Your Focus Is Creating Your Future (Most People Don’t Realize This)

Hi y'all! 

In this weeks episode, I yapped about how controlling your focus controls your future. This is important because whatever you repeatedly focus on, you strengthen those neural pathways and it becomes your default to your core.

I share some practical tools on how to stop doing this, and I also talk about lessons from my horse, who is a crazy powerful partner in life that mirrors my energy and teaches me about intentional presence.

Bottom line: You don't need to change your entire life to get the changes you want, you just need to shift your focus, one thought at a time!

Thanks for being here,

Shy ♡  

Transcript

0:00

Hey y'all. Welcome back to Shy Space, where we talk about all things pertaining to mental health and manifestation. My name is Shy and I'm the host of this podcast, and I'm so excited to be here with you for another episode with my co-host Miss London. It's a beautiful day today. It's been a beautiful weekend, and I hope. That wherever you are, you're having a great day or a great evening or morning, and I just really appreciate you being here with me and listening. So thank you. I'm really excited to get into this week's episode. I was listening to a self-help video on YouTube, as I often do, and I forget what the topic was or the title of the video. I'd have to go back and look, but there was a line that. Really like stuck out to me and just kind of struck me while I was listening and I was multitasking, so I knew that there was significance behind it, like striking me and grabbing my attention. And the narrator of the video said something along the lines of, if you can control your focus, you can control your future. And when he said that, it just again, like really slapped me in the face. And I was like. Okay. I am writing that down because I want to dive into that and I want to make that an episode. And so I figured we'd do it for this week because why not? It's fresh on the brain and I don't know about y'all, but I feel like there's a lot of hype around this year with the energy surrounding the year of the horse and like the fire energy, the fire horse. And it's just a very powerful year when it comes to the energies, the alignment kind of like what, what it's going to bring out of us as individuals. And a lot of that surrounds the topic of just like. Success and motivation and you know, like paving your path and doing the things that you want to do with your life. Like I've seen a lot of, uh, spiritual folks that have talked about the year of the horse and, you know, kind of like the energy behind it say that it encompasses like a very strong energy that is related to independence. And so like, you know, a lot of people will be starting businesses and doing things like that and just kind of like stepping out and taking bigger risks and making a lot of changes. Because last year was the year of the snake and that came with a lot of like shedding layers and learning lessons and it just didn't make a lot of space for people to, I feel like really like step out and like get to that next level that they needed to in order to make big changes in their lives, if that makes sense. But everything in, in divine timing and, you know, nothing is rushed or too late or too early. I, I truly believe in divine timing. So therefore it's all happening the way that it should. So anyways, let's dive into the episode because I feel like this is a really good one and it will help people stay really focused throughout the remainder of the year. We're already almost done with Q1, so, if you're like have a goal of any sort that you want to commit to this year. This is a good video for you for sure. I wanna remind you first too, that you don't need to have like a new life or recreate your life in order to have drastic change occur within your life. You just need a new focus. I think that a lot of people have this tendency to think that you have to kind of like uproot your life and change everything in order to get new outcomes or results, and that's really not the case. What you need to uproot and change is your mentality and your focus, like the thoughts you think, the energy that you put towards things and all of that, because the direction of your attention is the direction that your life will go. Where focus goes, energy flows, and this is everything that they teach in like philosophical teaching, spiritual teachings, anything pertaining to manifestation, law of attraction, you name it. It's all about focus. It's all about energy and alignment. So when I heard that line this week, if you can control your focus, you can control your future. I immediately felt just like called out. Because I feel like most of us, including myself, are not lacking discipline really. It's that we're lacking, uh, the ability to focus our attention. And a lot of people will have a ton of discipline and, you know, think they're doing all the right things, but their mindset and the thoughts that they think it's just garbage. You know, it's not in alignment with the goals that they're trying to reach or the life that they wanna live. And so they're not getting there because again, their focus is all over the place. Their attention is all over the place, and so they're not able to align with what they want because their life is always a reflection of what you've been focusing on, what you believe, you know, like what your true core thoughts and values and beliefs are. Not what you say you want, what you say you are, not what you say you believe, but like what you actually are. What you rehearse on a mental basis, on a daily basis, hourly basis, like that's who you are and that's what decides your life. Obviously action and decision making is extremely important and super important for manifestation as well. But, but it's not, it doesn't fly solo when it comes to your success. The mentality and the focus is way more important than the action who would would much rather somebody focus on aligning their focus and their mental state and their thoughts than aligning action. Because you cannot take proper