Focus: The Essence Of Change
Many of us are guilty of behaving like we have ADHD - when in fact, we just have not put effort into mastering our focus consciously.
Most people who have struggled with an addiction or disordered eating behavior, will tell the same tale of triggering events - when everything gets overwhelming, when everything seems like there is no purpose, when there is too much stimuli or not enough.... then they go back to their drug of choice. This is due to an inability to focus on what matters at the core.
When we do not know what to focus on - how to consciously shape our focus, so that is where our energy flows, we lose grasp - we slip.
Retraining our brain to focus only on the select essential, that is in alignment with our purpose and passion, requires us to first be able to be in the present moment fully.
This means we make a choice to not randomly check social media, iphone etc. to kill time or distract. Rather than this scattered attention to everything and nothing, we start developing the ability to pay attention and listen to what is happening around us in the details.
The essence is not in what people say, it's in how they say it.
We lose this valuable primal information, when we are busy distracting ourselves with modern tech stuff that messes with our basic instincts.
This is a huge contributor to why so many of us have extremely poor people skills and low Emotional Intelligence today.
A core trait of any addiction, is that it numbs us out.
We need not be in the now. We need not deal with the emotions, the fears, the pain, the love, the uncertainty, the change, the expectations, the anticipation etc.
It is a sense of withdrawing fromt this world, this moment we are in.
And this is something many of us do also as non-addicts.
We can withdraw into ourselves but remain physically present.
Or we can literally walk out and withdraw our body. Whenever we withdraw, it is imperative that we ask ourselves, if we are running from life, feelings and change. There is healthy withdrawal, as in needing time to reflect and recharge, and there is the unhealthy withdrawal, as in isolating and escalating back into secretive addictions etc.
Addictions are broken together, not in isolation.
At the root every every addiction is the disconnect from our body and from others; that is why healing must occur by reconnecting with others and our body.
We do this, by taking back control of our focus.
Focusing on other people, what they are saying, how they are saying it - diving into the moment, being present. When we allow ourselves to truly listen to other people and gather interest in others, we lose our obsession with our shortcomings etc. This because it is not about whether someone likes us anymore, we can actually like other people, without always having an agenda of "needing to be liked back" in the back of our mind.
We can give our time, our care, our love,, our compassion, our soul - and this, without needing something out of it.
And that is freedom.
Freedom is the byproduct of aligning our focus with only the essence.
That, which is in alignment with the values we wish to embody. This means, asking ourselves whether this is a decision in alignment with those values - if not, we ditch it.
We start saying no, more than we say yes.
And when we say yes, we are fully present, because we want it. Not just in lack of better, or fear of missing out. Slowly, we start training ourselves to focus only on what matters. And with time we become excellent in detecting the unsaid, and making better decisions - no longer feeling overwhelmed in a world which is often chaotic on the surface.