HSEP44: Getting Focused, So You Can Grow

Here’s a question for you.

• “What’s the highest value growth journey I can focus on?”

When it comes to personal growth, there are countless areas where you can learn and improve a skill, or gain more knowledge and understanding. However, it's not practical to try and excel in all of them. The key is to focus on the areas that will have the greatest return on investment for the life experience you are playfully building.

If you're going to hit a target, you have to know where or what it is. The more clearly defined the target, the easier it is to see. Once the target is clear and focused, we can identify the areas of growth that are most important for hitting it.

This focus, at least for me, helps me do a few things well.

• It helps me prioritize what’s important and what is clearly a distraction.
• It inspires me because I see a clear path toward growing in the direction that resonates.
• It gives me a better mindset, a growth mindset that engages with life - rather than living passively. I prefer to play my own game rather than reactively playing a game that's given to me by others.

This journey toward focus and growth applies to what I consider to be the 3 pillars of being human.

1. Self Understanding (Love)
   • A constant deepening of self-awareness. Understanding and embracing what is real, true, and authentic for my human.
2. Relationship to Others (Compassion)
   • The development of my ability to listen, communicate, and see other people more clearly.
3. Being in Service to Life (Freedom)
   • Using my skills, talents, interests, and passions in a way that adds value to the whole of life. This value add, is ultimately a value I give to myself (it comes back to me). The more value I can give, the more value I can receive.

Naturally, these three pillars build on themselves, with Self Understanding being the more important, and leads toward the development of 2 and 3. If I’m struggling in number 3, it indicates a struggle in 2 and 1.

Highest value growth area?

Here are my personal examples, maybe it will shed light on your own experience.

1. Self Understanding (Love)
   
   • My Health has the greatest impact on my ability to focus and being available to grow. Therefore, growing in my ability to feel amazing in my body is a priority.
   • What can I focus on that supports this? Through experimentation, I’ve learned that…
     • Sugar doesn’t serve me at all, and does the opposite. So, sugar is out.
     • What feels most amazing in my body is to be fueled by protein and fat.
     • Good sleep supports amazing heath and focus, I’m constantly moving in a direction that supports getting good sleep.
       
       
2. Relationship to Others (Compassion)
   
   • What can I focus on that supports this?
     • A make it a priority to have 4 in-depth conversations with people per week, where I listen deeply and observe in myself any triggers that distort how I see them. This helps me give people back to people, and love them beyond conditions.
     • I practice communication through writing and speaking. I write nearly every day, at least something that communicates and inspires a deeper compassion for others and myself.
     • I put myself in ‘forced’ situations to ‘show up’ as a communicator. Like, I find topics that are interesting to me, and I scheduled public talks on that subject.
       
       
3. Being in Service to Life (Freedom)
   
   • What can I focus on that supports this?
     • Most importantly, I can focus on Pillars 1 and 2. If they are adequately address, then being of service is a natural consequence.
     • The willingness to experiment, fail, and start over. I learn soooo much through experiment and failing. As I learn what doesn’t work, I get closer to what does work. Which also means, in appearances, I fail a lot.
     • Being Organized. This used to be something I was terrible at, going back to my childhood. I later found out that there were two reasons for this.
       • The first reason is that I wasn't joyfully focused on a project that both excited me and added value to people's lives. I needed a reason to be focused and organized.
       • The second reason is that my brain wasn't functioning properly because I kept putting poor fuel in my body, even though others told me that the fuel was fine. I wasn't listening to my body and instead was looking for someone else to tell me what to eat.

What is my target?

Fundamentally, it’s to grow in all 3 pillars. Secondly, the target is to add as much value I can to other people’s lives, in the most playful and enjoyable way possible.

What does that target look like?

• 3 Years Out
  • I have successfully trained 100 people to be space holders, each of whom directly helps 40 to 50 people per year to transform their lives. This amounts to 4,000 to 5,000 people per year. Moreover, these space holders receive an equal value in return, which eliminates any financial concerns and allows them to truly engage with life and grow their offering.

It is important to note the playful nature of this target. This means that it will evolve and transform, but the underlying intention remains the same: to enjoy myself as I find creative and playful ways to add value to people's lives. As I move towards this target and focus on the three pillars, it is inevitable that my life will continue to improve. Additionally, I will be better prepared for any challenges that may arise during the journey.

Okay! This was the pre-broadcast reflections. My thoughts and writings before the live video broadcast for the “Holding Space for Love to Be Seen” Podcast.