How to Stay Laser-Focused on Your Goals

When you are truly obsessed with things that are good and you constantly feed them, all those things yanking at you—self- esteem issues, introversion, disability, fear of success, fear of failure, or any form of neurosis— fall away. Why? Because you don’t care about them. Your attention is fully on the good stuff.

You need to face, master and channel your obsessions into an engine of massive, energized momentum for the success you desire. Set your course of possibility. And then fuel your engine with the highest-octane stuff you can get your hands on.

Lots of people talk about goals as a good idea, a nice “to do.” But not me and not any successful person I know.

Goals aren’t a New Year’s resolution or a journal entry or a bumper sticker; they are critical to your life’s happiness and fulfillment. I can’t stress this enough. Don’t write goals down on a Post‑it note and look at them once in a while. Eat, sleep and breathe your goals. Not just because you “should” but because you can’t not. Feed the beast so that it becomes so powerful there is no room for doubt. Because the moment you divert focus from your goals or take your eyes off them, you get lost in all the noise of your mind and the world.

Wake up and go to sleep focusing on your goals. Write them down every morning and read them every night until they become a part of you. Once you internalize them, you will see everything around you as a means of achieving those goals. The moment you quit this practice, you will find yourself falling into the repetitive cycle of work without purpose.

And don’t forget that goals will continue to mature and change. You will not write down the same goals five years from now that you write today.

Keep your attention constantly focused on the future rather than the past. What will you create? What can you do that has never been done? Look at what’s in your windshield and disregard the rearview mirrors.

For instance, as I write this, I own almost 5,000 apartments that are probably worth about $400 million. When I was starting out, I couldn’t imagine owning that much real estate. I remember thinking: “If I could get twenty units, making me a little extra money every year, I would be thrilled.” That’s all I could see then. Now, because I stayed with it and allowed my goals to mature and expand as I achieved my targets, I am able to think with more of what I see as my full potential. Today that 20-unit goal I had years ago has become a goal of 40,000 units and a $4 billion real-estate fund.

Now, when I make this new declaration, I become temporarily overwhelmed. “How can I do that? I’ve never done it before. I don’t have the staff, the money, the know-how or the connections yet. Wall Street guys are going to kill me on fees. I’ll have to deal with lawyers, regulators, and investors.” And on and on. When I think of all the reasons I can’t accomplish this goal, the beast goes into hibernation.

At that moment, rather than going along with the fears, I write down my goal of having a $4 billion real-estate fund that gives a 20% return to investors. I think about how I can provide great housing for tens of thousands of families, not to mention great jobs and salaries. When I feed the beast, something almost magical happens. I suddenly find myself seeing how I can do this rather than how hard it is. Almost out of nowhere, I find myself in different meetings and having different conversations with people who can get me there.

The easiest way to feed your beast is to spend time learning something new or learning how to be even better at something you’re already doing. Make the super successful your mentors. Buy their books, go to their conferences, read their interviews. And turn your travel time into learning time: Load your phone with podcasts and audiobooks that you can listen to while driving to work and home.

The point is to immerse yourself in knowledge. Don’t just drink the Kool- Aid—swim in it. Then make sure the people who live in your home and work at your company are reading the same material.

Excerpted from Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone, with permission from Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Grant Cardone, 2016.