So Much Happier Blog
Feeling Out of Phase?
Well friends, here we are solidly into 2020, a new year and a new decade! Whether you were raring to go or felt blindsided by the trappings of wrapping up the old year, time marches on. Like a lot of people, I spent the transition groggy with a nasty cold, and I feel like I’m only now finally starting to wake up again. Maybe you’ve already hit the ground running with exciting new ideas and plans, and if so, well done!
Whatever your experience has been so far, remember that your personal timing doesn’t have to line up with everyone else’s to be valid. Sometimes we all get a little (or a lot) out of step with where the world seems to be headed. You may experience this in small ways, with a sense of being out of synch in your closest relationships or in your local routines. For much of human history, the local was most of what we had to worry about! However, now, with the advent of the Information Age and the 24-hour news cycle that must be filled, no matter how low-quality the programming, we are bombarded with so much more than we can ever participate in, and much of it is fear-mongering. The split focus and temptation toward constant worry that this constantly induces is confusing at best and utterly overwhelming at worst.
And this is not just experienced on a personal level. Our new normal is affecting the genesis and reaction to mass events the world over. This time in history is in many ways chaotic and shot through with layers of rudderless conflict. We’ve hit multiple tipping points that require us to change on a global scale if we want to have a planet to live on at all in another decade or three, and the majority of the world’s leaders seem convinced that childish, self-obsessed stupidity is the way to go.
I actually think a lot of our issues come down to failures in educational systems. That’s not really surprising, since education used to be only for the wealthy, and only quite recently has there been an effort to scale it up to cover everyone in cultures across the world. This effort has revealed a whole new set of challenges that are not easy or quick to solve with our current level of experience regarding the effective transfer of information and skills in group settings. And just recently, the number of readily available distractions has exploded. It used to be that for those with the luxury of free time, one of the exciting things you could do was learn, and expand your horizons in self-motivated ways. Now so much is handed to us, even foisted upon us, that learning is less a joy and more of a constant drudgery as we try to keep up with everything that a cacophony of questionably valuable tastemakers tells us we must.
I don’t mean to sound like a grumpy old person here (“It used to be that everything was just great, blah blah blah”), because there was never a time when everything was perfect on planet Earth! What I’m hearing from so many people right now, though, is that the fight against constant overwhelm is becoming more and more consuming and exhausting. If you feel like you’re bogged down in a cycle of just getting through each day and recovering from it, you’re in good company! Here are some ideas that may help you as you begin to construct your vision of this new year and begin to set it into motion:
Acknowledge that this world is a challenging place in which to live, and don’t be so hard on yourself about it. You have to balance yourself and your needs, the needs of those closest to you, and your relationship with the wider world, all of which are demanding, and these demands are constantly shifting. Give yourself some love and credit for keeping up with all of this. Some people like to make their lives look effortless on social media. Don’t believe that #*%~.
Reaffirm that only you can be the source of the most high-quality information about you. By all means, consider feedback from others as you chart your path, but if their assumptions are wrong, reject them. Only if you retain the right to be the arbiter of your opinions about yourself, and choose to make self-compassion a guiding principle, will you have access to the constant stream of creativity you need in your daily efforts to make your life the best it can be.
Have a written list of your priorities that you refer to daily. Focus is key. You can imagine far more than you can ever accomplish in the flesh! You must prioritize your highest values and connected projects if you ever want to get anywhere. Do you have this? Almost no one does. If you don’t, make a list now in your phone or somewhere else you can easily refer to it. Have you done this yet? Seriously, do it now!
Unless you are a writer or other passionate content producer by choice, focusing on living your life in the real world is far more crucial than narrating your every move in the twittersphere. Yes, stay in touch with important people in your life in the most convenient ways for you. Just don’t confuse running in endless circles online with accomplishing your goals. Simplify and focus.
Carve out the time you need to take care of yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. If you think you’re too busy, start with small steps. If you fall off the wagon, get up and keep trying. You can’t sustain an optimal life if you always put your basic needs last.
Get clear about the ways in which you want to contribute and give, the ways that feel appropriate and exciting for you. If you’re not sure, get out there and practice donating some of your favorite skills. Be careful to corral your giving into this mission statement so that you don’t start behaving as though you owe all things to all people. We all need to exist within a give and take dynamic with the societies we live in, but doing too much will exhaust you and deny the world the best version of what you have to give. Give joyfully, and when you can’t, plot your rest and rejuvenation, and then get back to your chosen areas of giving.
