Resolving to re-focus
Gooooaaaal!
That’s how I feel at the beginning of the year—like a victorious fútbol player, all revved up and ready to work hard for another cheer. Goals appeal to my hyperfocus on productivity and achievement. And that’s why I have started avoiding them. At least the traditional New Year’s resolution variety.
And by that I mean the common practice of using goals as a measure against which we judge our progress and (more problematically) ourselves.
There are only two possible outcomes when we use goals as yardsticks: validation or punishment.
And neither one is helpful. We either get a brief (and always insufficient) boost of false worth or a stick with which to beat ourselves.
The real problem with goals is we tend to set them about things we already care about.
Sometimes they relate to areas where we’re already quite successful and sometimes to ones where we have never been able to make lasting progress. Our track record doesn’t matter because either way these are areas that already have our attention.
And attention is the only superpower we have.
Because we spend much of this most valuable resource unconsciously, we may not recognize its power, but that doesn’t lessen this truth: Our life is created by where we beam the spotlight of our attention.
Therefore it’s much more effective to use goals as a way of re-focusing our conscious attention.
(The word intention fits this use nicely.)
Re-focusing is so powerful because it shifts some attention to our blind spots, offering us growth in the areas where we most need it and helping us moderate our natural tendencies.
But in order to re-focus, we have to find our blind spots. How do you know what you don’t know? By getting some outside help, in whatever form: teachers (books, podcasts), personality profiles, partners, trusted friends, therapists, coaches . . . sometimes just writing provides enough distance. Make a list of the major areas your goals of years past fall into.
For me, these include
productivity
achievement
mastery
Things they don’t include are
connectivity
emotions
stillness and listening
So while my yardstick goals might look like a list of house projects to complete, an amount of weight to lose, and a photography technique to learn, my re-focusing goals might look like more consciously feeling the music when I dance at the gym, sitting with and non-judgmentally feeling though a negative emotion weekly, and meditating for two minutes a day.
Did you notice that all of these re-focusing goals have something in common?
That’s right. They’re easy. These goals do not require more motivation or more effort. They aren’t intended to make you try harder.
What result can I expect from only two minutes of meditation a day? I surely won’t become a master at sitting in silence and clearing my head. But I can expect that I will re-focus my attention at least once daily in a way that will start to throw light on a dark corner in my life.
The point is to practice the act of re-focusing itself.
As I do this consistently—and at two minutes a day, I know that I will!—I strengthen my re-focusing muscle.
As I focus on process instead of product I begin to open to the values I consciously want to live.
(Or I can change the nature of the product all together—see my To feel list from last January).