How to Focus + My Goals

Photo by Andrea D'Aquino. Follow him on facebook and flickr.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of things you want to focus on? Yet, you find it hard to make real progress forward? Perhaps, it’s time to slim down your list and focus on just one or two larger goals. I too didn’t know how to focus until an unexpected conversation with my husband exposed my problem. This is that story.
For New Year’s Eve last year, Jeremy and I were looking for something to do—a traditional party with an actual countdown, mingling with strangers, getting dressed up in swanky outfits, holding champagne, kissing at midnight, etc.
I felt so relieved when we were invited to such a party. “Finally, we’re not going to be orphans this year,” I thought. However, the Universe had other plans for us; something sweeter, something better.

The plan was to put Ryan to bed, have dinner, and then go to the party. As we were having dinner, one conversation after another, we ended up on the topic “What do you want in the New Year? What are your goals? What do you want to focus on?”
What started as a simple ten minute conversation over dinner grew into a two hour long, delicious sharing of our hopes and dreams for the future. It was one of the most honest conversations we’ve had. It was beautiful and worth savoring every breath.
One thing that became apparent was how scattered I was in what I wanted. My husband Jeremy had to stop me with “Oh wait, that’s too many things to focus on at once” as I listed all the things I wanted to focus on this year.
Despite my best efforts at simplifying my goals and my understanding that the more we focus on, the more diluted each goal becomes in its realization, I had too many “wants” and sometimes they conflicted with one another.
Using his supreme focus and sharpened managerial skills, Jeremy gently guided me in reorganizing my goals such that they were sorted in a hierarchical structure—with one big goal at the top to focus on, and lots of little goals that went underneath the big goal.
For my business, I had two big goals that were the most important which I will be focusing on. After examining all the loose goals, we determined that any career related goal had to fit under one of the two big goals. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t be working on them.
Too many loose goals become a distraction, taking energy away from what matters most. If you don’t have a definite goal, you won’t know what you should be focused on and will end up drifting wherever the wind takes you.
It makes sense: We only have a limited amount of time each day. If we give attention to one thing, that means we now have less attention to give to another thing. Real results are produced as a product of focused attention. Scattered attention, attention focused on too many things can never produce real results.
I often violate this rule, especially last year, when I didn’t have any definite focus. I was floating around. Whenever something came along that sounded attractive, I would dive in and try it out. In the end, they were all distracters. As a result, I didn’t produce much. My heart wasn’t in it and my attention was being split into too many parts for any one part to become potent.
In the year 2010, I dabbled in wedding photography, internet marketing, consulting business, and the good mood blogging contest—all things which were nice to-haves, but took me away from what I wanted most: to create products that can help people, and to grow this happiness blog.
In chapter 1 of Napoleon Hill’s 1925 classic “The Law of Success”, he talks about the vital importance of having a definite purpose —the thing you want to focus on. The thing you want most to become realized.
Here’s a related quote from that chapter,

“Until a man selects a definite purpose in life, he dissipates his energies and spreads his thoughts over so many subjects and in so many different directions that they lead not to power, but to indecision and weakness.

With the aid of a small reading glass, you can teach yourself a great lesson on the value of organized effort. Through the use of such a glass, you can focus the sun’s rays on a definite spot so strongly that they will burn a hole through a plank. Remove the glass (which represents the definite purpose), and the same rays of sun may shine on that same plank for a million years without burning it.“