Keep an eye out for ways to make your life fun. If something isn’t fun at all, you’ll tend to quit, because there are limits to human reserves of willpower. Enjoyment keeps us motivated in healthy ways. It also draws us toward activities we’re good at, which helps nurture our effectiveness and deeply feed our life vitality.
It’s fine to be influenced by the timing of the world and the people around you, but remember that those who have invented some of the best solutions in history have been considered eccentric-to-outright-crazy because they were not following the pack. In case you haven’t noticed (you probably have if you’re reading this), the world is desperately in need of creative solutions to a wide variety of problems. Paradoxically, you may be better able to help by refusing to have your timing and your activities dictated by conventional wisdom, immediate imperatives that you’re not the right person for, and public opinion.
Treasure the people you trust. Friends who have your best interests at heart as well as their own, and who have demonstrated the ability to maintain relationships characterized by a balance between giving and receiving, are one of the best things in life. Appreciate these people at every opportunity!
There are times when we need to meet life with a warrior spirit, and no matter what you’re attempting to do with your life, it seems to me that now, this moment on this planet, is one of those times. I don’t mean that we need to be combative, but rather suffused with a courageous willingness to do what is necessary and appropriate in order to meet the challenges we face, both personal and collective. Find someone from any time in history who inspires you in this direction.
I wish you courage, focus, friendship, ease, and joy as you face whatever may unfold for you in 2020. Be awesome!
Too...Much...Information!
“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”
One of the most challenging things about being alive at this time in history is the fire hose of information and pure distraction that we’re all drinking from every day. The sheer number of advertisements we’re bombarded with everywhere we look and listen can make it hard to direct our own attention for very long. If you have goals and important projects underway, this can be a problem! Without focused, sustained time spent on your highest priorities, you’re not likely to make much progress. You need energy, willpower, and all of your creative faculties to keep pushing forward, and the endless firehose will erode all three if you’re not careful.
Studies have shown that we have a limited amount of willpower each day. If you’re burning through yours on evaluating everything the world at large wants you to pay attention to each day, you’re leaving less willpower for yourself. This is why having an information policy for yourself is crucial to your long-term success. You do, in fact, have the power to decide and enforce such a policy. You do not have an obligation to spend your time sifting through a bunch of unsolicited muck when what you really need is time for your own plans. You don’t have to be rude to anyone, but you do need to be clear and firm with those who want your time and give you nothing you want in return.
So why don’t you set these boundaries already (assuming you’re not already perfect at this)? Are you afraid people will be mad at you? Afraid you’ll miss out on something important? Always in search of shiny new adventures? Spare a thought for why you are where you are with the flow of information and distraction in your life and see if you can gain some clarity. Once you see what’s going on for you, think about what you can do about it. Here are a few things you may need to do to come into balance with your environment and improve your focus on areas of your choosing:
Practice saying a firm, but polite no. There are few things as empowering as becoming an expert at this! What if you were able to do so with a smile, a light heart, and an expression of gratitude for an opportunity you’re not choosing—and no internal conflict. It is possible. Just practice! And remember that it’s ok to enjoy, even revel in, your power to choose your path in life. This is a privilege, and your building a life you love, focused on things you’re passionate about, will bless many others, not just you. It will also light the way for others to do the same.
Decide when you will check your phone/e-mail, and make sure you allow for enough time in between for you to sink into tasks and actually get things done. Put your phone on silent and out of sight during this time so it’s not a distraction, and minimize your e-mail if you’re on a computer. If you listen to music while you work, find a way to make it ad free.
Schedule the most important work of your day early, whether that’s exercising, meal planning, or a work proposal that needs to represent you at the top of your game. Then, as you use up your willpower, you’ll be doing so where it counts and not on a bunch of random stuff thrown at you by strangers.
Schedule time for browsing through information that’s relevant to your life, or just enjoyable, toward the end of your day, when you’ve accomplished important daily goals. If you need help limiting this time, set an alarm when you start and have a plan for what you’ll do next when the alarm goes off. Automation can really help in the later part of your day when your willpower is in tatters!
Minimize unnecessary decision making by planning meals ahead. See if you can find other decision processes to streamline as well.
If you’re afraid of missing things, see if you can brainstorm a way to share tasks with others. Maybe you can each keep an eye on a separate area and share anything important that arises with the others. Specialization is necessary when it’s impossible for any one person to stay on top of everything alone.
These are just a few ideas. How else might you manage the flow of information in your life and foster your ability and your inclination to focus? This is a lifelong process, so just work to notice where you could make new choices and gain some traction for your priorities. And don’t forget to share anything you come up with in the comments below!
