Where you put your mental focus?

It is all about focus and where you place your mental and emotional energy. If you ask me, I remember in old days putting my focus in the outcome and that giant impossible task. It made me work, work and work and still not satisfied with the result. Why? Because that outcome was so high and unrealistic.

Suck kind of high expectations and way of placing our mental focus can take away our living experiences. Now you are not living anymore. You are inside your head struggling to achieve and get. And whatever comes your way, it is not enough.

Later with life experiences, I learned it is not the outcome that matters but the journey and the little daily baby steps you take consistently. It is the little actions you take daily. When you do that, you start living life again. You start breathing. You take your time in doing your daily activities. You stop the rush and you reasonably put sufficient time to complete whatever tasks await you.

This shift in mental focus adds enoughness and worthiness in the things you do. Let us say you go to work. You enter your office. You meet your colleagues and have your meetings. You complete your work responsibilities with intention and purpose. And you focus on the little actions instead of the outcome. That would reduce the blame and the judging. You would eventually stop seeing yourself as not enough anymore.

But then you might ask this: Isn’t this going to make me less ambitious? Isn’t this going to make me slow down in my progress or lazy or not aspiring enough to achieve? Actually it is ok to aspire to achieve and have that mental vision of yours. But if you daily put your focus on the achievement and outcome and then throughout your days you realize still you haven’t arrived there yet, you get a sense of disappointment, frustration, sadness and maybe depression too.

However shifting our mental focus in such a context could give us back our living experiences. I like to reverse engineer such thoughts and find the truth in each scenario. Your approach towards your mind is not necessarily fixed and you can train it and work it out to make it serve you better today.

So if you ask: how could I do this? Well it is just a mental shift in focus. If you are at home and struggling to maintain its cleanliness, pay attention to the little things you do like putting the dishes away, sorting out the clothes, picking up things from the floor and such other small tasks.

Another example also is when you are at work. Let us say instead of focusing on the promotion and recognition that you strive to receive from your management, you put your mental focus on the daily little tasks you do. You take your time doing them. You block your time specifically to do them well. You have your conversations with colleagues with depth, warmth and presence. You meet your clients with excitement, enthusiasm and eagerness. You contribute the work and value you offer.

Finally if still you are resisting this idea, turn it into an experiment with your mind and see what happens with your inner calmness and stillness.