Focus is a hard thing to accomplish. I’ve experienced a couple of setbacks in the last 48 hours that have caused me to not focus on what’s the most important in my life and career.
So I guess the question is how do you focus?
How do you block out the things that hold you back?
This is going to sound really corny, but it’s about finding your purpose and analyzing every situation and challenge through the lens of purpose.
Growing up in Indianapolis is was so interesting. On one hand, I was a single child that had almost everything. I say the word almost because my parents weren’t together.
Now, I have never wrote about this or talked about this with them but not having both parents in the house hurt me a lot. I wanted it so bad. I saw my father thrive in his life and I saw my mother work harder and struggle in her life.
All I ever wanted to do was take care of my mom. She is the most caring and selfless person in the world. And I didn’t think it was fair for her struggle. One day I came home from college and I went over to my mother’s house. At the time she was pretty sick and I didn’t really understand what was going on. The house wasn’t really being taken care of and the winters in Indianapolis can be brutal. The home was older and started to develop mold. Everything around my mother was falling apart and there was nothing that I could do about it. There was a gigantic hole in the ceiling in one of the bathrooms and a laundry list of issues with the house.
I went back to college that evening but I promised myself to do everything in my power to take care of my mother financially so she would never subject herself again to that type of environment. A couple of months after my visit, my mom was admitted into the hospital for heart disease. The mold had worsened and developed a serious condition called myocarditis that gave my mother heart failure. The doctor literally told me “Your mother needs a new heart”…This was the worst thing I had ever been told in my life…and I couldn’t handle it. She would eventually get bypass and it fixed her condition.
This moment pretty much defined what would I would focus on for the rest of my life. I knew that my purpose in life was to build a future to take care of those that I loved most. People say that money can’t buy you happiness but the pursuit of money to me is not about being happy. The pursuit of money is about taking care of your loved ones.
We are all here for a finite amount of time and we waste so much of it on things that will never serve us.
When I get put into situations or come across challenges, I always remind myself of my mother. When I struggle with focus, I ask myself a very important question. “What’s your purpose?” This almost always resets my emotional pallette and allows me to remove my ego from whatever situation I find myself in.
So I guess blocking out distractions is all about making space for reflection. Mental exercises like meditation, prayer or journaling are all ways to accomplish this. I’m so thankful that I went through that experience with my mom because without it I would still be searching for my purpose.