Getting Off That Crazy Wheel
“Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.”
Most people I encounter these days feel as if they're always trying to do too much, that the world moves too fast, that they're always on the edge of falling behind and going under. We're a chronically overwhelmed culture. Now, get ready for a radical statement—part of the reason for this is that we ARE trying to do too much! When the sum total of everything you could be doing in any given moment is infinite, as it is in this age of "convenience," including 24/7 access to nearly all information ever collected, we suddenly need amazing focus and time management skills. And guess what? No one ever formally taught us any of these unless we grew up in a monastery, or with a parent with insanely effective natural organizational skills, in which case maybe we were lucky enough to have had mentors in these areas. Of course that's an exaggeration; you may have learned some excellent tidbits along these lines from any number of sources throughout your life, but it's a rare person who has been able to cobble together an effective set of strategies from these random references. The rest of us have to deal with the outrageous fortune that dumped an endless glut of opportunity in our laps, but with no way to turn off the fire hose when it all gets to be too much.
Since feeling chronically overwhelmed and ineffective doesn't feel like living a fulfilling life, we must find ways to do better. If you want to take back your life, it's time to get friendly with the concept of focus. There are two aspects I want to mention here: Inward focus and outward focus. The inward version is the one we practice in meditation when we observe our breathe or keep returning to a mantra—it's the ability to place our mind's awareness on, and continually bring it back to, a subject or a feeling of our choosing. Building this internal skill allows us to hone our capacity to spend time living in the calmest, best parts of ourselves, and therefore to have access to an ability to make the best possible choices, with the greatest possible sense of peace, in each moment. This is called sanity! Getting better at holding onto yours grants you a kind of personal power that's hard to describe, but imagine how great it would be to be able to choose your internal state more often than you react, automatically and without choice, to whatever assails you from your mental and emotional worlds.
The outward aspect of focus is the ability to deflect, in real time, distractions that bombard us from the outside world. Being able to do this efficiently all day long takes clarity (about your values and your purpose), intent, and relentless determination. While willpower is involved, a lot less of it is required when you've taken the time to write down your goals and priorities, and you remind yourself of them often so that in a moment of stress you can remember WHY a choice is right or wrong for you. Being clear about why you're choosing what you're choosing serves to inspire and galvanize you when you start to get confused. However, this constant decision making can still be exhausting when you have to do it all day! It's important to simplify where you can and find times each week when you can be restfully free of constant sifting and value judgments. This ability may also be hard to imagine, but I bet you've come across someone who seems able to stay functional even in the face of a whole lot of chaos, showing you that it is possible. If you have, think of that person as a model in this regard.
We also need those pesky time management skills mentioned above if we're going to succeed in getting things done when we choose to. These may include accurately estimating how long tasks will take, scheduling your time but not overscheduling yourself to the point where you burn out, transitioning between tasks in ways that assist you in refocusing, balancing your physical needs throughout the day so you don't crash, planning anew when things change so you can stay productive, managing your emotions when things aren't going your way, and others. Some of these you might already be good at, and some less so. When you think through the kinds of things that tend to stop you when you're working toward something you want, you'll probably be able to come up with your most likely challenges. Like all acquired skills, these take time to build, and you are a complex and ever-changing thing, so this work is never done. Choose just one or two of your personal challenges and start practicing improving your skills around them.
As you work, be patient with yourself. It's always annoying to feel like a beginner at something, but as I remind myself often, we've all been through the learning process many times. What feels painful and unlikely inevitably turns into something you can easily do on autopilot with practice. Over time, our capacities increase, and we can achieve heights that seemed vertigo inducing from former vantage points.
Whatever skills you think need your attention, there are probably lots of emotions, as well as habitual thoughts and negative self-talk, that come into play when they are challenged. This is where Tapping is absolutely brilliant in helping you to move through what's holding you back and come out the other side relieved—and often with new and revolutionary insights about why this thing has been hard for you and how that can change for you now. Humans are hard-wired to resist too much novelty because we have come to associate it with danger. You will always be working against the tendency toward caution because self-preservation is one of our most powerful drives. Dealing with the resistance that comes up when you attempt to make a change is a constant, never-ending process, so you might as well master techniques that can help you to do this quickly and with a sense of enjoyment and adventure. When you become comfortable with releasing unnecessary fear and immobility, the feeling of empowerment that results is amazing. I and my clients find this to be one of the best things about EFT/Tapping. Knowing that you can reduce your fear, overwhelm, and feelings of being stuck whenever you need to is truly something to be grateful for.
