If you want to grow your business, you need to make attention your number one priority. It’s why networking is a thing. It’s why CEOs go on road shows to raise capital. 

When advising new businesses, I often remind them of the challenges they’re about to come up against. We like to recall the exploits of entrepreneurs after they have been successful, but that shouldn’t fool you into thinking the market loves new businesses. It doesn’t. After all, who wants more competition?

We live in an age of distraction. Every day we’re bombarded with emails, tweets, instant messages, texts, phone calls, and whatever other technologies they come up with. Is it any wonder that at the end of the day we find it hard to maintain any focus at all, never mind focus on what’s most important to us? We need to get our values in order, along with clear goals that are aligned with our purpose.

Our brains are wired such that it’s difficult to take action until we feel at least some stress and discomfort. In fact, performance peaks when we’re well out of our comfort zone. If you’re too comfortable your performance suffers from inaction, and if you move too far outside of your comfort zone you melt down from stress.