Why you should focus on your energy and not your goal
How understanding and directing your energy will help you achieve your personal and professional goals
Most of us have goals and dreams, yet we often feel stuck in destructive behaviors.
Do you often feel that you lack energy, focus, and the necessary productivity to reach your goals?
Have you struggled with realizing how long a goal is likely to take?
Then this article is for you.
“The problem is not that we don’t have enough hours in the day; the problem is lack of energy, focus, and productivity”
Let's get started!
Map out your life
We live in an attention economy, someone is always trying to get our attention, and that's killing this generation's goals and dreams, communication skills, and relationships.
Most of the time, we get caught up in the ‘how’ and all logistics of making it happen, not realizing it is not about the how. It's the energy that will take me one step closer to my goals.
I see energy as my “Why” when I decide to engage in something.
Energy creates a new reality.
NOTE: This goes for all things, so be mindful of your thoughts and words because they create more of the same.
Thoughts work much in the same way as blocking out hours in my calendar, making myself unviable to other things and people.
Thoughts and words are continually creating or removing valuable energy. They act as my blueprint for achieving my goals.
If you don't Map out your life, someone else will do it for you, or chances are you will adopt the current attention economy model.
The first step to map out your life is to find the discrepancies between where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow.
Manifesting and achieving do not happen overnight.
Nothing is possible without energy. That's why you have to create space for the strength to flow to all places that will best serve you and your loved ones.
What would you say, and how would it feel if you had already achieved our gools?
If I gave them to for free? No hard work required?
Daily intentional reflection
Start by practicing 5 min daily reflection in the morning and 5 min in the evening to map out your life.
Make a decision and start imagining you are already there.
How does a person who is already there act? Talk? Sleep? Eat? Rest? Interact?
Ask yourself, “What do I need to do for this to happen in my life?”
Set a timer for 5 minutes and incrementally increase the minutes over the next couple of weeks.
Turn off all digital devices, sit in silence and breathe.
Thoughts will enter and exit, observe without judgment. If you get lost in thoughts, focus again on your breath.
Meditating teaches your brain to focus and resist the urge to wander. A massive amount of research shows that you will see a measurable increase in your ability to focus after just 2–3 days of practicing meditation for 10 minutes. (1)
Making progress, NOT perfection increases your motivation.
Progress is the number one motivation tool for increased focus.
I can not stress this enough!
Divorce al perfection and merry progress, soon you will start to notice the benefits the from the psychological changes.
Many years ago, I carried a piece of paper in my pocket for three years, that said:
“The progress is the goal, kill them with your Babysteps”
As I write these words, I get goosebumps. It changed everything for my loved ones and me.
It's Essential to Develop what I call a progress mindset.
Your mindset is the keyholder of your beliefs — how you perceive your talents, skills, knowledge, and personality comes from progress — not from the goals.
A lack of a progress mindset destroys your belief system and influences your viewpoints about goals and success in a very negative way.
A fixed mindset hinders your progress, while a progress mindset enables you to achieve health, happiness, good relationships, and peace.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
When I identify with my goals, I have nothing real. It's something in the future. I have no proof for this fantasy.
On the other hand, when I identify with the progress, I get immediate feedback, boosting my self-confidence.
Self-confidence comes from progress, not goals!
How to create energy
It doesn't come as a big surprise that inadequate nutrition, exercise, sleep and rest diminish our basic energy levels, as well as our ability to manage emotions and focus our attention.
Nonetheless, most people don’t find ways to practice consistently healthy behaviors, given all the other demands in their lives.
To understand your energy and use it to achieve your personal and professional goals, you have to start small.
Everything in our lives creates and consumes energy.
This is such a simple concept that most people don't direct their attention or reflect much about energy and its role.
Our energy comes or is drained from four main eras:
-Our body
-Our emotions
-Our mind
-Our spirit
In each of the eras above, I can systematically expand my energy and regularly renewed it by establishing specific rituals and behaviors.
Practice deliberate, intentionally and precisely.
Scheduleling this practice makes the specific rituals and behaviors become automatic very quickly.
With a little practice, it quickly becomes second nature. That’s where the fun beings.
To be able to expand my energy and regularly renew it as I please, Is nothing less than a superpower.
Start to identify the behaviors that are draining your energy and those creating energy.
Organize them into categories on a piece of paper.
-Kognitive
-Psychological
-Physical
-Private life
-Work-life
When you identify the behaviors that are draining your energy and those creating energy, it’s time for you to start finding the most helpful direction in your quest for more energy.
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.”
-Carl Rogers
When you can take control over your body and emotions, you can improve your energy quality, regardless of the external pressures you face.
Think small — win big
Research in sports psychology has shown that extrinsic rewards for doing the right thing boost our intrinsic motivation to keep doing it.
Make it your obsession to create small habits, giving yourself small rewards every time you practice.
Write down the specific things you’re doing to stay on track.
Stanford University researcher B.J. Fogg, the author of the book “Tiny Habits,” fund that significant behavior changes require a high level of motivation. He explains;
The challenge with significant behavior changes is that most people can’t sustain new habits for a very long period.
Instead, he suggests we start with tiny habits to make the new routine as easy as possible in the beginning.
Starting to take short walks every day, for example, could be the beginning of an exercise habit. Or, putting something healthy in your bag every day could lead to better eating habits.
Often when we start making changes, we tend to start too big and after a couple of weeks, we get “habit fatigue”.
Start with some small changes every day to reach your goal:
-The small changes in the physical domain include eating food with only one ingredient, taking daily walks, going to bed early, standing up while working, one pushup in the morning, and one in the evening.
-The small changes in the emotional domain include meaningful conversations with friends, being vulnerable, and practice emotional intelligence.
-The small changes in the intellectual domain include reading books, writing, deliberate practice, (Deep work), and digital minimalism
-The small changes in the spiritual domain practicing acceptance, empathy, meditation, being present, walks in nature.
If your problem is a lack of energy, focus, and productivity, the solution is a progress mindset and small changes.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
In the next article, I will write about Habit Formation's psychology and how you can hack it.
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