If you continue to work on your skills and your emotional management, you will eventually make progress. It may not be as rapid as you want, and it make take trials, errors, and seeming failures, but really, what's your alternative? We are evolutionary beings. We like to grow and test boundaries, even when doing so is scary. And human progress relies on our following this impulse. Failing to focus means that you will spend all your energy on recovery, and ultimately, that's not a lot of fun. This week, think about the ways in which you can work inward and outward focus, as well as better time management strategies, to create more available energy to feed into your goals and passions.
Is Now the Best Time for Change?
“Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties. ”
Last week we looked at some of the reasons why it can be difficult to create change in your life. We'll continue the same line of inquiry this week with some information about how our brains function and how we can best set ourselves up for success given their needs and limitations. In his book Your Brain at Work, David Rock lays out the conclusions of a wide array of scientific studies on brain functioning. If you're someone who wants to be highly efficient and productive, you might want to read it yourself, but I'll let you in here on a few ideas it offers that are relevant to this discussion. This is just a quick summary, so some of these concepts may not seem self-explanatory, but the evidence for them is there.
- Completing actions you know how to do on "autopilot" is easy for your body as it doesn't require the expenditure of much energy. Learning new things, on the other hand, is an energy-intensive activity that can quickly drain your brain's reserves
- Even processing new experiences when you're not trying to learn anything at all is taxing. Evolution has encouraged us to be wary of the new because anything unfamiliar might be a threat. Too much newness tends to ramp up our fight/flight/freeze response, which quickly exhausts resources and switches off our reasoning functions
- Dialing down internal distractions, otherwise known as "inhibition," is another demanding task that burns through resources quickly. Deliberately focusing on something to the exclusion of all else takes effort, so you can only do this effectively for a relatively short time before you'll need to take a break to refuel. Rock does not immediately specify, but food, sleep, deep breathing, and exercise all help us to recover from such efforts
- Switching focus back and forth rapidly as we do when multi-tasking is also draining, and doing this decreases our efficiency such that studies show no net gain in efficiency. Multi-tasking takes the same amount of time and energy as doing each task separately because of the efficiency we lose. It also decreases the quality of our work. The only exception to this is when one of the tasks is so ingrained as to be an "autopilot" task for you
- As much as we'd like to think that we can work at full attention all day, studies show that we only get a certain amount of highly effective thinking time per day. This makes it essential to be smart about how we prioritize the most important tasks so they can be addressed during our most energized moments
I hope you're noticing the through-line that when we try to work against our physical needs, we make the likelihood of our success in creating new habits much harder than it has to be. I think there's a reason why so many people find that exercising or adding a daily practice to their lives works better first thing in the morning. Not only do scheduling surprises tend to get in the way less, but we tend to have the most physical/mental resources available to us before the day's onslaught of requests and requirements starts to bombard us and use them up.
How can you start to be more strategic about moving your most important and most demanding tasks to your highest-energy times of day? (Maybe these aren't typically morning for you—we're all different, and you should absolutely notice what works for you most consistently and leverage it for yourself as you continue to learn.) How can you protect these times from random interruptions so that easier tasks only land outside of them? Maybe that means turning off your phone during these periods of more intense work. Maybe that means putting a Do Not Disturb sign on your door so that everyone in your house knows that this is private time. Maybe you'll decide to get up a little earlier so that you can get started on your day when the world is quieter, or wait until after coffee and a healthy breakfast before attempting deep concentration. I encourage you to start thinking about this and experiment with how these principles can help you move more quickly, and with less friction, toward your most exciting goals. Life is busy, but with some intentional planning, we can often carve out more ways to be productive than it might seem if we just blunder through our days putting out fires. And when you find a scheduling pattern that helps, celebrate it! Small victories add up to bigger ones over time.
Oh, Now What?
“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
It's important to have a strong vision of where you want your life to go if you want to get something done. Specific goals that can light your way forward are key. But even assuming you have all that, plus good basic habits, in place, what about when "life" happens? When the world lobs critical distractions your way, what do you do?
For each of us, distractions might look different; something that for one person would barely register as a problem would be a game-changer for someone else. What's universal is that there is, no doubt, something that could derail your best-laid plans—and sometimes something does. The question of how you'll handle it can determine the course of your life...but no pressure! But seriously, knowing that these pivotal moments will occur, often when you least expect them, it's a good idea to think through how to prepare.
