I have always been blessed to be able to focus and be self disciplined. I can make a list, set time aside, work from home, work on my own and stay on track to get things done in line with the goal I set for myself.
What I do notice is that a lot of people find it difficult to do this. There would be many reasons for this but one of the key reasons I see from my experience of being in conversation is that some people need to be social in order to keep motivated.
What is covered in this blog: |
Clarify Your Energy Source |
Early Life Insights |
Habits and Personal Goals |
Unravelling Old Strategies to Discover New Ways to Focus |
Using Developmental Maps as a Powerful Process for Unlearning |
Releasing Self Judgement Liberates You |
Find a community where you can focus and be social |
Clarify Your Energy Source
What can be helpful if you are trying to become more focussed and accountable is to start by noticing how you energise yourself.
It may not be true all of the time but generally speaking consider the following:
Do you love and yearn to have time with yourself? Do you feel refreshed when you have “me time’’? Are you more ready to face the world after you have had your solitary fix?
Do you love being around people as a way to energise and refresh yourself? You don't necessarily need to chat with people but do you like to know they are there and around? Do you have music on as you work?
If you resonate more with the first one this points to your energy source being more from within and if you relate more with the second one then this points to your energy source being external to you.
And you may notice you can find examples in your life where both of these are true, depending on the different contexts of your life.
Early Life Insights
Think about how things were for you growing up. Were there often people around or did you have a lot of time on your own?
I was an only daughter with two brothers so I had my own room and I spent hours on my own.
The early years sow the seeds for many of the patterns of personality.
Habits and Personal Goals
Now consider what happens when you set a personal goal for yourself. Something that requires you to focus, to be on your own, head down to get things done.
Do you notice that your heart is aching for someone, or something to be with you or around you?
While I would rarely go to a cafe to work, or put music on as background noise you may love to find a place where people are around, or have your dog sitting at your feet which helps you to stay on track as well as give you a feeling of contentment within yourself because you feel more consciously connected to life happening around you.
Unravelling Old Strategies to Discover New Ways to Focus
Introversion (the state of drawing energy from being alone) and extroversion (the state of drawing energy from others) is learnt behaviour and what is learnt can be unlearnt.
Once you know how you habitually energise yourself you can find strategies to deal with this. While strategies may work in the short term, in the longer term what is possible is to dissolve learnt unconscious habits into new ways to focus.
If you are having trouble staying focused then what is possible is to simply become more conscious of your habits and to unlearn some of the ways that you have been operating unconsciously for years.
How might you do this? Learning is a process and so unlearning is a process too.
Using Developmental Maps as a Powerful Process for Unlearning
One of the developmental frameworks that maps common patterns of personality and provides pathways to develop beyond them is the Enneagram. This framework guides you through locating your primary habitual patterns of personality (called Ennea Type) and then offers ways to explore and notice much more about yourself as a pathway to greater self awareness.
With more self awareness of your patterns you can intentionally choose developmental practices to mature you beyond habits you learnt a long time ago. Through commitment to the inner work you will uncover, rediscover and recognise deeper aspects of you. These deeper aspects of you are resourceful in supporting you to focus more easily and be at peace with silence and aloneness.
Developmental maps, including the Enneagram, can help shine a light on your blindspots, helping you to become more conscious of what you are doing now so that you can understand why you may be finding it difficult to stay focussed and hold yourself accountable.
Releasing Self Judgement Liberates You
Knowing there are developmental maps can be liberating plus knowing that there are many who have similar patterns of personality to you is also liberating!
Now you know that you are no longer alone in your struggles and that there are reasons why you do what you do. It is all very reasonable.
With these insights, when you are working on your goals, you can at least appreciate that there is little value in judging yourself when you get distracted. Self-judgement is another very common pattern of personality.
One way to work with self-judgment, if this is a habit for you, is to start by simply noticing when you judge yourself and then become curious to know the origin of that habit and then in time to explore ways that help you free yourself from it.
When you explore self judgement more deeply you begin to realise the complexity of the self and early soul structures.
Liberation comes when you begin to get to know the nature of You more fully.
Find a community where you can focus and be social.
There are many online communities that now exist to support people to become more disciplined and accountable.
Co-working set ups where you can be with one person, or groups of people virtually and be focussing on your own goals. Time to do what you need to do as well as open up new connections and friendships in your social network.
Given these solutions exist is more evidence to let you know that you are certainly not alone in having this challenge.
Full Circle Ideas is an online community space for entrepreneurs who want to share their creative ideas and tend to them with intentional time and gentle accountability.
If you have been thinking maybe there is something wrong with you because you find yourself getting distracted, maybe now you can give yourself permission to relax more knowing this is simply not true.
Overthinking uses up a lot of mental energy and when you spent less time over-thinking you can use your renewed vitality to find resourceful ways to become more conscious of your patterns of personality, exploring developmental maps which can support you in reframing, redefining and releasing you from anything that gets in the way of achieving your goals.
Eimer Boyle
Conversational Coach & Development Guide
View my bio
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