By adopting a definite major purpose, you have selected an object on which you have to focus your controlled attention. Forget the old saying “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” You have to put all your eggs in one basket and concentrate your attention on protecting that basket and getting it to the market.
Controlled attention is the act of coordinating all the faculties of the mind and directing their combined power to a given end. It is both an outgrowth of many of the other principles of success and an important aid to them.
Controlled Attention at Work
Chemistry teaches us that individual elements can combine to form new substances that are very different from the components that constitute them. Water is a simple example: Both oxygen and hydrogen are gases, but when two oxygen atoms combine with one hydrogen atom, they form a liquid-and a highly useful one at that. Sodium and chlorine are volatile and dangerous in their pure states, but when one atom of each forms a pair, they become ordinary table salt.
The same is true of thought. Thoughts of one nature can combine with those of another sort, and controlled attention is the means by which you decide the process. If your child is threatened by an oncoming car, fear for his or her safety and love for him or her will combine into thoughts of action, leading you to pull the child out of the way. Both the initial thoughts are strong, but it is the combination of the two that is strongest and most effective at preventing harm.
Observation and experience have taught me that the following principles of success, when combined in your mind, can produce power bordering on the miraculous:
l. Definiteness of purpose
2. Self-discipline through emotional control
3. Autosuggestion applied to attaining your purpose
4. Willpower actively engaged and directed toward your purpose
5. Controlled attention
6. Personal initiative
7. Creative vision
8. Applied faith
Here’s an example of these combined principles at work. Suppose you are faced by a common problem: You need a sum of money for a specific purpose, and you need it by a certain date. There are two ways to deal with this. You can worry about it but do nothing to raise the money. Or you can go after it in earnest by combining the above principles.
If you know how much money you need and make up your mind to get it on time, you have definiteness of purpose. When you put your mind to work to devise and carry out a plan for getting the money, and you exclude all other thoughts, you are exhibiting controlled attention, applied through personal initiative.
Your mind is cleared of all fear and doubt. That is self-discipline working through willpower, expressed in applied faith, and acted upon through autosuggestion. This combination of forces will stimulate the imagination and cause it to create the means through which the money can be procured. Once this happens, of course, it is still up to you to act on that plan to the best of your ability.
You can draw on any of the seventeen principles in this process, although the major ones are listed above. The two constants in any combination must be controlled attention and definiteness of purpose.
Thomas Edison once wrote:
The most important factors of invention can be described in a few words. They consist first of definite knowledge as to what one wishes to achieve [definiteness of purpose, creative vision] . . . . One must fix his mind on that purpose with persistence and begin searching for that which he seeks, making use of all other accumulated knowledge on the subject [mastermind group, controlled attention]. He must keep on searching no matter how many times he may meet with disappointment [willpower]. He must refuse to be influenced by the fact that someone else may have tried the same idea without success [self-discipline, applied faith]. He must keep himself sold on the idea that the solution of his problem exists somewhere, and that he will find it [autosuggestion]. When a man makes up his mind to solve any problem, he may at first meet opposition; but if he holds on and keeps on searching, he will be sure to find some sort of solution. The trouble with most people is that they quit before they start.
In all my experiences, I do not recall having ever found the solution to any problem connected with my work on my first attempt. And one of the most surprising things is the fact that when I have discovered the thing for which I am searching, I generally find that it has been within my reach all the time; but nothing except persistence and a will to win would have revealed it.
Such is the power of controlled attention. It harnesses many of the other principles, heightens their power, and, in turn, is increased itself. Are you ready to concentrate your attention on the task at hand?
Source: Keys to Success by Napoleon Hill