Having a written list of your highest values will help a lot when you're confronted with impediments. Something disruptive has crossed your path, but how much of your attention will you give it? Is it for you, or is it something you will deflect back out of your experience? Is it calling you to hew to your highest values, rise to the occasion, stretch, and grow, even if it halts or slows the momentum of other projects? If so, it may be a valuable opportunity in disguise, and giving it your full attention might be the most appropriate choice. The choice of where to focus your energy at times like this can define your experience of whole chunks of your life, so whatever you decide, make sure you've done it after consideration, and consultation with both others your choice will affect, and people you trust to think through decisions with you. Be sure to check to see whether your choice is ultimately in line with your values; this will help you to appreciate the life you're living and stay motivated throughout its ups and downs.
When you're at a crossroads, chances are that no decision will leave a beautifully clear and tidy aftermath. That's ok. You're looking for a decision that expresses the best of you and who you wish to become. We can envision an ideal future all we want, but any route we map out to get there will inevitably have to shift. Often, I think, having to reroute gives us the strength of broader experience than our straight, planned path would have afforded. It may even prove to be the catalyst for the manifestation of our own brand of genius. Sometimes the best results come from a collision of forces interacting in ways we could never have foreseen.
Because change is often challenging and uncomfortable, we may live in dread of disruption. Depending on how much time we spend worrying, this can be a huge waste of energy, and very demoralizing as well. A better use of time and energy would be to use any worries that arise as signposts that point us to the preparation we could be doing, and doing the work of staying calm and healthy; this way, when challenges do show up, we'll be in a better position to meet them with our full reserves of creativity and resourcefulness. We'll know that we are as prepared as we could make ourselves for this important moment. Plus, taking even small actions feels better than being an immobilized ball of worry. Being as healthy as we can feels better than than giving up our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual conditions to circumstance and flailing around in confusion.
Life never really goes as planned. We can fight this principle or accept it and prepare for it as best we can. Which option you choose will change what is possible for you when the chips are down. This week, keep your eyes peeled for how you might begin to shore up worries and other energy drains with small, manageable actions. Remember that even in mitigating risk, you can find things to enjoy. Celebrate what's good about your health and readiness now, and what parts of your life are already beautiful. The present moment is, after all, the only place there is to feel enjoyment and satisfaction. The more you attune yourself to feeling good in each moment, the more you can do this even in the midst of disruption, which will help you emerge more quickly to the other side.
Consumption vs. Creation
“I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”
Here's something I've found helpful in my work in supporting productivity: Understanding the difference between consumption mode and creation mode. If you're reading this, the world you were born into has encouraged you to default to consumption mode through your education (memorize what we give you and repeat), the ubiquity of advertising (trust us, you need to buy this), politics (here's the party line), organized religion (this is what you should believe and do), family (here's who you are), and on and on. There's great reward for accepting and conforming to what is handed to us, and that's not necessarily a bad thing! Humans are social animals, so being part of groups is essential to our health and well being. Societal structures help us to create and maintain the stability needed to foster decent standards of living and opportunities to pursue our own personal flavor of happiness, while still feeling like we're part of something larger than ourselves. But it's all too easy to become entranced by all the expectations we encounter, and caught up in endless contemplation of what's expected. Not to mention anxiety about whether we're measuring up, and what will happen if we don't.
If that's where we're living, we're not going to spend much time in creation mode. Creativity thrives outside the strictures of imposed expectations. It requires that you free your mind from established patterns and allow your own unique internal spark to lead the way to something fresh and new. For children, this is easy. For the first several years of life, they don't understand or care much about what anyone else thinks unless behaving a certain way leads to a catastrophic withdrawal of love by family members, but even then they're likely to try to get around the rules. As they get older, they will often realize that it's a lot safer and easier to conform to expectations, lose the imaginary friend, and at the very least perfect an extremely convincing impression of a compliant member of all applicable groups. The desire to be accepted and belong is very compelling during the teen years in particular; if we're not careful, we can get stuck in the patterns of fear-driven compliance, which tends to keep our lives small and confining.
If you want to have access to your creative engine, or work up to being a creative genius, priming the pump with inspiration is important, but it's also essential to turn off the barrage of information and expectation from outside. You must learn to think of yourself as a creator, prioritize making time and space for creative urges to bubble up, and be ready to take action to bring your creations into reality. How you share them with others is up to you, but you'll never get started if you don't find ways to carve out an oasis of self. You may find that this is hard to do because it's so easy to be pulled every which way by so many other things that seem important, especially when you have no guarantee of what you'll produce during this time. You may feel pressure to come out of it with concrete results, and frustration if you don't. It takes courage to stand for something you want that takes solitary effort, especially when it takes time to find one's stride—and it always does when starting something new. How can you know how music you can write in a given amount of time until you try? Obviously you can't! Especially if you've never written a song before in your life.
