I am continually amazed at how many tips and articles there are about how to keep focused, and pretty much they all say the same thing in terms of uncluttering your desk, removing those distractions etc.
But let’s start with asking you a different question. What do you see when you focus your eyes?
When a camera focuses something, e.g. a flower. It makes adjustments so we see only that one thing, causing everything else to be out of focus.
As we know our eyes do the same thing. We focus on that one thing, our eyes focus on the flower, and everything around us blurs out.
Let’s look at the meaning of the word focus. It derives from the verb focus, which means to fix on a central point.
It’s strange that we all know what it means, we can do it with our cameras and with our eyes, so why can’t we do this with our minds?
We are all intelligent people and know what we should and must do to achieve what we want to in our personal and professional lives, BUT, for various reasons we don’t, and that’s what I want to ‘focus’ on.
If instead of doing the normal things we read about, e.g. creating our list, putting things in priority order and working through these having removed all our distractions and clutter from our working day and environment, I asked you just to sit there and focus on ONE thing, blurring everything out of your mind and eyesight.
Think about the thing you are focusing on, let’s stick with the flower. What does that flower represent to you, for you? Do you want to grow more flowers, have a great bloom, move it from a pot to the garden?
Picture the result in your mind and imagine the flower having that bloom or being in the garden, think about how it feels, what it looks like and think about what you need to help you i.e. tools for the job, time to do the work.
What do you see NOW when you focus your eyes?