How to Get Your Mind to Focus
I didn’t particularly have a great childhood — I suffer from alopecia so I got bullied a lot, and it really affected my self-confidence, and it really affected my mindset. As a kid, I was very introverted, and I didn’t really like to interact with people.
I didn’t really have a support structure when I was growing up; I had an absent father. And my mother really didn’t make much of an interest in what I did. I was awkward, and so my father, who had started running about 18 months before, encouraged me to get into running. At the time, I was an asthma sufferer. I remember turning up at a running club on my own at 11 years old to join an Athletic Club.
The receptionist introduced me to the coach at a time and we talked about our expectations more than anything else. I remember the very first time I turned up, I saw these fast track-and-field athletes, and I got really intimidated. I felt really uncomfortable being in this place where I was way out of my comfort zone. I started to get these negative thoughts and started saying to myself, “I feel like this is a bit of a mistake”.
When we started, even doing the warm-up was a struggle for me. I barely run 100 meters without having a chronic asthma attack. It was a real challenge. But after some perseverance and through self-discipline, I started getting better. My time started to make some improvements. And within nine months, my asthma disappeared altogether.
I met my first proper coach about a year after that; Alex McGee. My former training partner, Mo Farah, had came from Somalia and, similar to me, he was bullied a lot because of his lack of English. But we used each other’s competitive nature to motivate each other so that we could become successful athletes.
I think running became a distraction from life. I train Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I’d compete Saturday and Sunday, so it can take up quite a huge chunk of my time. I was actually a really busy kid, and I didn’t really have a lot of time. It got me into this kind of zone. It was just the kind of place where I was happy at the time.
As I started getting better, I started to get those small wins under my belt, I started gaining confidence and I started gaining self-esteem. I started to see things a little bit differently. I created some habits really early on, self-discipline and being super time productive. Things that a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners aspire to in today’s world, I got way before even starting my first business.
11 was a very special age for me. Back in the day, we didn’t typically have a large amount of money, we lived off the state, we lived in a state-owned property. My mom never worked, so there wasn’t a lot of wealth that went around. It was myself with my younger brother and her. I remember walking in the nature reserve, which is about 15 minutes from where we lived, and walking and I started seeing all these golf balls from where golf was played next door. The next day, I decided to go back with a bucket and I started collecting all these golf balls, I started jumping in the stream and foraging in the bushes. I didn’t even have money to buy Wellington boots, so I’d just take my shoes and socks off and jump in. Then I started walking around the fairway and all these golfers started to come up to me, curious why an 11-year-old boy is walking around the fairway and concerned about my safety. I told them I’m rescuing golf balls and the golfers were interested to see what was in my bucket. They started inspecting some of my golf balls. Brand was important, condition was really important and even the color was really important, depending on the time of day. From a golfers’ perspective, if you’ve only got two balls, and we’ve got about six holes to go, they’re panicking, sweating about losing some more balls. I always hang out around hole 12, which is where everyone was kind of panicking. This is where I started learning entrepreneurship, where I started to learn negotiation and sales.
We both walked away with smiles on our face as they got a great deal because they only paid half price for a brand new ball and I get a good price and went home with a bag full of coins. I gave some of the money to my mom for groceries and milk and bread and so forth. And I kept the rest for savings.
I think I conditioned my mind at a very young age. I have this results-oriented mindset. I’m always striving towards performance and improvement. My belief is that if you are not moving forward, you are moving backwards. And no one really wants to move backwards.
How do I get to this action-taking mindset?
Have self-discipline.
You have to discipline yourself, you have to set everyone has goals and aspirations. All of us want financial success, we all want health and happiness, we all want abundance as well. If you want to achieve things in life, if you want to get the most out of life, you have to self-discipline, you have to prepare.
You have to make short term sacrifices for long term benefits.
The world right now, it’s kind of crazy. There’s so much going on, there’s so many distractions, most people are working from home, but how can you change your environment? How can you surround yourself with different people? How can you condition your mind?
Think about where you are and where you want to get to. How are you going to do that?
Go back to “why”.
Start to question yourself, start to look at yourself in the mirror and say, Why do I want to do this? What motivates me what gets me out of my bed every day? What makes me hungry, what drives my passion?
One of the things that I did was going with the flow, and what I mean by that is really aligning yourself in terms of your values. Whether we live by those values is a different matter. And whether we compromise those values is also a different matter.
My values never get compromised; I would never sacrifice my values because that is my DNA. If I change my DNA, then I’m going to attract a different tribe, I’m going to attract a different energy and I don’t want to do that. I’ve got good energy; I’ve got flow and people know me for a particular reason. Otherwise, this is where people get confused in terms of their clarity. They don’t know which direction they want to go in.
You’ve got to take action.
Stop talking and actually do something about it. And I see so many people just doing this, they talk they rabbit, but they never take action, or because of insecurities fear, limiting beliefs that they put upon themselves, or whatever excuse they want to come up with. This is the reason why people don’t actually achieve the results that they desire.
Is there any particular situation where my mind that’s been affected by the results that I didn’t get? Sure, all the time. It’s an ongoing journey. It’s an ongoing battle. But I think one thing that you’ve got to learn from is that there’s no such thing as failure, but rather I see them as learning points in your life. You reflect on how is it that I could have made the situation better? Could I have actually turned up with my A-game? A lot of people really are affected by failure, but you have to really question what was my intention? When did I turn up as an A-player? Did I go all in?
I’m an all-in or not at all type of person. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to go all in, or I’m not going to bother. There’s no middle. You either commit, and go or not bother. I think that’s the first question you have to ask yourself.
Reflect.
Ask yourself if your intention wasn’t as good as what it could have been. If I was to repeat this process, if I was to launch a project again how could we have changed our situation, rather than blaming others. People are good at blaming others for whatever their circumstances are right now, or the fact that they haven’t achieved this or they haven’t achieved that. Remember that every time you point at people, there will always be four fingers pointing back at you.
You have to take personal responsibility. If you want to get results in life, you want success, you want happiness and abundance and wealth, you have to take personal responsibility and grab life by the balls and make it happen for yourself. No one else is going to happen.
One of the things that we did this year because of the pandemic is move really fast and decided to put on a summit called the Game Changers Summit, a 30 day summit. We essentially collaborated with some of the world’s leading industry authorities in entrepreneurship, marketing and branding. We went from idea to launch in less than seven weeks. We did content for 30 days solid. We interviewed Jack Canfield, Dr. John Demartini, Sharon Lechter, some of the big boys in the entrepreneurial world, and we had a lot of fun, but it was just a ridiculous amount of hard work. On top of that I had a newborn baby as well, so I would not advise anyone to go do that.
We then launched the podcast, the Game Changers Experience, and then I’m working on re- launching the Game Changers Summit again in 2021, which I’m really super excited about. We’re going to be bringing in some real hot heads. It’s going to be live as well. It’s going to be really fantastic.
On top of that, we’re also going to be looking into launching a TV channel as well. Behind the scenes, we’re also launching our Accelerator Programme for our global audience, which is mainly for six figure openers and creative entrepreneurs and business owners that want to gain greater clarity, increase their productivity, but more importantly, they want more success and results and more impact.
If you want to know more about any of these exciting projects, feel free to DM me or email me at hello@adamstrong.net
