Career Mission's Chief Executive Officer, A. Harrison Barnes, in a webinar discussed the importance of remaining focused and avoiding distractions.

Harrison believes that goals can be achieved only when you believe that you can achieve them. He cites the example of Mike Tyson and explains the direct relation between the mind and your destiny. Tyson who was bullied and lured into street crime at an early age, carried a very low image of himself in his mind till he came into contact with Cus d’Amato, his trainer. d’Amato instilled in him a spiritual power – a power which made Tyson believe that he was the best and the strongest. In other words, d’Amato changed Tyson’s self-image, and the negative messages that Tyson kept on hearing in his mind. One of the things he told Tyson was that “The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.”

What Harrison wants to say is that one the biggest obstacles between you and your goals is ‘you’ and what you think of yourself. Most people lack confidence and think very low of themselves. They do not believe that they have ability, the skills or the capacity to go ahead with their dreams. Basically, most people are unaware of their strengths, so they fear life and its challenges, and hence, they run away from many things. Harrison advises you to believe in yourself and your capabilities and not be distracted by what the voices in your head say about you. You need to change those voices which keep you down and hold you back to whispers of encouragement that drive you forward. It is extremely crucial to resist the distractions that are posed by those voices that undermine your confidence and diminish your concept of what you are capable of achieving. The only message you need to focus on is the one about how good and capable you are. Create your goal and a game plan, and then fill your mind with the right messages.