The Art Of Staying Focused in Busy Times

You know, we all go through seasons where we're able to consistently stay focused on all the things that really and truly matter to us. We're just like unstoppable, where, you know, day after day we're able to. To work on the things that we really think are important.

Maybe that's your English skills. Like, you're focused day in and day out, and you are able to practice every day.

You are engaging with people every day in English, and you're just killing it. The same thing can happen with your celpip prep. You have long streaks of weeks where you are working daily to get ready for your exam.

You're practicing, you're studying, you're doing all the things that you need to do. And then life happens.

Sometimes those interruptions that life throws our way kind of come in two ways that I've noticed, at least in my own journey of noticing myself being focused sometimes and other times feeling like, where, where am I and why aren't I making the progress on the things that I really want to be, you know, making progress on?

And like I was saying a moment ago in like, reflecting on it myself, I've noticed that there are two ways that those things happen or two ways that those that our focus are on, on what matters to us gets thrown off track. And they come gradually, like those shifts away from the things that matter most. I've noticed sometimes kind of sneak in a little bit at a time.

Like in my case, I've noticed some gradual things like sneaking in with my exercise routine where I've been wanting.

And in the past, I have been very regular on, you know, setting my alarms to remind me when I need to stop what I'm doing and put in a little bit of stretching time in order to get my back or keep working on keeping my back happy. There's been times where I'm really focused on that and it's go. It goes really well.

And then there are other times where, like in, in recent weeks where it's just felt like I. I forget to set the timer, I forget to make time during the day.

Usually not all the day I forget, but those regular intervals that my physiotherapist is trying to get me to commit to, where, like every two hours I am doing some stretching activities. Those regular, frequent stretch pauses, if you will, those have gone out the window.

I noticed it this week as I was just feeling some pain in my back.

I realized, oh, no, I have been too focused on other things and I've not been paying attention to this Particular activity that is very important to me.

And yet I went a whole week where I would sometimes, if I was lucky, get, you know, one or two stretching sessions in during my workday and sometimes after work where before, like several weeks, maybe a month before, I was doing really well on that regular responding to, you know, timers that I've set on my phone.

And I would just stop what I was doing, go to my office, close the door, turn off the lights, and do stretches, no matter where I was or what was going on. And like I said a moment ago, this past week has just not been one of those weeks.

And I got to Friday yesterday realizing, oh, I missed that frequency. Like, I can notice the difference in my back. I notice the difference in pain. It's starting to creep up again.

Maybe you've had similar things going on with your celpit practice or with your English practice, where it just kind of sneaks in. The demands of your day, the demands of being with your family, the demands of your job, whatever it might be, the demands of it being summer.

I mean, hello, here in Victoria, it's actually sunny now and warm and it's really tempting and, well, normal to want to be outside and enjoying it. Right. So all of those things kind of sneak in sometimes and pull you off.

And then there are other times, and this also happened to me this week, where abrupt changes take place where you. I mean, they're not expected. They just come out of nowhere and they pull you off.

In some cases, it can be an emergency, something happens to you or to a family member. I hope it doesn't. Or it could just be something like the demands of work picking up for one reason or another.

That's what happened to me over the past week. And one of the contributing factors to not having a lot of time to do my stretches.

But thanks to demand of work, another thing began to happen further for me is that I have had to start canceling my physiotherapy sessions, where I actually go and visit with my therapist, my physiotherapist. So that has been something that I have been very regular on. Well over the past year, like every week, usually without fail, I would be going.

But this past, like two or three weeks or so, for one reason or another, because of work things going on, I've had to cancel my sessions and I've started to notice it. But those changes to my schedule are abrupt. They're not expected. They just kind of happen. And I need to respond by shifting what I pay attention to.

Maybe you find yourself in that situation too, where maybe you have seasonal work, where this time of year things just pick up like crazy and you're just go, go, go at your workplace and you don't have the same amount of time to focus on your English skills or to focus on getting ready for your Celpip exam that you did during the spring or the winter months. So those things happen. Right? And I've been just reflecting on that over the past.

Well, over the past couple of days and especially today, Saturday, as I've gotten to the end of my work week, it's Saturday.

Now that I'm recording this, you're going to be listening to this on Tuesday, Wednesday, but this day, this weekend, Saturday, I was just thinking what happened to my habits, to my priorities, and how can I get myself back on track? Before I go any farther, I want to say hi. Welcome to the Celpip Success podcast. If this is your first time here, I'm so glad that you're here.

My name is Aaron. I'm glad that you decided to stop by and listen. This is the podcast that is designed to help you get ready for your Celpip exam.

And like I said a moment ago, I'm glad that you're here. If you're a returning visitor, I'm so glad that you keep coming back, especially in the summertime. I'm so thankful for you. If you.

If this is your first time here, I'm also so glad that you are here. And I hope that you get a lot of value out of today's episode, because what I want to leave you with today are three things that I'm thinking about.

I'm kind of coaching myself on these things and I wanted to share how I'm coaching myself with you today. And not because I think that I. I'm a master at this, because I'm totally not.

