Focus is a skill that I accidentally learned to develop within myself. I don’t know how I happened to develop the ability to focus, but I can see its presence throughout my entire life. For me, I can remember in the late 90s in junior high, playing Pokemon, I loved the strategy of the game. This love for strategy would shape my entire life.
When I had set a goal for myself, I would execute that plan. I would fall down and it would be painful to get back up… not just physically, but emotionally as well. My best friend and roommate, my freshman year of college, knows more than anybody that I had a spreadsheet for everything.
My ability to focus was strengthened from taking action. The sheer ability to commit even for a moment to a given process is like a flexing a muscle. The most beautiful part of the process is seeing progress.
Progress leads to optimism, my drug of choice. I fed off ever single bit of the process. A quote by Greg Anderson, spells it out for me perfectly:
Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.
I am not personally a huge multitasking, when I was working at Wal-Mart while in college I had two nicknames, “The Finisher” and “One-Track Mind.” Both of which stemmed from my ability to focus on a task longer than my peers. I was not more gifted in school, I found that my success came from my stubbornness to stick with the process.
The only way that I could focus was to get started and start small. These small wins consistently over time gave me more confidence. This process had a compounding effect, much like compound interest. Today, I feel I am successful because I want it and I am going to work to have it.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.”
Pain is necessary for growth…
If choose to view pain as an opportunity for growth it now longer is something we avoid, but rather something we lean into.
What aspects of your life who would you like to experience change? What is one task you can focus on this next month to cultivate that change? If you’ve enjoyed this post, please do me a favor, share it and sign up to be notified of future posts.