Warren Bennis, in Why Leaders Can't Lead, writes:

The flying Wallendas are perhaps the world's greatest family of aerialists and tightrope walkers. ... I was struck with [Karl Wallenda's] capacity for concentration on the intention, the task, the decision. I was even more intrigued when, several months later, Wallenda fell to his death while walking a tightrope without a safety net between two high-rise buildings in San Juan, Puerto Rico. ...

Later, Wallenda's wife said that before her husband had fallen, for the first time since she had known him, he had been concentrating on falling, instead of on walking the tightrope. He had personally supervised the attachment of the guide wires, which he had never done before.

Often the difference between success and failure, life and death, is the direction we're looking.