What is Your Distraction in the Journey of Success?

**Learn to manage your distractions especially in this age when they are plenty.** *Photo Courtesy of bethkanter.org*

Distractions are any things in life that make us veer off the track on our journeys towards achieving set goals in life. And success means so many things to so many people. To some success is measured in monetary terms, to others it is about power, influence, satisfaction, cars, houses, lands et cetera.

These goals vary significantly depending on who looks at what goals. For instance the man with so much money may look at the man not caring about money but rather concerned so much about power as one who doesn’t understand the whole dynamic aspect of Money, Power and Politics.

In another case the man with political influence may look at the guy who is after attaining a PhD, which to him means success, as but a man who doesn’t understand what the meaning of success is. The most striking thing about all these types of people and what success means to them is that the Journey is almost the same.

They all face a lot of challenges on their paths. They, at the same, get a lot of distractions on their roads. The distractions will vary from person to person and often one person’s meaning of success may mean the other person’s distraction.

An example would be where one man who believes that success in life is to be successful in public administration and in the process of trying to do that and achieve his goal, politics and political influence from politicians end up distracting him in his work delivery which if he delivers well would mean success to him to a very large extent.

But that is a toast as compared to what I discovered meant distraction to one J Piermont Morgan. At one point in his life, he never allowed women in his office except once a year when it was the end of the year celebrations.

One of his business partner who had a female secretary had to rent an office in the opposite building across the street from where she would work to avoid distracting J P Morgan. And it was then reported that after doing that, his output on his work became very tremendous. To most people, they believe that that was the tipping point for J P Morgan.

Another distraction became his constant health issues. This started from the time Morgan was a young boy. As he grew, he would take long breaks from his work to regenerate. It is believed that this health issues were further complicated by the fact that he overworked himself. But to succeed one has to work more than ×5 harder than the average man.

There is a common phrase we often hear that never mix business and pleasure. And this is the greatest distraction to most men especially those who desire success in business, politics, education or any other sphere in this life. And we have living proof and examples of men who were brought down by mixing pleasure and serious business.

Great world leaders have had it rough in their journey by simply allowing emotional passions to take over them. Even today, we can’t miss a saga where sexual harassment are labelled against a world political leader or business leader. At this point, it becomes clear that that means a distraction to so many of them.

In this age and era of advanced technology especially in ICT, social media and internet are becoming serious distractions. But we must agree to the fact should we call them serious distractions, it is because we allow it and choose be slaves to it.

Another case of distractions may come from people throwing stones at you from the outside as a result of doing the right thing. It becomes a serious distraction when one decides to give attention to such and may mean the thin line between achieving one’s goals and not achieving them. Sometimes this distractions are as a result of our own choices and ones in which we need to take liability.

An example of this would be about one Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Steel. A lot of distractions were as a result of wrong decisions made by his right hand man by the name Freak. In trying to concentrate to build Carnegie Steel Corporation, Freak’s wrong moves kept him in check and some of these messes were too loud to be ignored.

Other distractions may mean an eye opener on what needs to be done. When you realize that there is a distractions from customers as much as possible treat it as a positive distraction because it means you are getting feedback and one which means a cutting edge against your competitors.

But as long as it is a negative distraction, deal with it squarely and by all means. Uproot it out. Don’t underestimate a distraction. Delilah distracted Samson and the consequences were dire. The love of the coins distracted Judas and it cost him salvation. And there are such examples all around us, ones which need to teach us. The lessons we take are ours to decide.

My Last take is that deal with distractions properly. If you fail to deal with distractions in your journey of success, it will mean your first step to failure.

End.