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Have a look at this for a view. Pretty freaking awesome day today. All the way down the coastline, stunning.
What’s up everyone? Hopefully you can see from the view and at least the day behind me that it is stunning today and I’ve been waiting for about a week for it to stop raining to just be able to do this video blog because literally I couldn’t even hear myself think, let alone record anything. The rain was so loud. But I want to share with you some things that I’ve learned in regards to focus and what it means to be able to focus on your goals and to make sure that you’re constantly striving towards something but also what you need to be concentrating on in regards to your goals and why you actually want to achieve and what associations you have with them.
So rather than you guys having to focus on my shiny forehead, I’m going to flip the camera around so you can focus on this amazing view and hopefully you will get some value out of what I have to share with you. Hopefully you will be able to either relate to it or take something from it that will help you to just get a little bit clearer on the best ways that you can channel your focus.
All right. So what do I mean by focus? Well, focus is for me the ability to be able to concentrate solely on your outcome or on where you want to go or achieve and being able to do that regardless of what challenges come up, regardless of how hard, how painful, how much time, whatever else it is that’s going to come in between you and where you want to go. The ability to be able to focus solely on the outcome and therefore get the confidence to know that regardless of everything – even if you don’t even know how yet, that you will find a way to achieve what you want to achieve.
Now this is something that I’ve strived for a lot in my life. It’s something that I constantly try and work on on a daily basis with my training, with my knowledge. Some people might call it stubborn but we will just agree to disagree there and I think if anything, the journey alone of being able to just constantly push yourself and strive yourself has led me to achieve lots of great things, meet lots of great people and really get the most that I can out of every single day.
One of the things that I have noticed though over the last few years is that if you’re not clear on why you want to achieve what you want to achieve. So it’s really easy to come up with a goal. I want to get down to 60 kilos or I want to have X amount of dollars or I want to be able to spend X amount of time with so and so.
These are all tangible goals. They’re all things that we can picture and work towards. But why do we want them? What’s behind there for us? And what I didn’t realize until I actually did achieve a lot of these things was that until I realized why I wanted them or what emotions or feelings did I attach to the outcome, what it all meant for me – and in some cases, this is quite disappointing because I would sort of end up at the goal or I would see a lot of my clients end up at their goal but never feel that sense of achievement, never feel that sense of, “Wow, look what I’ve done,” and actually stop and be proud of it.
And I’m sure you’ve all felt that. Like you look amazing or you will achieve something and someone will acknowledge that but you will be like, “Oh, yeah, but it took me this long,” or, “Oh yeah, but I still want to do this,” or, “Oh yeah, it’s OK. But I don’t really know,” and I think the problem with that is the fact that we were concentrating on the tangible outcome which was whatever, the kilos, whatever, the financial, whatever, whatever it was you were concentrating on. But we never stopped long enough and focused enough on why we wanted it and what emotions or feelings we had attached.
So what I’ve started to learn and realize especially with my clients that if we don’t focus more on how you feel when you’ve achieved that goal or that tangible objective, what characteristics are there that have changed within you or that you were noticing about the world or whatever it is but often – let’s take the 60 kilos for example.
You had been working really hard. You end up at 60 kilos but you were so concentrated on 60 kilos. There you go. You’ve achieved the number but nothing else in your perspective has changed. There’s no emotional change and before you know it, suddenly you’re self-sabotaging yourself or you’re going backwards because yeah, you ticked it off but it didn’t mean anything more than the fact that you ticked it off.
Whereas if you pictured the entire time you were working towards 60 kilos, if you pictured in your mind, “This is how I’m going to feel when I’m at 60 kilos. This is the type of person that I’m going to be. This is the amount of confidence that I’m going to have. These are the conversations I’m going to have with myself and other people. These are the things I’m going to be able to do. These are the outfits I’m going to be able to wear. This is how much I’m going to enjoy. Every time somebody gives me a compliment, I’m going to say, ‘Thank you. It has been hard work but I feel awesome.’” If we had spent more time on concentrating on those things, not only are you going to feel way better the whole time you’re working towards it because I mean you’re literally pumping yourself up on a daily basis.
But when you do get there, you can realize how good that feels and let’s say for example you don’t get 60 kilos but everything else that you were concentrating on, you feel like you’ve achieved. So you might be 62 kilos but you feel awesome. You’re full of confidence. People are giving you the compliments.
The numbers are irrelevant now but the emotion and the feeling and all those things that you wanted to attach to that goal are still real and I find that you’re going to get a lot more value out of that and if I take a personal example for myself, it was when we planned to go to Everest last year. It had been two years of planning and training and focusing and pumping up and dreaming and watching videos and YouTube clips and non-stop to only arrive in Kathmandu and be stuck at an airport for three days not knowing whether we could or couldn’t go, trying to work out in our mind what would we do if we couldn’t go there.
All I can say that I learned out of that was the fact that my sole focus was being able to tick that off my list. But then when I had to step back and the decision was taken away from me, I had to choose what I wanted to focus on and the main reason I wanted to go to Everest was because I wanted a challenge. I wanted to reconnect with nature in a way. I wanted to realize just how amazing the world is. I wanted to spend time on myself. I wanted to have an adventure and we ended up doing [0:06:55] [Indiscernible] which is a trip that I never would have done. But I was still able to get every single one of those things that once I concentrated on them, I realized were more important to me than ticking off Everest.
Yes, I still want to tick off Everest because like I said, some people might call me stubborn. I say driven. But if I never do Everest, I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on the opportunity to have the life experience that I’ve been able to associate with the trip that I had.
Yeah, and I just want you [Indiscernible] realize every now and then that yes, I want you to push for goals and yes, I want you to constantly strive to be better and do more but take the time to step back and realize why you want to end up there. Also be aware that you’ve got the choice to switch your focus up whenever you want to. It’s really easy to end up at a destination or to end up in a particular situation where you can focus on how uncomfortable it is. You can focus on how you weren’t – you didn’t know what you thought you needed to know or you weren’t prepared the way you needed to prepare or whatever it is or you can decide to switch it up straight away and realize, “Wow, this is a learning experience. This is a challenge. I didn’t know I was going to step from myself and now I’m here. Let’s make the most of it,” or “I didn’t achieve my goal this time but I spent four weeks working solely on myself, on my health, on my well-being and getting fitter and healthier. I didn’t get that number this time but I know that I’m on the right track. I’ve got the confidence now to keep going. I’m going to focus on those things. I’m not going to focus on the number. I’m not going to focus on whatever else it is. I’m going to focus on the lessons I’ve learned, the experience I’ve had and what I can now do and use with all of that.”
So I’m trying to keep this short and sweet. I know the view is amazing and I actually want to go down and have a swim but choose what you want to focus on. Realize why you want to focus on it and if some of you are having trouble – and that often is the case that you’re so close to something, that you’re so focused on it but it’s right in front of your face, it’s really hard to see how you can focus or make a choice to focus on something else. So if you need help with that, please feel free to reach out. I’m happy to talk to you guys on any level but otherwise, pull yourself out of it a little bit.
Take that 30,000-foot view of your life or of that particular goal or focus and see what things there are behind it for you. So, good luck with it all. I’m loving it over here and I look forward to catching up with you soon. I really hope that you guys were able to get something out of that.
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Adam McKenzie