Focus on the prize

One of the biggest things that I have been learning is the discipline of being focused on the main goal. I get distracted every few minutes, and if it is not an advertisement, or a funny cloud in the sky, it is an event that we may consider bigger than it actually is. Instead, I don’t want to lose the focus on the prize.

I want to write something personal. I remember when I was in high school. It was a nightmare, and it still is for a lot of students: I spent the most horrible years of my life, and the reason was not because it was frustrating, but because all my expectations were ruined by small events that I was considering bigger than they actually were.

Maybe it was my first bad grade, the fact that I changed teachers, the expectations or the illusion of getting what I needed. I remember during the last year, I had lost all the passion for studying, and the only thing left was emptiness.

Almost 5 months before the final exams, I realized that none of teachers’ and the students’ opinions mattered, but just my own backpack of experiences and knowledge. Instead I kept studying what I was really interested in, by myself. Later on, my parents recognized all the mistakes that they made, but it was too late.

Now, 4 years later, I see that as something totally pointless. The reason is that, during high school, I didn’t know what my goal was until almost the end. I was carried away and distracted continuously by the opinions of other people, the teachers, the hormones in the teens made everybody crazy… and the real focus on the final prize was lost.

I have met a lot of people lost into those daily distractions. When I was in high school I was one of them for sure. It felt like I was alone, on a boat in the middle of the sea during a hurricane. The small events and the opinions, were like waves that were always hitting on my boat, and my strategy was to go against them, instead of focusing on another way to escape the hurricane.

I am continuously learning that maybe all the money, the lawyers, the impulse of buying something, and also the emotions, are overrated and they don’t matter much if we consider the steps to do and then win the prize. I hope that I have learned the lesson of understanding what is really important and what is not, keeping this discipline in order to focus on my goals and win the final prize… and the thought of what is happening at the end it is always giving me relief.