action unless it's inspired action. So you always wanna start with your mindset and then that will lead you to inspired action. And that inspired action will take you or open the doors to take you to what you want or where you want to go. I feel like that's not a lot of people like focus on that as much. They're like, oh, like discipline, you know, showing up daily, going to the gym daily or doing this daily. And it's like, yeah, no, but like what are you thinking about daily? Like, are you doing things that fuel that control and that, um, ability to focus really. The whole reason for this is to just redirect your focus to purpose. You want it to be intentional focus. You want it to be purposeful focus. You don't wanna be, you know, having your thoughts scattered all over the place in your energy, this way, that way and the other. And you know, just like living life by default rather than like intentionally or you're living in a reactive state rather than intentional state. The reason that a lot of us do this is because focus is actually a nervous system, habit or pattern. Your brain, again, we've talked about this, is wired for survival, not success. So it scans for things like you know, what's going wrong, who's gonna leave you or hurt you, where you might've messed up, where things could go wrong in a situation, which is something that we call negativity bias. And it's also protective patterning. Like your brain is always gonna try to protect you, especially if you've been hurt in the past. So that's not like a sign of being weak or anything. Like there's nothing wrong with you. It's just the truth because a lot of people aren't able to focus because they have a lot of anxiety or they struggle with other things. And so they're constantly in this negativity bias. And this is very, very common for people. And again, this is not like there's nothing wrong with you, it's just a lot of the times like people grow up in really, unpredictable, chaotic environments. Maybe they have parents where like, families where it's like performance based love or things like that. This teaches you by default, without you even trying to be hyper-focused on threats, approval, not failing, not messing up, things like that. So it will naturally cause you to feel stuck because you are literally stuck in survival mode. Your focus is in survival mode. So you can't get out and like create. And so if you haven't listened to my last couple episodes on getting out of survival mode, I would highly recommend them. Um, I talk a lot about the different autonomic states within the body. There's fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and. All sorts of things that I talked about in my last couple episodes in terms of the nervous system and how it reacts and why it's triggered in certain ways. But this all comes down to nervous system dysregulation, which is what I was talking about in those episodes, which is when your attention just like narrows, like you can't, again, you can't be creative. You can't be expansive, like you can't step outside of what you're doing because you're just so locked into I am trying to survive. And like, it's literally not your fault. Like you, you need to unwire that and you need to bring awareness to it so that you can fix it. And it's hard, but it's totally doable. And the great thing is too, that once you get to a place where you're more regulated and you feel more safe, your attention can expand because you have more room to think more thoughts and just sit there and maybe ponder life rather than like having a consistent return to baseline, like you're always trying to like, get back to your baseline. Like if you stay at your baseline more consistently, because you're more regulated, you will be able to have, thoughts and intuitions come from God, spirit, whatever you believe in unexpectedly or maybe expectedly and you know, have, have that higher level of consciousness where you're communicating with, higher realms of intelligence. It's really incredible, truly. And that's why it's so important in anything that you wanna do in your life to make sure that you are mentally good, that you are, not harboring all these like intense emotions and traumas and things within your body because they will come up eventually if you just suppress and avoid and ignore, and you just cannot build the big future, the big, goals and dreams that you want from a dysregulated, contracted nervous system. Like, it's just not, it's not gonna be an easy journey for you. I mean, I know people do it, but it's not, it's definitely not easy. And you want it to be, you want it to be like seamless and like, this is right, this feels right, everything feels good type of situation. So another thing about the focus that I want to touch on is that whatever you focus on, you're going to strengthen. There's to so many studies that you could read in different books or if you just researched it where they've done actual scientific research studies on people doing things versus just pretending that they did them by thinking about them very intensely in the mind. And in those studies it's been with like different athletes of various forms. They've done it with musicians playing instruments, and the studies have been absolutely phenomenal in terms of the outcome, because the brain is able to just have the same type of response when the action is not actually being taken, but it's being taken mentally in terms of the impact that it has on the body or the skill. So the piano players who just focused on playing piano rather than actually practicing physically. Had the same level of improvement, if not more than the ones who were actually practicing daily. And then the same thing happened for the football players or whatever it was that Joe Dispenza, uh, talks about in his book where they. It was either like running or stretching or something that they had to focus on mentally, and they again had like physiological measurable results that showed that their results were just as good, if not better, as the folks who actually did the physical movement or the physical activity. It's actually insane. So