Is Your Focus on the Task at Hand?
When you are in a profession where you are listening to other people frequently, your focus often gets so outwardly tuned that you don’t always listen to yourself. It is over four years at this point that I completed my first coach training program and received my initial coaching certification. As any new aspect becomes part of your life, whether be it for work or even as an item you do for recreation, it is very easy to have your life become more and more wrapped up with it.
For example, even going through my coach certification studies it became apparent that practicing this profession was going to be far different from my first career. My first career involved being part of a major corporation, and being an employee in one of the departments of that company. Coaching meant setting up my own entrepreneurial business. A corporate career, projects are often assigned to you by others. In your own business, you create your own schedule, your own alliances, own choices on how you choose to promote your business. Unless you work in a sales area of a large corporation, it is not your responsibility to bring in business. As an entrepreneur, you are always alert to opportunities as to how to do that. And, even though you are “your own boss” as you become more emerged in your new life, you sometimes find that some of those same feelings you had when you worked in your previous world, creep back into your new world.
I know that has been true for me of late. That is why when even selecting the quote to use for this month on the website, I was very conscious of finding something that reflected how I was feeling and would provide me some perspective and inspiration. I found that in the quote you see on the home page of the site, “Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else”. It was written by J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, the boy who never wanted to grow up. What I have been feeling of late is overwhelm. It has tended to happen when I would battle with my mind and not focus on the task at hand, or day at hand. I’d start my day not thinking about how I would perform that day’s activity, but begin focusing on the activities of possibly two or three days away. How would I address them? What steps would I take to make sure I had prepared for them properly? When would I find the time to do what needed to be done?
My pattern of thought was taking something I truly enjoy which is the coaching I do with my clients, the interaction I have with the support groups I facilitate, the networking I do with other entrepreneurs and job searchers I meet, and turning it into work. I actually do enjoy the lifestyle that I now lead, where I have the oversight over my own schedule. I have even joked with many that if the schedule I lead does not work for me all I have to do is blame the fellow in the mirror that stares back at me each morning.
Is overwhelm, frustration, worry, even fear creeping into your life at times? Is it happening even when focused on activities you do enjoy doing or on ones that once you have completed them you are glad you did? I know the real issue is my lack of focusing ONLY on the tasks of that day, that moment, that particular activity and not being focused on dwelling on the past or projecting into the future. And, I know I must continue to work on that. If you have had the same feelings in doing those things you too enjoy or have determined are the ones you value being most important for you to focus on in the moment, are you ready to keep your mind present and just work with the task at hand? If so, I’m sure you will find it will help. If not, than perhaps it is time to be doing something else.
