When Will You Focus?
“When will you just focus and listen to your heart?” I remember the day when a guy I was dating told me that. I remember staring at him feeling bitter and offended. And then eventually, trying to compose some defensive response to let him know that he doesn’t know me and that I was focused. But he knew me, at least enough to see that there was a disconnect between the dreams that lit me up and the lifestyle and habits that I was living.
At the time in my life, I was allowing myself to get caught up in the excitement and allure of Toronto’s downtown scene — the parties, the hype, the clout, the ego flaunting, and the time being wasted wooing peers. Admittedly, that was natural to me because I’ve always been a “party girl” and loved the energy of getting done up, feeling sexy, carefree, and sweaty, dancing the night away with my girls. I guess growing up it became a bit of an escape for me and if I’m being honest, it made me feel good when I didn’t have much self-esteem.
But after partying Thursday to Sunday, sobering up and grinding Monday to Saturday, it started to wear on me. It affected my body, my mental health, my bank account, and the quality of the relationships I was attracting. More than anything though, it affected my goals and the dreams in my heart that I wasn’t listening to. And so yes, he was right; I was disconnected, I wasn’t aligned and I wasn’t focused on what I honestly wanted in my life.
In my late 20’s other things started begging for my attention — dreams of me thriving as a creative, a writer, a speaker, and a business owner; grew louder and restless. I needed to fully commit them and stop being half-assed in the way I would show up for myself. Especially since, the vision I had was going to take 100x more effort, time and resources that I had imagined. It was going to require me to sacrifice and let go of some things in order to get there.
FOMO was a bitch for a while. It crept in often and had me feeling like I was missing out on so much and that I’d lose touch with everything the more I put my head down, but I had to stay the course. As I got better at being firm with my new boundaries, habits, and lifestyle, I started to cultivate a deep appreciation for the value of my time and focus. Which is something I honestly didn’t get in the same way before. I started to understand and experience the effects of putting your attention on the wrong things, especially when I realized that the real currency isn’t money, it is your attention. And that’s why the difference between people thriving and the ones who are not, is most often because of the distractions, lifestyle choices, habits, beliefs, and commitments that don’t nurture them. Being able to invest our resources into ourselves, consciously and intentionally is at the core of our ability to actualize ourselves and our dreams.
Looking back on that exchange between myself and my past love interest, I know that I was not grateful for his candid critique at the time but since that moment it has become a question that echoes in my mind every time I start to veer off from my target—when will you just focus?
