So… how is your focus nowadays? If you have any at all in this time of constant input and distraction it is almost a miracle. Focus requires attention, choice, and eliminating what you do not want and what is less important to you. Yet our lives are all about information, data, social media and constant connection. It is kind of hard to read a book when your phone keeps pinging, or even to look up something practical on your phone when messages keep coming in, and you forget almost instantly why you picked it up in the first place.

Then you go out and there is advertising, busy streets, noise, input (if you live in a city like me). And there is internal pressure to be good; at work, as a parent, as a lover, as a friend, in your personal development, self care, travels, how you manage your space, time, relaxation, effort, fun, connections and so on.

It is tiring me to even write this list. There is so much happening in our lives and the pace is so fast, I have noticed myself becoming less and less focussed.

I have also been on a journey exploring what it means to me to be a woman in this day and age, and have explored a lot of my ‘yin’ sides: going with the flow, being in the moment, softening, opening, relaxing. Beautiful skills, and ones that are really important to me, as life is much more immediate and sensual and I feel more alive and connected to myself because of them.

But try running a business in that mode and nothing much happens.

So I have been exploring what I needed to create a balance.

And I found focus. I also refer to it as my inner man.

I discovered how satisfying it is to bring healthy masculine into what I do. How my inner man can hold my inner woman and together they are rocking it. To create a balance between yin and yang, between being and doing, ánd to distinguish between distraction and what is really important to me.

To go a layer deeper to what matters to me and operate from there.

Life is all about balance, finding it and loosing it and then regaining it again. And creating focus is vital to me in this dance.

My external man played a role in this as well; he helped me get clarity on what I need and want and crystallise the steps I needed to get there. Thank you Ken.

And from there I learned to do it for myself as well. And the satisfying thing is:

✦ I do not get lost in ‘fluff’ (things that do not matter), or if I do, I find my way back way more quickly
✦ I have clarity on day-to-day next steps and have the satisfaction of seeing myself progressing towards my goals
✦ I have time and energy to focus on what really matters

So how do you do this?

I identified what is really important to me. In my business that is: serving clients that are fully committed to their own journey and ready for their next step as a Life Coachand Leadership Coach, and supporting leaders in deepening and expanding their leadership through a 6-month intensive training, using the practice of leading Circling as a powerful tool for insight and realisation.

In my personal life it is: spending time with my love, my dear friends (and not so much my gazillion acquaintances) and my family, finding quiet time just for me, doing self care things such as sauna sessions & body work, being in nature on a regular basis and finding that sweet spot being cozying up indoors and (travelling) adventures in the bigger world. O and reading and creating (blogs, food, experiences and so on).

That is it. The rest is fluff. Distraction. That means spending endless time on social media is distraction. That does not mean I do not get caught up in that, but because I have my focus its is easier to snap out of it. It means hanging out with people that are not in the above categories is distraction. That also does not mean I do not like meeting new people, but my focus is on the categories above first. It means new exciting projects or coffees with people I barely know are a distraction. Which again does not mean I never have coffee with people I barely know, but only if I have time left for it and feel excitement about them.

See? It is relieving to me to write this.

I feel so much more space in my life because of my focus. It helps me identify what really matters, so I can allocate my time, energy and resources to those things.

Which massively amplifies my sense of happiness, ease and enjoyment (because I am getting what I want). And it amplifies my sense of accomplishment, which feels great to my inner man.

As a result, my business is doing great, my personal life is beautiful and rich, and my bond with my family is better than it maybe has ever been. Also, I feel happy with myself a lot of the time and have a good support system in place that helps me learn, grow and thrive, as a person and as a leader.

So create that focus. Help your inner man and woman shine.

And before this sounds too glorious: it is a journey as well. I stumble and fall. And then I reorient myself (often with a little help from my friends) and start again.

Life is journey. And creating a focus will help you know where to go.

Love,
Anke

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