Practical ways of becoming and remaining successful: Eliminating the noise

Today our journey continues with the fourth installment of the series, Practical ways of becoming and remaining successful: Eliminating the noise. We are almost to the end with only one more remaining. If you are joining this discourse and have not read the others that preceded, I recommend that you go back and read them once you have concluded reading today's offering. It is really important that you get the entire picture of what is being communicated in this series. Now let us begin with today’s message.

I submit to you that you that your ability to eliminate the noise has a direct bearing on the level of success that you can attain. It also impacts the timeline in which you can see this success. Distractions and a lack of discipline are lethal dream killers, which leave many individuals who once were loaded with potential, wondering what went wrong. Focus then, is a powerful and necessary character trait one must develop. To better understand focus, let us examine the image above of a racehorse.

As you may have noticed in the picture the horse is wearing blinders or blinkers. In general if you have ever carefully observed a horse race you would notice that most if not all the horses where blinkers. Have you ever wondered why? The answer is encapsulated in the very nature and anatomy of a horse's eye. It is said that the equine eye is the largest of any land mammal. It has the ability to see a staggering 350 degree range of monocular vision. However most of this vision is peripheral, which is relatively poor. As a result a horse is easily spooked when it is approached from its periphery and tends to rear on its hind legs or take flight as a defensive strategy.

I did some research to find out why race horse owners see it fit to put blinders on their horses and this is what I discovered:

Blinders help the race horse run in a straight line. Because of its vision a horse has the propensity to run in a diagonal line, so blinders reduce the peripheral vision and keeps the horse's focus down the track.

Blinders help the race horse from being spooked by the other horses in the race. Remember it is in the horse's nature to be alarmed by objects that are moving in its periphery, which means that a horse race is the perfect environment for a horse to become unsettled.

Blinders prevent immature horses from turning around and looking at its rider. Imagine how dangerous this can be for both horse and rider if this occurs at full speed in the middle of a race.

From these examples it is evident that blinders help a horse to keep focused, by keeping its eyes looking forward and reducing distractions at crucial moments. The same ideology is applicable to you. Are you so prone to distractions that you easily lose focus and begin placing your attention in other directions apart from your goals? Or are you easily spooked by competition? The moment you realize that there are others vying for the same position, same prize, same promotion and same job, you get scared and your instinctual reaction is to take flight? If this describes you today then you are in need of proverbial blinders. You need that ability to block out all of the distractions and noise that can take you off your course.

As I close, I challenge you to do some soul searching in order to identify all of the distractions that are preventing you from living out to you full potential. It is only after you have identified these distractions that you can create a plan to block them out. Remember what distracts you may not necessarily distract me, so this exercise requires a serious self-assessment. I guarantee you that eliminating the noise will make a world of difference as you continue on your quest to success.

Until next time remember: as long as you have life you should live it to your fullest potential.