Success depends on getting good at saying no without feeling guilty. You cannot get ahead with your own goals if you are always saying yes to someone else's projects. You can only get ahead with your desired lifestyle if you are focused on the things that will produce that lifestyle.
I've been writing for myself since I was a teenager - I got into top-lining for some other artistsproducers, but the focus was always on my own stuff.
I've always thought that if my death was imminent, I would read. When I can't focus on a book, I tend to keep reading the same page. My guess is, I would've read, like the first page of Nicholas Nickleby over and over again.
'7th Heaven' was a big ensemble cast, so everyone would get a turn. Basically, I'd get a script that focused on my character and think, 'Oh, I'm working every day this week. ' The mindset was I've got more to do, so I had to focus.
I don't attend an actual school but I'm still following through with high school. I do work with a tutor for about six hours a day. It's hard core but definitely worth it, and it's my main focus now - finishing up high school before I release my new album and apply to college.
One of the great failings of our education system is that we tend to focus on those who are succeeding in exams, and there are plenty of them. But what we should also be looking at, and a lot more urgently, is those who fail.
You can do two things at once, but you can't focus effectively on two things at once.
The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.
Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.
If everybody else your age is doing something very different than what you're doing, there's always going to be someone saying to you you might not succeed with it, you might not make any money with that. . . there's always going to be some type of obstacle in the way. All of those things will go away if you really focus on what makes you happy.
Here's what my love affair with quotations has taught me: the more you focus on words that uplift you, the more you embody the ideas contained in those words.
We don't want to focus on the trees (or their leaves) at the expense of the forest.
I believe in a America first foreign policy, that far too often President [Barack] Obama and Hillary Clinton - and, unfortunately, more than a few Republicans - have gotten distracted from the central focus of keeping this country safe.
Violence may be a good focus to organize around, but we have to look at women's lives in our entirety.
I've written songs for Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, and Linda Thompson. I sort of focus on these wonderful, aging divas. But maybe that's because I think I'm Christina Aguilera.
Focus all your attention and energy on the achievement of the objectives you are involved with right now.
Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labor efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things.
I don't have a routine, but I have used meditation to just decompress and focus.
Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.
Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you're not. But going below the surface too, it's an active process. It's not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you're tuned out, then you're not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.