Focus

Focus… easy to say, hard to do - especially for me.  Every year, as I select my word for the year, I think through actions that would be impactful to my life.  Last year was all about “embrace”- embracing what I have and what I don’t have.  I certainly needed remainders along the way to keep my attention on “embrace”.  It wasn’t an easy task.  Therefore, once 2025 started and January took off as quickly as it did, I realized that what I really need to pay attention, is to be able to “focus”.

At any given moment, I have multiple things to juggle.  As much as I call it multi-tasking, we all know that it ends up being one thing at a time with less attention since the brain has the other “multi-tasks” in there.  I know that my “multiple things” are not going away.  However, I can be better at “focus”ing on one task at a time, even if that means I get a smaller portion of that task done but with FULL attention.  How many times do you grab your phone to search for something but then you get carried away with an email or an article or a post?  That happens to me very frequently.  Or while you are in the middle of a task, a ping/call/text comes about your household/family/friend where you get sidetracked from your task?  That also happens to me a lot.  I loose my attention on the task at hand and move on to something else without finishing the initial task or by finishing it haphazardly.  Where this lack of full “focus” hurts is with my family - I loose my train of thought and cannot even finish a sentence during a conversation with my husband or I try to play with the kids while I am cooking which ruins both the game and the food.

January hit the full family with sickness within the first week.  As painful as it was to lay on the sofa all day long, the sickness (it was probably the flu) gave me the opportunity to truly “focus” on what I need to do.  My only task was to get better.  And for those of you who know me well, that meant “getting better with no medicine or pain killers”.  By the third day, as I was dealing with all sorts of body aches but no fever, I decided to focus on the task at hand - to get better.   Not taking medicine was a personal choice and clearly it wasn’t doing its magic.  I ended up with two Advils so that I can get up and prepare myself my hot lemon tea and anything else that can help me to get better.  It worked.  Thinking through my options clearly without getting distracted with other “stuff” certainly helped me to get better.  Therefore I made the decision to “focus” more clearly this year.

Focusing not only on the task but also at the moment is also part of this year’s theme for me.  Kaya turned 10 this January, which means that the years go by very fast and I do not want to loose those moments.  So, if I am playing with my kids then everything else can wait, inclusive of dinner prep. I already have the muscle memory of ditching my phone while getting the household ready for the evening but now I will try harder to bring that muscle memory whenever I am working on a single task that doesn’t involve my phone.

Talking about muscle memory, here is a great class from January, where the focus was on the core.  This was also special class since we celebrated Kaya’s 10th birthday.  What I really enjoyed in this class was that we used pushups to focus on the core without putting the emphasis on the core - if that makes any sense.  Give it a try and do NOT multi task!!!

High five to all of you who can complete a full workout session without loosing your focus!

focus is on “having fun'“

never left my side through out my sickness

kaya’s team practice on Slalom - pure focus and determination

AND ELa’s team prior to the race…