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 though is that a lot of people find it very difficult to do this. There would be many reasons for this but one of the key reasons I see from my experience as a coach is that some people need to be social in order to keep motivated.
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:
If you love and yearn to have time with yourself and you feel refreshed and renewed in doing that, this points to an internal operating system.
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. Those early years sow the seeds for many of your patterns of personality.
If you love being around people as a way to energise and refresh yourself e.g. you love to sit and work at a cafe, you need music or background noise to keep you company, chances are your energy is enhanced by being with and around people. This points to being practiced in a system that references the external world.
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 feeling content within yourself because you feel more consciously connected to life happening around you.
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 of being.
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.
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 on what to look for and notice within yourself as a first step. Once you become more self aware of your patterns then it suggests pathways on how to mature beyond these habits you learnt a long time ago.
Developmental maps, including the Enneagram, can help shine a light on your blindspots, help you to become more conscious of what you are doing now so that you can understand why you find it so difficult to stay focussed and hold yourself accountable.
Knowing there is a map can be liberating and knowing that there are many who have similar patterns of personality to you is also liberating! Now you know that you are not alone in this struggle and that there are reasons why you do what you do. It is all very reasonable.
When you are working on your goals, now 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.
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 yet be working on your own goals. Given these solutions exist is even more evidence to let you know that you are certainly not alone in having this challenge.
Full Circle Ideas is a community that works for me. It is an online space for entrepreneurs who want to share their creative ideas and tend to them with intentional time and gentle accountability.
If you used to wonder was there something wrong with you because you find yourself getting distracted, now you can more easily relax and know this is simply not true.
Now you can use your energy to find resourceful ways to become more conscious of your patterns of personality and explore developmental pathways to release yourself from anything that gets in the way of you achieving your goals.
Eimer Boyle
Conversational Coach & Teacher of Human Development
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