Tag Archives: focus

Finish strong

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I share a message that my kids have heard over and over again, “Be safe, be smart.” I say this to them almost every time they leave the house. I don’t care that they are 24 & 26 years old, I deliver this like a mantra. A good friend of mine has a different kind of mantra told at a different times to his kid, and that’s, “Finish strong.”

I’m in need of this mantra right now. The coming weeks are so busy, I’m tired, and yet I’m so close to the end… I’ve got just over 20 work days left until I retire, and I keep telling myself, ‘Finish strong!’

There are other things I’m saying to myself. I’m trying to remember to pause, and to enjoy the celebrations that come with retirement… but the main mantra, the thing that I keep coming back to, is to ‘Finish strong!’

What gives way?

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I was reminded recently of the project management triangle. It refers to the fact that you can only chose two of the three: Cheap (cost) / Fast (time) / Good (scope). This is related to what I was thinking, but not really the essence of it. What this made me think of is how we are always making sacrifices.

Right now, my sacrifice(s) seems to be sleep and diet. Everything else is going really well for me. Work is busy, but smooth. I’m seeing a lot of my family. I’ve connected with friends. My workouts are going well. But I’m not sleeping great and I haven’t been paying attention to what I’m eating, or rather I don’t think I’m eating enough.

It’s so hard to have everything going in the right direction all at once. There is always something that seems to be giving way in order to ensure other things are going well. I’m sure that I’ll rebalance my sleep and diet soon, but then will something else falter? I’d like to think not, but that seems to be what happens. Is this a constraints issue like the management triangle? Or is it just me?

Meditation fail

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I’ve been ‘pretending’ to meditate for years now. I’m not berating myself. I know that meditation is a journey, not a destination, and that the practice itself is as much about bringing your focus back as it is staying focused. I get it. I just haven’t really done it.

My monkey mind doesn’t stay on anything long enough to call it meditation. In a typical meditation I’ll focus on my breath and that won’t last 2 minutes. I’ll do a guided meditation and not too far into it discover that I haven’t been listening for a while. I’ll get to the end of a meditation and realize that I’ve been daydreaming for as long as I can remember trying to meditate.

My mediation time in any given session last as long as the dog’s attention in the movie ‘Up’, where every few seconds he’s distracted by the idea of a squirrel. This isn’t once in a while, this is… Every. Single. Session. And it has gotten worse rather than better.

Meditation time has become distracted time. A pause in my day where I put a meditation on, but my mind doesn’t stay on it. In a 10 minute meditation I might count 6-7 breaths before my mind wanders or wonders. Even if I recognize that I’ve drifted away, I don’t really get back to it. Or my attention is even shorter the next time.

I need to change things up. What I’m currently doing is not working for me, and I’ve been at it way too long to accept that my poor follow through is the best that I can do. I’m not sure what I’m going to change yet, but I can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. And if I’m honest, for the amount of time I’ve put into meditation, I really suck and have seen no improvement. It’s time to take a break and come back to this habit later. Hopefully with a new, more effective approach.

Honing Observation Skills with Questions

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I love this quote by James Clear:

“Observation is a skill, and like any skill, it can be trained and honed.

Even if you’re not a negative person, you may be skilled at noticing negative things. Sometimes people are good at noticing the reason things won’t work out or have a tendency to fixate on the latest distressing story.

But you can train your eye toward the opportunities each day quietly presents. You can become competent at noticing your good luck: the little moments of joy, the stranger who helped, the small things that went right, the opportunity in front of you right now.

What are you competent in observing? And which types of observations seem to serve your life best?” ~ James Clear

I’d add one more question, and that is, ‘What questions are you asking to ensure you are making the right observations?‘

‘Why don’t things work out for me?’ …is a very different question from, ‘I wonder what good will come of this?’

‘What else could go wrong?’ …is a very different question from, ‘What opportunities will present themselves now?’

James Clear makes a great point about needing to observe opportunities, I just think the path to get there is giving our brains, which are massive answering machines, the right questions to ask and then answer.

Path to Nowhere

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We all do it.

We choose a path that doesn’t take us where we want to go… a path to nowhere.

Endless scrolling on social media. Binge-watching shows instead of pursuing hobbies. Saying yes to everything and stretching ourselves too thin. Procrastinating on big goals by tackling tiny, irrelevant tasks. Staying in our comfort zones, avoiding new skills that scare us. Skipping exercise or eating junk for quick fixes. Remaining friends with negative people who drain our energy. Buying stuff to feel better, but still feeling empty after our purchases, or buying on impulse because it’s easy, and the items aren’t too expensive.

