendell Holmes and sets the tone for “The Power of
FOCUS.”
The authors format their work in eight
stages, described as “Focusing Strategies.”
Each strategy identifies ways to deal with what the
authors consider to be the three biggest challenges
facing business people today: 1) time pressures, 2)
financial pressures and 3) the struggle to maintain a
healthy balance between work and home. How can such
challenges be dealt with to create positive results?
According to the authors, it is simply a matter of
learning how to focus. This approach sounded too easy to
me, but the more I read, the more I believed.
At the end of each focusing strategy, the
authors provide a section to assist the reader in
identifying things they would like to change (misplaced
priorities, old habits, etc.). The reader is encouraged
to write down the benefit(s) of making the change and to
set their own action plan and dates for completing each
action.
There are numerous anecdotes and sayings by
well-known authors throughout the book. These are
designed to encourage the reader to focus on actions and
choices that can lead to improved balance in areas such
as career and business, health and fitness, personal
relationships and any others that have special
significance. For example, following Strategy #3 (Do You
See the Big Picture?), a “Personal Master
Plan,” to assist the reader in designing and
implementing a master plan to prioritize goals, and an
“Achievers Focusing System,” helps to measure
weekly progress. When these are implemented and progress
is measured on a regular basis, the likelihood of staying
focused on those habits that can lead to successful
results is considerably increased.
As mentioned earlier, “The Power of
FOCUS” is a lesson in the obvious. It reminds the
reader of that which is known so well but may not be
consistently practiced. The message is a simple one: to
inspire the reader to take action and focus on those
things that can help him or her enjoy an abundance of
health, joy and prosperity in the years ahead. As
Socrates observed, “A life that goes unexamined is
worthless.”
Favorite Quote:
Recorded from Focusing Strategy #2, under the topic
Discover Your Brilliance, “When you keep on doing
work that you detest, you need to remind yourself that
this is futile. As well-known speaker Rosita Perez
explains, ‘When the horse is dead, get off.’
Stop flogging yourself. There are other
options.”
Reviewed by Robert Boykin, Industrial Relations
Specialist at Fluor Hanford, Inc., Richland,
Wash.
“The Power of FOCUS: How to Hit Your Business,
Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute
Certainty,” Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen
and Les Hewitt, 2000, Health Communication Inc.,
Deerfield Beach, Fla., ISBN 1-55874-752-4, 299
pages.
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