Even if the steps toward a goal seem very methodical and concrete, you will find that you need to bring your creativity to bear on how to accomplish each task, since you are a unique human being with many needs and desires to balance throughout your project. Sticking with the program requires focus and discipline, and the decision to put aside distractions to bring about the result you want.
No matter what you're working toward, you'll be more successful if you acknowledge that you are choosing to be in creation mode when it's time to work. Acknowledge yourself for having the strength of spirit to go out on a limb alone over the dark chasm of the unknown. Appreciate your desire and your ability to bring new ideas and constructs into being. Focus on bringing forth rather than bringing in. And make sure you still allow yourself some consumption time in order to relax, renew, and stimulate new thoughts and sensations that will feed into your work. You may have noticed that ideas tend to crop up at unexpected moments when you're relaxing and doing undemanding tasks like taking a walk or a shower. This time is important too, because your mind isn't engaged in anything demanding, but you're also not trying too hard either. The right mix of time spent in various states of mind will be something for you to experiment with as you pursue your most productive and satisfying life.
This distinction between consumption and creative mode has really helped me to remember what's important to me as I forego other interesting activities that might otherwise distract me from producing the stuff of my goals. I hope this concept helps you to find a balance between the two that suits your forward movement in the context of your unique life.
Squirrel!
“The direction of your focus is the direction your life will move. Let yourself move toward what is good, valuable, strong and true.”
In last week’s blog about time management, I mentioned that creating change requires focus, creativity, and persistence. This week I’d like to zero in on focus. The achievement of any long-term goal requires sustained application of focused effort and attention, so let’s consider what this means and how we can bring focus to bear for maximum results.
Focus is:
· Cultivating the ability to apply your consciousness to a goal in the present moment so that you can get high-quality work done
· Tuning out everyday distractions like ambient noise, junk mail, and anything else unimportant that might tempt you to swing your attention away from what is important to you
· Keeping any fears and doubts that crop up along the way in perspective so that they don’t stop you short
· Continually returning to the work that needs to be done in order to keep your project moving
Bringing all of your mental powers to the subject at hand requires that you live in such a way that you’re prepared to do so when it’s time. There’s no way around it—if you want to stay the course over time and reach your biggest goals, you have to take care of yourself, consuming adequate nutrition, getting the amount of sleep that is optimal for you most of the time, and managing your mind and emotions. It takes practice to build your attention span and to keep returning your busy mind to the task in front of you, as well as a strong, calm emotional center. Meditation is, in my experience, one of the best tools for creating these abilities and conditions, and I suggest that you look for a variety that suits you and practice it to help support your ability to focus. If you get into the habit of calming your mind, you supercharge your capacity to expand your attention span and the quality of attention you’re capable of offering to any given task or person.
In order to resist the senseless pull of distractions, you need to devote time to reminding yourself of what you’re working so hard for. You need to imagine vividly and savor the sweet rewards of achieving your goal before you do so, constantly remembering the compelling reasons why it’s worth the effort so you can stay inspired. And you need to attend to uncomfortable emotions that arise and make it difficult for you to stay on task. Tapping/EFT is a fantastic help in this, as it can make it much quicker and easier to process and release emotional buildup, and clarify any actions you authentically want to take from a calm, balanced place so you don’t make mistakes by acting impulsively.
It’s a great idea to make sure that your workspace is clean, uncluttered, and comfortable enough for you to spend time there. If you can make it attractive and fun to be in, even better. Making sure you can play music you like, look at artwork you love, and have supplies at hand that are colorful and appealing can all be important. This is worth your thought and effort, because everything you can do to make your work enjoyable helps to keep you engaged—if you like your environment, it will be easier to be productive.
Time management is also important to protecting your ability to focus, as if you’re always hurrying and overwhelmed, you’ll find it hard to be fully present where you are and get your best work done. It’s important to find time for everything that’s a priority in your life even if it means slowing the pace of your progress toward your goals. If time management is hard for you, go back and read last week’s blog again for ideas about how to regain some control over your schedule. There are some basic skills we all need to work on that make working effectively with time possible, but it’s not something we tend to get a lot of formal support for. It’s also very unglamorous to do the work to build these skills, so it may not seem like an attractive way to spend our time. Even so, these skills make so much more possible that it makes sense to do it anyway.
