Samaritan Counseling Center Blog

The Essential Ingredient

By Matthew A. Williams, Administrative Coordinator, Samaritan Counseling Center

What if I told you that I have failed? More importantly, what if I told you that I have failed multiple times trying to achieve the same goal? Insanity right? (Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.) It may sound familiar. In fact, it is probably safe to say that we all have something in our lives we strive for and no matter how many times we try, we still fall short of our goal. Could it be we are lacking an essential ingredient to help push us over that threshold to greatness and success?

 

Most of us are currently in that yearly pursuit of greatness in the form of New Year Resolutions. How many times, over and over, do we set the same goal, year after year, and…nothing! What we lack is ATTENTION—the essential ingredient in our quest for success!

 

Simply put, our lives are full of distraction. Phone calls, emails, text messages, kids, TV, the never ending trips to the fridge for snacks, and the big one—FACEBOOK! We give these things our time and attention without much thought.

Or, we multi-task, which has a tendency to get us into more trouble than we realize. The fact of the matter is, our attention is strained to the point of catastrophic failure—and who are we failing? Ourselves!

         
Bonne Artman Fox, a licensed therapist and founder of A Conscious Choice, offers some advice to help us better manage our attention in order to achieve success during the New Year:

·       Clear your desk. Even if you know where things are amidst stacks of papers, clutter slows down your creativity and productivity.

·       Respond to phone calls, emails, or text messages at designated times throughout the day. Your attention is the driver of excellence. Protect it by turning off ringers that may distract you from the task at hand.

·       Leave a daily message on your voice mail greeting about your day. Give an overview of your meetings, appointments, etc. By doing so, you are giving a personal touch to your callers and letting them know when you will be available to return calls.

·       Establish a timeline of how long you will work on projects before you move on to the next. Research shows our concentration is best when we work at 60 minutes intervals, and then take a 5-10 minute break.

By eliminating the clutter (distractions) all around us, we can hone in our attention to the task at hand and maximize our efforts. So go ahead—set a goal, clear your desk off, cut out the distractions and start the New Year off right by managing your attention. Don’t forget to schedule your snack run ahead of time!