[Discussion] (OC) The importance of focusing

Every day you wake up with a different set of emotions, thoughts, and energy levels. You might wake up feeling like you can accomplish anything, or maybe you’ll wake up lethargic, sad, excited, bored, any set of emotions. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? To accomplish anything, we need the capacity to act against how we might be feeling. We need to control, at least to some degree, our actions despite our desires. For example, I may not wake up today wanting to finish my essay, and yet if I leave it up to when I’m feeling like it, that moment may never happen.

Even deeper than this though, I have to be reminded (even if that reminder comes from myself) of what I need to accomplish for the day. I need something to aim at. So, I wake up with my lottery set of emotions, thoughts, energy, etc., but then I also need something to direct them towards. If I wake up feeling lazy, and I know I have an essay, I might still triumph over my laziness (in anguish and maybe for a short period of time) towards finishing the essay. But, if I have nothing to aim at, and how I’m feeling comes about by luck, then whatever happens in my life is from external sources. I take what life gives me, which might be good, but it might also be nothing at all.

For example, our eyes are picking up on a massive amount of information. We simply can’t even be aware of all the sensory information they receive past a base level of passive awareness. We need to focus, everything else is periphery. Yet, many of us don’t focus our lives at all, let alone our days. We take what life gives with emotions we don’t control.

How do we overcome this? How can we possible return some control to ourselves?

We’ve all heard this. We know what the first steps are. However, I want to bring to light the underlying reasons underlying why these are the first steps.

First, we need to set goals, then act in spite of how we might be feeling. Second, we need to remind ourselves of these goals in our minds or risk backsliding. It’s not enough to become obsessed with our goals if we forget about them in a week, month, etc. We need to keep them in our mind until they are accomplished.

What setting goals does is focusing your mind. All the sensory information, things we can do in a day, etc., is enough to keep us distracted our whole lives. Setting goals is giving yourself something to aim at in this infinite possibility of life. We want to not keep chasing periphery and accomplish nothing or accomplish things by mere luck.

Then we need to remind ourselves daily of what these goals are. This doesn’t need to be done alone, we can recruit a team which will help keep your mind focused when you can’t.

The risk we want to avoid is simply doing what you feel – because you may never feel like accomplishing your goals again. If you don’t have any set goals at all, nothing specific to focus your mind on, and you’re acting based on your feelings alone, then you are surrendering any control over what you get out of life. You take what life gives you, and you feel whatever random feelings you’re feeling towards this random situation.