If you’ve done your best with all of these points and you’re still struggling, it might be a good time to consider whether you could use some help. Maybe you just need some support from a friend or through coaching, or maybe you’re dealing with a specific issue like a learning disability (there are lots of great resources and techniques for coping with these now) or ADD/ADHD. Before I knew adults with ADD who could explain it to me, I can safely say that I was not aware of just how different someone else’s inner world could be from mine, despite having had a variety of experiences as well as a history of relating to eclectic friends. There are chemical conditions like this one, depression, and others that can make everyday tasks a struggle beyond what most people encounter. If you suspect that you may be in this boat, get some more information and find a professional to help guide you as you explore your personal experience and your options. Any unnecessary struggle is a waste of your time and vital energy, plus it’s just super frustrating and demoralizing. There is help available if you just reach out for it.
Next week we’ll explore the importance of developing persistence, which also strongly supports focus. In the meantime, I hope this gives you a few things to think about as you look for ways to optimize your happiness and productivity.
Silence Is Golden
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
Even if you’ve never meditated, you’ve probably heard that one of the benefits of many kinds of meditation practice is supposed to be a quieter mind. Since most cultures today place great value on the use of the mind, the benefits of a quiet mind can seem mysterious. Use it or lose it, right? Aren’t we supposed to be exercising our minds in order to stretch their capacities and keep them nimble? Well, just as our bodies need both weight-bearing exercise, cardio, stretching, AND rest in order to function at peak capacity, our minds need various kinds of use and rest in order to provide us with the capacities we want from them.
Modern life is so hectic, demanding, and distracting that we don’t generally get much time for silence and reflection. This leaves is with a mind that is mostly running at high speed all the time. With a mind so busily engaged, it’s harder to notice the patterns that are running on autopilot, keeping us stuck in ruts that we never seem to be able to break out of for reasons that elude us. When we put ourselves into a situation where nothing is required of us, and practice meditation with the aim of quieting the mind, we allow the mind to rest a bit; by the way, this in turn allows the body’s stress response to calm down, which is great for physical health—a bonus side effect! While it definitely takes practice to make progress in disengaging from normal patterns of thought, so that benefits may not be immediately felt, over time, it’s possible to build familiarity with new mind states. This familiarity makes it easier to take them with you, or recreate them when you’re experiencing something difficult, so that you can function more smoothly throughout your life. A hyper mind isn’t necessarily a resourceful mind, just as a chronically tense muscle isn’t always useful—it needs to be able to relax and stretch in order to do everything it’s meant to do.
When you’re meditating for the ability to quiet the mind, there are numerous benefits that I know I immediately experience, and you may as well, such as:
· As I head toward greater quiet, my mind will usually chime in a few times to reveal things I need to do or remember, which is legitimately helpful. I can make note of these and continue the process. Without giving myself a few minutes of quiet, I would not have remembered these, and opportunities would have been lost.
· As my mind slows down, I become more aware of my body, and anything about it that I need to address.
· I start to notice more about what is really going on with me, how I really feel about things that have been going on recently in my life. I begin to feel more like myself and less like someone just running around at the behest of every distracting thing I encounter every day.
· I begin to feel that there’s more time available to me than I would otherwise.
· I begin to feel calmer, more at peace, and more powerfully able to define what’s important and where I will choose to put my energy and focus.
· I feel more in touch with my intuition.
· My body feels more pleasantly calm and peaceful.
· I feel like my to do list falls away and I’m able to recognize the goodness of just being alive, which at this point is much more a feeling than a thought.
Once you’ve practiced an expanded state of mental quiet, there are many other meditation techniques to pursue depending on what you want, but being able to create that quiet space is a foundational skill without which only certain kinds of progress can be made. This state also becomes something you can remind yourself to revert to when you find yourself getting hyper for any reason. It can immediately help you to regain helpful perspective on the ways in which you may have been contributing to your own stress. Bringing a greater sense of calm to challenge allows you to stay more creative, less reactive, and more reasonable. You’re then more likely to be able to solve problems and work well with others, which makes you less likely to spend your time feeling stuck and confused.
In a seemingly unlikely way, spending time creating mental quiet leads to greater focus and energy, which can make it seem like you have more time rather than having lost it in the pursuit. Even if you don’t think you can spend more than a few minutes practicing, you can still benefit from the attempt to create a few minutes of internal quiet throughout your day here and there. I highly recommend making this a little game that you play with yourself. You may have other mental games you already play, like doing crossword puzzles. This is just another category of game that builds capacity your brain needs to function with excellence.