But, you know, sometimes it's just nice to have someone talking with you as you are working through your own, you know, messy situations or messy schedules and realizing that you're kind of off course and you want to bring yourself back. Back.

I know this is what I've appreciated when people do it with me, and so I wanted to share it with you again, not with the mindset or the idea that I have it all figured out. I hope that you've heard, as I've been describing in the introduction, what this is going to be all about.

I hope you've heard that my life is messy, too, and I have things going on in my life that pull me off my Priorities all the time. It happens all the time for me. And I continually need to be coaching myself.

When I catch myself going off target, I need to be coaching myself to get back on. And I want to do that with you today too, if you will allow me.

If you find yourself in that messy space, come on along with me and we're going to work on some ideas that I think have helped me and are helping me right now as I am, you know, re refocusing, getting myself back on target again after some weeks of being off. And if that's your situation today, I hope that these ideas will help you too. So the first one that I have been realizing is this.

I need to recognize where I'm off or where I'm going off. And I need to adjust without beating myself up. Oh, my goodness.

I don't know if you can hear that in the background, but right now there's an ambulance going along the road. Because I live next to an ambulance depot.

It's not like right next door, but on the bottom of our street, probably about a half a kilometer, there is this big ambulance base. And every day there's always ambulances ripping by on our street heading to help someone.

And you know, sometimes we can have those situations where we. We hear the emergency sound in our, in our mind and in our.

In our life where we realize, oh, I'm in trouble, I went off course and I need to get back on target again.

And what I was trying to say before that ambulance put me off, pulled me off course, was that it's important to recognize and adjust without beating yourself up.

When you realize you are off course or when you have stopped working on what was very important to you before because of either, you know, gradual shifts in your schedule or gradual shifts in what you are doing with your time, or because of, you know, rapid or abrupt changes to your schedule that are just out of your control and you're just responding. And then all of a sudden you realize, it's been a while since I've been focused on what matters.

Okay, so that's the first one recognize that it's happened. That's what happened to me today. As I was just thinking through what was. What has been going on in my week, I realized I'm off course.

I'm not doing the things that are important to me. So it's important one to immediately shut down that voice that comes in to beat yourself up. I mean, that's me. That is totally me. I have this.

I don't know, it's not perfectionism.

But I definitely feel bad about myself when I realize I'm not doing what I felt was important or what I know is important because I've gotten distracted by other things. So it's very easy for me to kind of get down on myself or be hard on myself. And.

And it's equally as important to realize that you do that for me, that I do that to myself and shut it down. Like, don't let it speak loudly to yourself that way. Like, don't let yourself speak negatively to yourself in that way. Because you know what?

It's not really true. It's not true. You're not a terrible person. You're not an irresponsible English student. You're not a terrible English student.

You're not a terrible celpip prep person. I don't know what else I could say about that. If you find yourself off course because of other things going on in your life, it's just not true.

And I need to tell myself that as well for what's going on in my life. Maybe you need to do that for yourself as well. So don't listen to that voice. Instead, when you recognize that you are off, it's time to adjust.

And can you guess what I did just before I hit record? As I was thinking through this myself, I realized, you know, that it had been like almost three weeks since my last visit with my physiotherapist.

And I was feeling it in my back. I was feeling it. I have been feeling it in my back and in my neck.

And I just picked up my phone before I recorded this message, got onto their website, and I booked another appointment for this Tuesday at 4:40pm So I adjusted. I. I recognized where I've been off. I didn't allow myself to go into a negative spiral of, oh, there you go again.

Forgetting to do what you were supposed to do to take care of your back. Nope. I. I picked up my phone and I corrected the drift, if you will. My drift away from the taking care of my back. How can you do that today?

How can you recognize where you're off and make an adjustment to go back towards what matters to you? The second thing that I've been thinking about a lot is that this is an ongoing process. Refocusing is an ongoing process.

Nobody, nobody that I know is able to set and forget a priority or something that they're focused on. Whenever you make that goal, the thing that you're wanting to focus on, it's not enough just to write it down once on paper and you're done, is it?

And I'm talking to myself here.

It requires daily refocusing on making sure that what we're doing, the activities that I fill my day up with, are actually leading me towards getting closer to accomplishing that goal. It's not enough to set it once and it's good, right?

We always need to be like refocusing and making sure that our day to day activities are lining up with what we say is important. I need to do that all the time. And you know what? It's so easy to forget to do it. It's so easy to just kind of go on this sort of autopilot.

And I'm talking about myself here, where the momentum of your life, the momentum of your day to day activities just kind of pulls you along, it brings you along and you can find yourself getting to the end of your day and not having time anymore to focus on that thing that you said was important. Maybe for you it's your celpit prep. Maybe for you it's practicing your English. Maybe it's working on a relationship in your life. Maybe it's your job.

I don't know. Whatever your important thing is, it requires us to constantly be adjusting our focus, doesn't it? At least it does for me.

I find that I drift easily if I'm not careful. And it just requires myself to be intentional every day about checking to see if my feet are taking me in the right direction.

I wonder if that rings true for you too.