Wow.
Thinking back to the times when I succeeded in producing concrete results, whether it was my first online business selling apparel, or graduating from university, or starting my blog, or even winning the good mood gig contest, I was completely focused, completely fixated, unwavering, razor sharp, focused on the end result (and on nothing else).
“Ah, that’s the key I’ve been searching for, ‘focus’, and having a ‘definite purpose’,” I thought to myself.
I sat back, and watched as Jeremy excitedly helped organize my goals, and to simplify them, so that I can actually focus on just one or two things instead of fifty.
At an hour to midnight, Jeremy said, “You know, we can either go to the party and mingle with a bunch of people we don’t really know or—while the topic is fresh—we can go grab our laptops and organize our goals in a share doc, so we can keep each other accountable. And afterwards we can watch a movie and open a bottle of wine. What do you think?”
It was so delicious an idea that there was only one possible answer: Of course, I would rather spend the night doing something personal and meaningful with my life partner.
Since, I had already gotten ready—all dressed up with my hair done and makeup already applied—which I pointed out to Jeremy long enough for him to say “Oooh, ahhh, pretty”, I ran upstairs like a little kid to change into warm comfy house clothes.
I then marched into my office, sat down at my desk, opened a Google doc and started typing. A few minutes later, Jeremy came in with two glasses of freshly opened red wine and his laptop. He sat at the reading chair—where I could see him in the dim shades of the reading lamp.
I had my goals organized in three major categories: professional, personal wellness and couple goals—as per Jeremy’s clever suggestion.
If you are curious, my two professional goals were: product creation and increase site traffic. From that moment on, I made a commitment to myself that everything I work on will fit into one of these categories. If not, I will not do it unless I choose to.
For my personal wellness goals, I had several loose goals. But the number one goal is to live consciously to the best of my ability by redirecting negative thoughts so that I am not stuck in a painful place caused by dwelling on the past or a nervous place caused by worrying about the future.
For couple goals, I wrote down the first thing that came to mind, “alone dates once a month”. I am so silly, I was in complete logical mode and was thinking about the actions to do, instead of the end goal those actions provided.
When Jeremy added his goals to the shared Google doc and it refreshed on my screen, I quickly scrolled to the bottom to his Couple Goals section. He wrote, “End 2011 with a closer relationship than 2010” and under that, he had “2 date nights per month” and “listen instead of argue.”
I almost died when I read that- died in a land of happiness, a land of roses and rainbows. Jeremy is just so sweet. He’s always been so much more genuine about our relationship than I and so much more thoughtful. I have a lot to learn from him.
I looked over at him, there beyond my open laptop screen, under the warm lights of that reading lamp, with a kind of fondness that is indescribable. Tears welled up in my eyes. Those simple words on the screen meant and conveyed so much to me.
I jumped up from my desk , skipped like a bunny over to the reading chair in utter joy, and landed promptly in his lap. I pushed his laptop aside, snuggled up real close and said, “I love you babes. Thank you.”
In the end, we didn’t do countdowns, or have champagne(we don’t even like champagne). Instead, we had the gift of a night, beyond anything I could have planned—a focused roadmap for this year, wonderful wine, delicious popcorn, priceless moments of connection, and a phenomenal documentary called “The Cove”(which I highly, highly recommend. Beautifully written, moving, uplifting and heart-warming).
Now that is a beautiful start to a new year.
What are your goals for this year? What do you want to focus on?
Consider, going through your list and pick just one or two things to focus on. Give it your whole attention and I am sure your focused attention and dedicated action will cause it to come into reality. I am reminded of a saying, “Where attention goes, energy flows.” It’s all a matter of deciding where to put our focus, and then allocating our time towards action for the fruition of that which we are focused on.
The same formula can be applied towards parenting or to improve a relationship. Focus, focus, focus is the key.
Remember, it is not possible to focus on many things. Pick just one and focus with all your attention to make it a reality, before moving on to the next thing.

Finding Happiness

It was a Thursday night in July of 1996 when my quest for finding happiness began. I was sitting on the floor of my luxury apartment doing paperwork when it hit me that the path I was on was not the path for me.
I was twenty-five, wealthy (six figures in the bank) and had achieved every single material goal I ever wanted. I literally thought I had it all. My closets were filled with designer clothes and fancy shoes. My bathroom cabinets were filled with luxury cosmetics. Everything was great except for two things: I was miserable and I felt empty.

My childhood and teenage years were very tough and so I channeled all my pain into pursuing success. I thought, at the time, that if I achieved all my material goals, I would be in bliss. I worked very hard and was able to achieve every goal I set. But I started to notice that with each goal achieved, I was happy but it was temporary. I wanted ever lasting happiness and thought that the next goal would bring me that happiness. The irony is that with each goal achieved, I felt more and more miserable.
What made things even tougher was that to the outside world, I had it all so I could not express my pain to anyone out of fear that it would look like I was being ungrateful for my abundance. I was grateful but yet deep inside of me something just felt off.

The Start of My Journey to Happiness

So on that fateful July night, I decided that I would do whatever it would take to find happiness. The emptiness and the misery scared me and I did not want the rest of my life to be a continuation of that misery. Little did I know what life had in store for me.
A few months later, Buddhism entered my life and my world started to unravel. Discovering meditation was amazing and I felt that I had found the path that would help me to find what I was seeking. My hunch was correct because learning about meditation opened my eyes to a brand new way of looking at life.
I devoured spiritual books. I quit my job and started to travel the world. Within five years time, my luxury life was history. I no longer lived in a fancy apartment. My clothes and possessions were all donated. All I had was one suitcase with some clothes and some books along with a passport that proved I had circled the globe at least twice.
It was around this time that a wise monk crossed my path and gave me a chance to be initiated into one of the high Orders in India. I took the opportunity and fell in love with what I learned. My love for the teachings of Vedanta were so strong, I almost took final vows as a nun but decided not to because I was not ready to give up on the idea of sharing my life with a man. So I left the monastic path and re-entered the world. It was tough because the monastic world was just so beautiful and the modern world seemed to be full of pain. However, I continued on my quest for happiness.
A year later, I met my husband and that began the wonderful journey of marriage. I was still searching for happiness and one thing led to another and my husband and I found ourselves living in India for six months. It was one the best times of my life although it was a very emotional time for me because more and more of my family and friends were leaving my life.
When you go from being rich to being “poor”, not everyone gets that especially if you do it voluntarily. People think you are crazy and they think that eventually you will come to your senses. I apparently, to my friends and some relatives, did not come to my senses, so people started to leave and it was painful. My reputation was dragged through the mud. Numerous insults were hurled my way and even one uncle disowned me.
Despite the pain, I knew I was on the right path and was determined to find out all that I could about happiness. Once we were back home in America, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and we moved in with my parents so that I could take care of my mother during the last six months of her life.
I was by her side when she passed on and that was a huge teacher. It showed me that all we take with us when we go is how we lived our lives. All the material possessions stay behind. My mother’s passing just made me more determined to love life and to find happiness.

