Wondering where your time goes? Wishing you could multiple your minutes? Thinking a time warp could be helpful. Consider upping your focus!
Focus is the ability to direct your attention or efforts in a concerted manner. As a child, I loved playing with a magnifying glass in the summer and getting the sun’s rays so focused through the glass, that I could actually begin to burn a small hole in the leaf I held. Focus is like that. All your energy is clarified and pinpointed on what you have in front of you.
In today’s social media culture, I find focus to be very difficult to achieve. There is always one more post, email or text message to read. The dinging of the smart phone is an incessant reminder that someone or something wants my attention, let alone my surroundings of my family, my business, my laundry!
How do you go about achieving focus such you feel time becomes your own and the time warp feeling of gaining some time occurs? Here are three ways.
Get Your Brain in Focus
Question 1 – What is it you want to do right now?
From a psychological standpoint, Dr. Susan Perry, a social psychologist describes your brain in moments of focus:
From what I’ve studied, it seems that both the right and left brain are working efficiently together, but able to screen out peripheral distractions. Time seems to disappear and you and the thing you’re doing feel as though they’ve become one. Such flow states have aspects in common with trance states, though it’s tough to do MRIs of someone writing a book or playing a game.
When you focus, you are “in the flow.” Your brain gives you that feeling of time in suspension because you are so engrossed in your project.
Determine Your Intention
Question 2 – What will help me clarity my focus?
When developing your focus for the day, the week or even the next ninety days, you have to determine what it is you hope to focus upon intentionally. If you are like me, I like a lot of different shiny baubles. I can get interested in the best strategy for this, the newest way to do that, and of course, the easiest way to do it all.
Start by thinking about what is most important to you this week. What three things could you be, do or have that you could focus on intentionally? For example, could you intentionally focus on being grateful, or doing more fun reading or having an enjoyable cup of tea each morning to start your day while writing your list of intentions?
Until I figured out that I really wanted to focus on my writing and coaching to help women find a more well-nourished life, I was trying a whole lot of things.
Give Yourself Permission
Question 3 – What is it that brings me joy as I focus?
Without focus, our brains don’t know which way to thrive. As a muscle, it’s always expending calories and from the beginning of time, looking for ways to conserve those calories. So as you are distracted by many things, you’re using up a huge amount of energy.
By determining what to focus upon as well as what brings you joy, your brain says ahh!
Permit yourself the luxury of doing one thing at a time. Lao Tzu
It is a luxury to focus in some ways, yet one that can refill your heart and soul, so that you can have the energy to do the other things that are on your responsibility plate.
The Take Away
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.” ~Helen Keller
What sunshine focus are you seeking today? What do you want to be doing well? What intentions do you need to be setting? What permissions do you need to give yourself?
I hope you can discover how developing the habits of focus can bring a time warp into your life and nourish you.
If you would like to investigate how coaching could help you determine you clarify your focus and living a well-nourished life, I have a few openings currently. Contact me for a free focus-setting session today!
Nancy Booth helps you discard chaos and uncertainty as you journey towards a well-nourished life after 50. She helps you embrace wellness, purpose and intentional connections in your life. Her coaching process helps you design your own personal roadmap to help you build a healthy, purposeful and peaceful mind, body and soul. She would love to walk your journey with you.