And again, I think that that idea of constantly needing to be checking our focus and checking our heading, making sure that we're going in the right direction isn't that you don't give yourself. And I. That I don't give myself permission to beat myself up about that as well.

Where it's like maybe, maybe we have this false idea in our mind of thinking that other people that maybe we see online or on TV or some, you know, leadership person that we know in our life or someone in our life, maybe it looks like they have this all figured out and they never need to, you know, adjust their course. And so we kind of compare ourselves to them and think, well, they have it all together. Why can't I? I must be terrible. Or I'm not.

I'm just not good at this. I suck. I'm weak. I don't know all those things, right? Those negative soundtracks that easily play, at least in my mind.

I bet you do too, have those thoughts.

And I think it's just important to realize that this is Something that everybody needs to be continually doing if you care about accomplishing things. Nobody that I know, and I don't know everybody, I guess, but I don't think anybody is able to set and forget a goal, you know, because they're just.

As soon as they. They set it, they are a billion percent focus on it 100% of the time. Especially if you have family, if you have kids, if you've got a job.

I mean, there's all these competing things, isn't there, that are always, you know, vying or trying to get your attention.

And I know for me, I just need to continually be pulling myself back and making sure that I'm going in the direction that I've said is important for me. So remember, point number two, this is an ongoing process. It's not something that I set up on Monday and it's going to stay true till Friday.

I need to continually be making sure that my Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday activities in some way, shape or form are moving me in the direction that matters. At least during the day sometime. You know, I mean, maybe not 100% during the day because you've got other things to take care of.

But are you adjusting yourself daily to make sure that you're going in the direction you need to be going in? And if you realize you haven't, it's okay. See, point number one that I was just talking about. Recognize the drift. Recognize that it happened.

Don't beat yourself up and just adjust and get back on target again.

But just don't assume that just because you've set that goal and I'm talking to myself, that you're going to be able to stay focused on it 100% of the time because you're just not. I'm not. I'm not able to do it. I'm admitting that to you, and I hope that you can admit that to yourself as well. And it's okay to refocus sometimes.

Well, it's okay to refocus every single time you realize you're off target. The last one, and this is totally me having a conversation with me. And I'm just going to let you in on it. It's okay.

And actually pretty darn important to tell myself no sometimes. And not just myself, sometimes, other people in my life I need to say no to so that I can say yes to the things that really matter to me.

And I'm not always good at that. I'm not always good at that, especially when it comes to the things that are.

I'm just thinking for Example, one of my favorite things to do in my life, and it's always been a passion of mine, is playing video games. I. I really like playing games. And right now, the game that I like to play on Xbox, I like to play it with my kids. It's called Overwatch.

It's pretty much the only game that I'm half decent at. I cannot play Fortnite, for example. I suck at that. I don't know if you've ever tried that game, but I'm. I'm just. I just can't. I don't know.

I. I'm just terrible at it. And there are other games that my kids like to play, but the only one that I can stand a chance on with them is with Overwatch.

And so that's my favorite game. And I can very easily say goodbye to hours of my life playing that game when we're, you know, hanging out or just kind of relaxing at nighttime.

I freely admit that I have allowed those fun things to steal too much of my time sometimes, and I need to tell myself no more often.

And this week, I am happy to say I was able to do that a couple of times, where I know that if you've been a regular listener, you've heard me talking about my writing, I'm working, and I have been working on a novel, and. And I've been doing that for a long, long time. Like about 10 or so years maybe. And I'm so very close to finishing it. Like, it's so close.

And I have all these competing things, priorities, interests that get in the way. This podcast is one of them. I mean, sometimes when I have creative energy, I know I need to make a recording like this.

I knew that today was the day that I normally dedicate to making a recording. And. And yet there were other things that are pulling my attention away, but I've needed to say no to them.

And this week, like I was saying before, I told myself successfully no to playing Xbox so that I could focus my attention on writing. I don't do that frequently or consistently enough. I need to. To exercise that muscle more. But. But that's something that is important for me to do.

I need to be telling myself no more often so I can say yes to what matters to me. I don't know if that resonates with you. Maybe there are things that you need to say no to. And that was. That's me on the personal side of things. Okay.

I've gone on much longer than I was intending to, but if you are still here with me. First of all, thank you.

Just as a reminder, the three things that I am talking with myself about and maybe hopefully encouraging you as well, is this. Remember, if you find yourself off course, if you're feeling like it's been hard to stay focused on what matters to you.

Number one, remember, recognize what's going on and then adjust. Adjust course, come back to what matters, but don't give yourself permission to beat yourself up.

Number two, remember that focusing and refocusing and refocusing again is an ongoing process. It's not something that you set and forget one day and you never have to do it again. I don't know anybody who is able to do that.

And if I just don't, and if you do know somebody, well, tell me about them because I would like to meet them. But yeah, this is an ongoing process and you need to give yourself that permission to be.

It's okay to realize you're off course and to need to refocus again on what matters. And finally, it's okay to say no to yourself and it's okay to say no to others in a kind and gentle way, of course.

Okay, that's it for today's episode. I want to say thank you for listening. I hope that you will come back again next time. Bye. Bye.