SMART Focus
If your cultural and mental world is defined by a hyper-performance paradigm, you likely don’t have a SMART focus.
SMART Summary
Jumping in and out of multiple topics, roles, events, etc. like a camera lens zooming in and out, while thinking “I’m focused on this right now” which lasts 10 seconds or 10 minutes, isn’t what we mean by having a SMART focus in terms of living a SMART Life. (Neither is whittling hours away at the foot of a guru, being idle. More on this later.)
Here’s the SMART perspective on Focus:
Stillness
There’s a word that means lots of things to different people. You might think “rest” or “peaceful”. You might think “solitude” and either panic or wish for an opportunity to get away from it all. It’s all these things, and still more. There’s an art to being still. It’s not like “hold still” as in the opposite of constantly squirming – like the tug of war between a parent and a child. It’s not like the “hold still” as in stop at a red light until the required time passes before moving on. Or the “wait here” for any number of reasons in life. Basically, “standing still” while fully revved and spinning our wheels inside, in whatever context, is not being still. It’s being stuck against our will. We’re captives, hostages if you will, detoured, knocked off course.
Stillness, in the SMARTLife context, is completely different. It’s stillness of soul. And it’s a choice, it’s intentional. It’s meaningfully superseding busyness. It’s replacing the measuring stick of multi-taksing, with the yardstick of focus. Hey, the goal here isn’t to find easy, it’s to find what’s helpful…
Uncluttered
SMARTLife Focus is exchanging the role of “mental handyman” a jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none surface-level generalist mentality, for an uncluttered approach content with fewer topics, and unconcerned with comparisons. SMARTLife focus is uncluttered, organized, or at least prioritized without guilt!
Alert
In the stillness and uncluttered mode described above, we are alert to opportunities, new thoughts, expanded perspectives. This is the benefit of being focused, we begin to experience a compounding effect, a deepening result; as opposed to a growing collection of more mental “stuff” and disjointed experiences.
Regulated
Not regimented, regulated. Not relegated. Those are three different words. Regulated, vs. regimented (over controlled) vs. relegated (as in pushing things off into the future or kept in the past). Regulate means “controlling the speed of” or “adjusting to an external standard.” This prompts us to be selective of the external standards we adjust to.
Controlling the speed, meaning it’s the control that is the focus, not the speed. Think ballroom dancing, not a 100-meter dash. Regulated means you can speed up, go full force, then equally scale back and idle for a while. You are regulating your activity, not reacting to the trivial, fleeting, or seemingly urgent.
Trusting
Living with SMART Focus requires trust. Trusting in people around you to provide some of what you need, because you are exchanging the frantic attempt of taking care of every aspect of life with a basic trust in those around you, in God, in a future that doesn’t require you to control every detail in a self-survival kind of way.
DUMB ways to not value having a SMART Focus include:
Detached
The positive ability to disengage from performance and unending expectations, is not the same as being “detached.” Not if your version of detached looks like being or making excuses for becoming disconnected from people, unaffected by other’s needs, or frankly irresponsible. Let’s stop short of embracing idleness for stillness. We don’t need to be physically inert in order to be internally still.
Urgent
Ever notice that most everything we label “urgent” has to do with someone, something, or somewhere else? Of course there are true emergencies to offer help, support, etc. to someone else, but the vast majority of the time, it’s more likely that we are living in reaction to “urgent” in a much more superficial way.
Marching
Marching along to someone else’s drumbeat is in vogue these days. It’s understandable to a point. A group provides identity, safety, a place to belong – at least externally. But have you considered who the drummer is? Do you know where the group is going? And why? A SMART focus is marching to your own beat internally, then finding a group of others in sync with that beat as a bonus. Marching with a group is not a requirement, not a life survival skill, not your identity – that’s not SMART.
Believing Everyone’s Opinion
Everyone can’t be right about everything all the time. It’s simply not possible. And it’s not unkind to disagree. You can love a person, and be loved as a person, while having your own perspective and opinion. Anyone forcing you to believe an idea, without the option for you to choose, isn’t loving you – they are using you for their own ends. That’s not SMART.