Onward and Upward
“The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist, the more likely your success.”
Just keep going. This is one of the most important principles I know of in the grand scheme of creating a successful life. You don’t have to always be running—you can walk, skip, hop or dance—and it’s ok to take a breather now and then when you need it. But if you can build the habit of just doing what you can to move forward a little bit every day, your progress toward what you want will be much faster than if you tend to exhaust yourself and drop out, or reconsider everything when you don’t get immediate results.
In such a fast-paced world, one in which we’ve been shown that everyone can become an “overnight” success by just getting on a reality T.V. show, our expectations may have become a bit unrealistic. For most people, success is the result of years of effort, which invariable include lots of ups and downs. Even those who seem to have gotten a big, lucky break have usually spent plenty of unglamorous time preparing and wondering at times if they’d ever get anywhere. Just like the rest of us!
I would suggest that this time of uncertainty and constant application yields precious abilities, even when it seems like nothing is happening. When we keep going despite resistance, worry, boredom, and annoyance, we’re building a habit of focus and healthy stubbornness that can serve us throughout life. Of course, I’m not implying that we should be so stubborn that we never consider our results and adjust course, or listen to the constructive feedback of others. I am in favor or each person dancing to their own drummer, though; you must ultimately be the one who decides what is right for you, and sometimes even the most well-intentioned advice must be ignored if it doesn’t seem right to you and for you. Some of the people who have invented the most astonishing things throughout history have been told over and over that creating what they saw in their mind’s eye was impossible. They kept going and perfected those things anyway. Healthy stubbornness in action!
There are many ways to keep yourself going when it’s difficult and uncomfortable to do so. I suggest broadening your tool set so that you have a better chance of staying in the game when the going gets frustrating. For example:
· Figure out what motivates you and roll with it. Are you someone whose abilities wake up when you’re moving toward something good, or working to outrun something you fear? Most of us respond somewhat to both, but you may find that one or the other is more effective for you. If you like to imagine moving toward something you want, remind yourself at least once a day what you’re working toward by imagining it vividly—preferably numerous times per day. This will bring you little surges of energy and the ability to recommit to your task every time you do it. You can also give yourself a little pep talk here and there and remind yourself of the progress you’ve made. If you get fired up when you imagine moving away from something bad, you can imagine something like that instead—see, hear, and feel people talking about how you failed and they knew you’d never amount to anything, etc. For most people, far more repetitions of the positive style of motivation is best, but throwing in a vision of what you definitely don’t want can sometimes add some spice to the mix.
· Take care of your physical needs without fail. Don’t skip meals, but keep them healthy. Get regular exercise, which builds energy and helps manage stress and lift your moods, and stretch your muscles to stay limber. Get at least seven hours of sleep per night. Brush and floss. You get the picture.
· Tell only the people you know you can trust to be supportive about your big goals. The last thing you need is a lot of negativity from people who think small, or are threatened by your unique vision.
· Commit to being a lifelong learner. No one starts off as an expert. We all build expertise in the areas we choose over time, and it never happens overnight. You don’t have to keep up with all information all the time, but you do need to keep up with your chosen field of interest, and again, it’s a fast-paced world out there. This will take some time and attention always if you want to be good at what you do, but it will also keep exposing you to the brilliance of others, which is inspiring.
· Find ways to blow off steam when you hit road blocks. Do or watch something that makes you laugh yourself silly. Spend time with friends. Volunteer for a worthy cause and get your mind off your own troubles. Spend some time on a hobby that just makes you feel good. Read biographies of successful people, who I guarantee went through hard times before they became famous and respected for their contributions. Write out your woes in a journal. Go outside and enjoy the natural world.
· Be willing to rethink your strategy as you try things and learn from your experiences. Consult others who have done something similar for advice and a change of perspective.
· If you crash and burn or fall off the wagon in some way, know that everyone experiences failure sometimes, and we often learn far more from these episodes than from we do from smooth sailing. Failures and mistakes may feel terrible when they’re happening, but they are not the end unless we decide they are. If you’re still alive, there’s still more left within you.
· Remind yourself that what you have to give is unique and important. Even if it’s not yet ready or not yet connecting with an audience or customers, someone out there needs and is waiting for what you have to offer.
For some people, succeeding to a level that feels satisfying takes far longer than they ever hoped or imagined. If this is you, it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong—this is a very common human experience. We can’t always know beforehand exactly what will get us to our destination. Just keep taking a step forward every time you can, keep learning, and above all, just keep going.