A Shift in Finding Happiness

In September of 2010, strange things began to happen and it all started with a question my husband asked me. We were talking about goals and I realized that I no longer had any. For a former “Type A” like myself, such a sentence is totally out of character. How can I not have goals? It was very weird to hear myself say those words.
Even though I am a very positive person, my immediate reaction was that I was on the verge of dying because how can you go through life without goals? Was something wrong with me?
To complicate matters, I found myself not enjoying the things I used to enjoy. I used to read spiritual books and found myself not really learning anything new in the books that I was reading. The books were great but it was like reading the same material over and over again. It was getting to be boring.
This only made me more concerned because for the last thirteen years, that is all that I read and loved. What was happening to me? I had no clue. All I knew is that I no longer felt the way that I used to feel and it scared me because it was so different. Blogging became boring because I had no desire to write about the same things that I used to write about because the subjects no longer interested me.
I was having a huge identity crisis but I had no idea why. All I knew was that I truly felt happy. There was no sense of longing for happiness and that one realization made me see that the quest I had been on since July of 1996 was finally over. You would think this would have made me even happier but all it did was scare me.
Why did it scare me? Well…when you spend every cent you have and so much time on a goal—Like finding happiness–you never really think about the time when you actually achieve that goal. In my quest for happiness, I never imagined what would happen if I found the answers that I was looking for because it seemed so far-fetched.
Even more interesting was the fact that happiness looked so different from what I thought it would look like. For example, I still have days where I am cranky and my ego is in full control of my senses. I have days where all I want to do is stay in bed and not deal with the world. I have days when I am so full of joy, I could explode from the immensity of it. I have days where I cry at the pain that I see. I have days where I wonder if my quest was worth it since I spent every cent I had.
Yet despite all of those days, deep in my heart I know what life is all about and that brings me peace. I no longer question what is the meaning and purpose of life. I know what my purpose as a human being is and I strive to meet that purpose every day. Some days I hit the mark and other days I don’t.
You see…you and I are here because sometime ago we forget who we truly are at our core. We get so caught up in the illusion of life, we forget our inherent Divinity. We all have the ability to have lives we love and to be happy; we just need to see the illusions for what they are.
Your worth as a human being has nothing to do with how much money you have or the degrees or any other material item you think you own. You don’t own anything except for how you live. When you pass on, the cars, the money and all the things you own will not go with you. They will stay behind.
Your worth is determined by one thing and one thing only: how much love have you given to life? Have you brought joy to others or just misery? I wish I could tell you that I have only brought joy to others but I have not. I have done things which have hurt people but I vowed to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. Sometimes it is easy and other times it is hard.
As I realized that my quest had come to an end, I did not know how to proceed with my life and so I took a three month hiatus from being online. It was very apparent that I could not write anything since a new writing voice was starting to emerge. It hit me that I needed to just be present in what was happening and just be.
For an active person like myself, standing still is like pulling teeth. I don’t love it but I knew that I needed to stand still in order to figure out what to do next. So I spent those three months reading, watching movies, traveling and a whole lot of introspection.

Clarity, At Last

By the end of December, a goal began to reveal itself and it was unlike any other goal I ever had. Most of us have goals that are rooted in personal gain. Our goals reflect our desires. The irony about life is that we focus so much on the end result, we lose sight of the fact that the journey is what matters.
Your experience of life is dependent on how you are present in life. Here in the West, we focus so much on doing that we neglect being. Being present in the moment is what determines your life. Are you present? Are you having fun being you? Do you love yourself?
If you are not having fun and if you don’t love yourself, then something has got to change. It is like the old Buddhist joke about a monk who passes away and discovers that the ancient text did not say celibate as he thought but rather it said celebrate.
So celebrate being you and being alive. Enjoy the journey. If you have goals, go for them but realize that the goals do not define who you are. How you go about your day says more about you than what you achieve. How you treat a stranger says more about you than how much money you have in the bank.
Where am I now in my life? Well…with all of these realizations, I decided to shut down my business because it no longer reflects the person that I am now. So I find myself starting a whole new phase and chapter in my journey (Hint: Think Simple Now will be my new home to document this journey).
A new writing voice is emerging as well which I am still honing. All I know is that I am happy and that I just want to do what I can to make other people realize how awesome they truly are. Finding happiness, in the end lead me to a place of service and shifting focus away from myself—for when we give, we truly receive. Amazing.