4 Keys To Focus On What Is Relevant

We live in times of dispersion due to the multitude of simultaneous stimuli to which we are exposed daily. For this reason, it is not easy to find the way to focus on what is relevant. Sometimes the days, weeks, months go by and we have the feeling that time passes without us taking care of anything essential.

Focusing on what’s relevant means connecting with what we genuinely want. We also take care of it, precisely because it has to do with the pillars of what we are or do.

Distraction and dispersion are forces that prevent us from moving forward, but above all, they create a wall between us and our reality.

It is not, of course, about adopting a serious attitude towards life, leaving no room for fun or relaxation. Rather, the intention is to avoid that  frantic and systematic exercise that so many people practice today: that of losing each day in a sea of ​​insignificant activities and thoughts.

How to do it? Here are four keys that can help you.

1. Eliminate the unnecessary

The unnecessary is everything that  does not bring us closer to what we really want to be or do. It is not easy to identify it, since sometimes we come to believe that, for example, being aware of what happens on the cell phone generates well-being. If we don’t look at it every five minutes, we experience uneasiness.

We must apply a reasonable criterion to define what we really want, especially in the long term. To establish what is left over, we have to take a forward-looking perspective. That gossip that makes me have a fun time, how will it affect my life in the medium and long term? Help me get what I want?

In order to focus on what is relevant, we need to clean the house, the mind and the heart a little. If there are too many objects, ideas or feelings, it will be very difficult to identify what we really want and what we do not want.

2. Order your thoughts

Ordering thought is only possible if we carry out a constant exercise of self-observation. In this case it has to do, in the first place, with making us aware of how we manage time. What do we do? Why? What activities do we prioritize?

After a few days of observing ourselves carefully, we can ask ourselves if our way of living is consistent with what we want to achieve  or does it coincide with the kind of life we ​​want to build. If it is consistent and matches, it means that we are focused on what is relevant to us. If not, it means that we are not acting for our own benefit.

3. Rediscover the engine, a key to focus on what is relevant

Everything to which we attach enormous value is relevant. The children, the partner, the work projects, the trips, the family, the creation or whatever. Understand those realities that, in our opinion, can lead us to feel complete. Normally we dedicate ourselves to the irrelevant when, for some reason, we cannot find the way to get what we want.

To focus on what’s relevant, we need to rediscover that desire. Sometimes we only achieve this when we stop feeling fear. Although it seems crazy, human beings can be afraid of wishing, because we are also afraid of not getting it. So we inhibit that desire, very often, through trivial distractions.

Rediscovering desire activates our motivation. If it doesn’t, we may be confused. We may believe, for example, that we want to change jobs, but in reality what we want is to feel more competent and valued. And that is the reason why we do not find a new job: that is not the real desire that drives us.

4. Align efforts

If we identify what is most relevant to each of us, there is no reason not to align our efforts around this. When we talk about aligning efforts, we mean investing time, energy, thought and heart in what really interests us.

The most relevant coincides with the essential and, therefore, it is not something that we can put off or lose sight of. When we align our efforts, we give it a central place in our daily lives, which does not mean obsessing over it or living exclusively on it.

If what we want most is that our children are well, this wish will become a source of positive reinforcement when we dedicate time, commitment and sensitivity to that goal. If what we want is to achieve a work purpose or anything else, apply the same formula.

Focusing on what is relevant is equivalent to building an alliance between our desire and our will to satisfy that desire. A task that is simple for us in a world that constantly seduces us to stop at the irrelevant and fleeting. However, it is worth it because that is what much of life is about: getting what we really want.