Principle 11: Controlled Attention

Introduction

The eleventh principle of Napoleon Hill's 17 principles of success is Controlled Attention. When we chose our major purpose then we select an object of our controlled attention. People say that don’t put all of your eggs in one basket but we have to put all our eggs in one basket and concentrate our attention to protect that basket. Controlled attention is the process of directing our focus towards a desired end. It is an important aid for other success principles suggested by Napoleon Hill. Concentration on a single idea can give us massive success. Tesla Motors is a manufacturer of Electric vehicles. By concentrating its energy on electric vehicle manufacturing, in less than a decade it has made a great fortune for Elon Musk and other stakeholders. Intel built better chips and satisfied its customer needs. Intel focused on-chip manufacturing and created massive wealth for shareholders. Whatever is your enterprise, controlled attention to your major purpose is extremely important.
Controlled Attention and the Other Principles of Success
By focussing on controlled attention, you will condition your mind to attract only desired things and smartly eliminate distractions. By having controlled attention, you can completely eliminate conflicting emotions like self-doubt, envy, greed, jealousy, and hatred. Hence, you will be in a better position to control your attention towards a definite major purpose.

How controlled attention compliment other success principles

1. Definiteness of Purpose
We select an object of focus when we finalize our definite major purpose. Deciding on a major definite purpose, creating a plan to achieve it, and executing that plan will require our concentration. Once we concentrate our attention on our purpose, we will start working for its achievement.
2. The Mastermind Alliance
We need a mastermind alliance to achieve our major purpose in a faster way. In turn, the mastermind intensifies our concentration by sharing our vision with close associates. This increases our enthusiasm, personal initiative, faith, imagination, and a will to win. Just as magnifying glass starts burning the paper by concentrating sun rays, our mastermind helps us to focus on our goal.

3. Applied faith
When we decide to work upon our definite major purpose with our mastermind group, we display our faith in a common purpose. Our controlled attention gives us full strength to focus on our goals. Hence the power of our faith complements the controlled attention.
4. Positive Mental Attitude
We will become positive by focussing on already discussed success principles. There will be no room for negativity and lack of attention due to our focus on a definite major purpose.
We will explore how controlled attention complements other success principles in our next article.
5. Going the Extra Mile: This requires continuous action on your part and our concentrated attention will definitely fuel the momentum of our actions being taken while going the extra mile.

Summary

Controlled attention is a great tool to remove distractions from our life. Keep your attention on things that you want in your life and don’t focus on unnecessary things. Also, we have to understand that thoughts are contagious and we have to be cautious while releasing our thoughts. Thoughts can be made positive by having controlled attention in desirable outcomes.
Implement controlled attention in your life and reap its enormous benefits.