The Magical Power of Focus
By Leo Babauta
“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.” – Qui-Gon to Anakin, Star Wars Episode I
The quote above, as cheesy as George Lucas’ writing often is, contains a nugget of Jedi wisdom that I’ve repeatedly found to be true.
Your focus determines your reality.
It’s something we don’t think about much of the time, but give it some consideration now:
If you wake up in the morning and think about the miserable things you need to do later in the day, you’ll have a miserable day. If you wake up and focus instead on what a wonderful gift your life is, you’ll have a great day.
If we let our attention jump from one thing to another, we will have a busy, fractured and probably unproductive day. If we focus entirely on one job, we may lose ourselves in that job, and it will not only be the most productive thing we do all day, but it’ll be very enjoyable.
If we focus on being tired and wanting to veg out in front of the TV, we will get a lot of television watching done. If, however, we focus on being healthy and fit, we will become healthy and fit through exercise and good eating.
This may seem simplistic, but it’s completely true. This is the magical power of focus.
Let’s look at some of the ways you can use focus to improve different aspects of your life.
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” – Buddha
Leo,
100% true!
Our experience springs out of whatever we consistently give out attention and energy to. Most don’t know that we have the power to choose our thoughts, which would make like a game of choice instead of a game of chance.
RB
I was just talking with some friends today about this and I recalled the quote attributed to Henry Ford “Whether we think we can or can’t, we are right”. Our minds are the gateway to success or failure and most often it is us who gets in our own way.
Geoff
This article describes how I’ve lived my life to a tee. I jump into new thing after new thing after new thing. I’ll usually stick with it until I figure out the basics and then move on. Just like the article says, this constant change of focus gets little accomplished.
Two additional recommendations I have for maintaining focus are to
1. Keep a list of things you would like to do or work on. When you’ve finished you current goal, look at the list and pick what you want to do next. If any of the items no longer sound appealing, remove them from the list. This will help you from jumping into things that really were not for you.
2. Reduce the noise that can affect your focus. The point of this article is about powering through the point when your natural drive for a goal or task diminishes. The other problem people have in this day and age is the ability to stay on task while you are working on something. Shut down twitter, turn off facebook, close your email. Put your phone on silent. Set aside a specific time to work on your goal and make sure every distraction you have is off. Fight the urge to check any of these items until you have completed your alloted time. Easier said than done, but well worth the effort.