The Failed Focus

Today, I was reminded that we all fail. In a short newsletter from Lyle McKeany. But failure is based on our definition of success and on our expectations. And on our attention.

That means we can do something about this.

I’m failing quite miserably at the moment in many ways.

I’m not keeping a decent morning routine of helpful habits. If I write my daily journal entries at all, it’s often in the evening and not the first thing in the morning as I used to do for so long. I don’t publish regularly, not even on my little mostly unedited blog here. I feel I don’t work efficiently and effectively enough, too. I don’t enjoy that I am travelling as much as I should.

And I’m succeeding in others.

But when I switch my focus to what works and what I can be happy about just in this very moment, there’s so much I ignore when I focus on failure. I realize that I am travelling the world with my wonderful wife. That we are healthy and learn and experience so many new things, even when we’re sometimes spending the whole day in a hotel room or Airbnb apartment. I have a job that allows all of this for us, and a family that supports us.

We can guide our attention.

While failure and success often exist at the same time for many of us, our focus decides which influences us more. Dr. Aziz Gazipura recently published a book (100 Wins in 100 Days) that keeps this basic idea in mind, and teaches us how to focus more on what works rather than on what doesn’t. I so far failed to read it completely and work through it, but I succeeded in buying it and starting a list of wins, as he suggests. And I’ve remembered it by writing about failure here.