But the costs are real. The path isn’t forward. These are all paths to nowhere.

Find your Everest

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Today’s title inspired by Dave Sands.

We had just completed our weekly training as we prepare to ‘Everest the Crunch’ (walking up the Coquitlam Crunch 37 times in 48 hours, to climb the equivalent height of Mount Everest), when Dave shared the following quote on Instagram, along with a photo of us and of a sensational sunrise behind Mount Baker from this morning.

“Refresh, renew, and re-emerge! Find your Everest, go for it, and crush it!”

This is the time of year when millions of people start New Year’s resolutions, yet statistics say that 92% of these will fail. If you want to be in the 8% success rate, take a moment to really consider what your goal is that you are going to attain with your resolution. Is it something that you can hold on to? Is it big enough to be a challenge, desirable enough to keep your drive, and yet still attainable enough that you won’t be discouraged if progress is slower than expected?

Find your Everest!

((… And follow us on our journey too.))

Where’s your focus?

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I remember a couple friends doing a puzzle in front of me that left me clueless. One of them had 2 forks and placed them on a table, one on top of the other on an angle, and asked, “What number does this represent?”

I guessed wrong and the other friend guessed right. I kept trying and got it wrong far more times than right, while my other friend got it right every time. I accused them of cheating so the guessing friend started writing the number on a piece of paper. The friend placing the forks on each other would place the utensils down, the other friend would write the number down. The first friend would wait for my guess, reveal the correct number, then my second friend would show his correct guess that he wrote down.

This went on for an embarrassingly long time, with my friends offering to tell me how they did it, and me refusing because I was going to figure it out!

I didn’t.

Finally, they showed me. When they did, I realized how the ‘tell’ was being exaggerated for my benefit, but I was so fixated on the forks that I missed it. The forks placement had nothing to do with the chosen number. After placing the forks at an odd angle on top of each other, my friend would place a few fingers on the edge of the table. How many fingers he placed there was what the mystery number was.

But my eyes stayed focused on the shapes made by the two forks. Even when my friend was tapping his fingers loudly on the table, I ignored them and stayed fixated on the forks.

I think too many people are focused on the forks these days. Where would you benefit from widening your focus and attention?

Unspoken expectations

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“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.”  ~Chris Williamson

We spend so much time living in the past. We beat ourselves up for what we did do, didn’t do, should have done. We build scenarios that never happened yet are fully imagined. And we play these scenarios in our mind as if they are real. Then we are helpless not to respond through thoughts and perseverations, again as if the scenarios were real.

Unspoken expectations build resentment, steal joy, and limit our presence in the present… Not because we are living in the past, but because we are living in the imagined outcomes of possibilities which never existed.

The past, real or imagined, limits our ability to truly be present now, unless we let go and focus on our presence in the present. Unless we leave our unspoken expectations behind.

A year and a half later

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I’ve had some time recently that I could have used better. It reminded me of something I shared a year-and-a-half ago, ‘If I had the time’.

I won’t reshare the whole post, but I’ll share the very powerful comic and quote I shared:

Here’s a great comic by @MrLovenstein:

And the quote by Author Julia Cameron:

“The “if I had time” lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born — without the luxury of time.”

And I ended the post with this,

“If only I had the time… would I use it? Would you? How convenient and comfortable is this lie? The reality is that if it’s important enough, there’s probably time for it, time we can find, time we can make, rather than making up excuses.”

—

Discipline is hard. Good habits are hard. Being strong in one area of your life doesn’t automatically make you strong in another. People who smoke know it’s bad for them. People cheating on their diet still want to lose weight. Yet, in both these cases the people in question could be very competent and effective in other areas of their lives.

It’s a reality that in some areas of our lives, even when we have the time, it can still be really hard to do things we actually want to do.

Love the process

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That doesn’t mean the process is easy. It doesn’t mean you wake up full of enthusiasm every day. It doesn’t mean there aren’t hard days.

Just commit to putting yourself out there. Not for an end result, not for a reward, or accolades, or achievement badges. Do enjoy those when they come, celebrate as often as you want… but don’t show up seeking the outcomes.

Show up because you made a commitment. Show up because that’s how you define your success. Show up to show up because that’s what you do, and you’ll naturally fall in love with the process.

Once you’ve fallen in love with the process, then showing up is easy, and even on the hard days you won’t struggle to show up. Then, and only then, will the real rewards come. Again, celebrate them but don’t focus on them. Focus on showing up and keep the love of the process going.