"I don't watch the wall," race car driver Mario Andretti supposedly said when asked for his secret of success.

Wise words.

It's wisdom based on a simple truth: what you think about, you bring about. Drivers who constantly watch and worry and fret about the wall too often end up crashing into it.

Are you "watching the wall" in your business?

Are you spending your time obsessing about price objections, pesky competitors, slumping sales, labor shortages or additional hardships? Are you focusing on the frustration resulting from unreasonable clients, unseasonable weather, unreliable contractors and a host of other unfortunate circumstances?

If so, expect more price objections, slumping sales, hardships and other onerous outcomes to come your way. Many psychologists and business coaches attribute that to a "law of attraction" — the idea that what you focus on, expands.

The "law," popularized in the book "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, maintains that if you spend lots of time thinking about financial challenges, you'll attract more of them. Conversely, concentrate on bringing more abundance in your life, say, by reaching out to higher caliber prospects or introducing new product lines, and you'll attract more of that.

The New Year is a good time to take stock of where you are and where you want to be with your business and career. But as you take stock, take care. Be careful not to dwell on past disappointments.

Be aware of, but not consumed by, what did not turn out as you hoped during the past year. That goes for the clients you didn't attract, the deals you didn't close, the awards you didn't win, the promotion you didn't get, the goals you didn't achieve, etc.

What didn't occur doesn't matter now, and it makes no sense to fret about your failures and dwell on your disappointments. Second guessing yourself about what didn't work doesn't work. You can't change what happened to your company last year, last month or last week. All you can change is how you respond to what happened.

It's not what you lost, it's what you learned. Look on each setback as a learning experience, as a chance to discover what not to do next time.

As you plot your business strategy for 2017, affix your gaze on the windshield rather than the rearview mirror.

Look through the windshield, and you'll get a good view of the possibilities and potential and promise that lie ahead. Look through the rearview mirror, and you're too likely to set your sights on the roads you coulda-woulda-shoulda taken but didn't.

As you contemplate the road ahead for your business, don't let fear cloud your thinking or diminish your dreams. Fear leads to anxiety about events that likely will never take place. Tony Robbins, the peak performance author and strategist, defines fear as "false evidence appearing real."

As you look ahead, don't focus on the size of the walls in your business.

Focus on how to get over, under, around and through them.