every single thought that you repeat becomes easier to think again, and it becomes easier for your mind and your body to actually accept it as truth because neurons that fire together wire together. And so they stay together and they replicate and they repeat, and they build and they strengthen. So if you're constantly focusing on things like the negativity bias would feed you such as I'm behind, I'm not doing enough, other people are ahead of me. Stop it. Your brain is building highways, neural highways around inadequacy, and you do not want that. That is such a waste of energy and such a waste of time. And then it's just gonna be one of those things where like you, you think it automatically and you're convinced that it's actually true because it's coming from your brain. And so it must be true, and like that is not the case. So don't let yourself get there. Here is the truly wild part about this too. Your brain doesn't care if the focus is on something positive versus something negative. It just strengthens whatever you rehearse. So if you look in the mirror every single day and you say, I'm a piece of shit 15,000 times, you are literally going to feel like the biggest piece of shit. Without a doubt. Now, on the flip side, if you stand in the mirror and say all sorts of affirmations, a beautiful, and I'm amazing 15,000 times, you're gonna feel like that bitch. And you're gonna have some crazy shit happen to you. I can guarantee it. You're gonna attract some crazy, crazy stuff and you're not gonna be able to believe it. And you're probably just gonna have like a full blown fucking identity shift at that point. So that's sick honestly, if you ask me. But anyways, so some examples, again, if you focus on lack, you're gonna train your mind to scan for lack more often. If you focus on growth and opportunity, you train your mind to scan for opportunity. If you focus on fear, you build a fearful identity. And if you focus on expansion, you build a very brave identity. This is how you form your identity in real time. It is about the thoughts that you think and the the habits that you allow yourself to engage in repeatedly on a daily, hourly, ongoing basis. I mentioned a couple seconds ago that you will basically have an identity shift when you do something like this. And really what that is when it comes to the actual brain processes is shifting from reacting to directing. So most people just live life on autopilot, letting their outside stimuli and people and situations control their focus, control their moods, control what they do sometimes. You know, a text changes their whole mood. A slow month at work changes their worth like, this this is all stuff that I still struggle with and I've struggled with my whole life and it's way, way easier now and way more different now. It. It's like this is real human shit. And it's like, it's actually genuinely hard. Like there are, there have been so many days in my life, especially when I was younger and I was in, shitty relationships and I had absolutely zero ability to regulate my nervous system. And I would get like a bad text from my boyfriend, my friend, my mom, whoever it was, and like my boss, it would, my whole day would be ruined. I would be spiraling. I'd be obsessed like. It was extremely unhealthy and I feel like a lot of people can relate whether or not you're older, younger, like we've all been there. It's hard, and especially when things go wrong at work, like if you're not performing well or you get in trouble, or you make a mistake or whatever, like that can really, really severely impact how you feel about yourself. And it's hard. It's like, it's just, it takes you back to, being a kid, feeling inadequate, feeling like you're in trouble, like you've done something wrong, you're dumb, you're not enough. Like, it's just a very tough situation. So again, if you struggle with this, I really want you to be easy on yourself'cause being hard on yourself is not gonna make it better. It's actually gonna make it worse. Love yourself through it, gave yourself grace. Remind yourself that you're not alone. I'm here with you in this struggle. I'm almost 30 years old. I turn 29 next month, and there are still days where a text can ruin my mood. And a bad month at work can ruin my mood, easily by far. I've let little silly things ruin my day before. So it's a lot of work to learn how to not do that. But if you do feel like you're that type of person where you know, one comment can really ruin your whole day, you feel like just very easily impacted by the outside world. That's a reactive focus. So that's what we wanna shift away from. Intentional focus sounds like responding to situations in the form of, yes, this happened, but what do I want to learn from this? What do I wanna build from here? What version of me that I wanna be like, how are they gonna handle this? Where do I want my energy to go? Do I want it to go to this? Do I want it to go somewhere else? Because your focus is truly so powerful. It's literally your power, like it is your third eye, which is the magic that you have in your body in terms of power, like it's that focus, it's the steering wheel to your life. And if you do not hold it, your triggers will. So Jesus take the wheel. Okay? Like you don't wanna let go of that. Alright, now let's talk about goals and goal setting in terms of how this plays into that. Obviously having a very strong focus is going to impact your goals and your ability to achieve them tremendously, right? We all know that. Knowing what you want, staying disciplined with what you want, staying on track with the daily habits, the daily disciplines, whatever it needs to be. Fantastic. Great. Love it. All good. But, on the contrary, if you're doing all this stuff, but your focus is kind of in the shitter and while you're doing all this stuff, you're thinking about how bad you fucking suck and how you're never gonna amount to anything and how this is such a stupid waste of effort because you'll never actually succeed in this. Baby you might as well just put down the textbook, the basketball, whatever it is that you're working on, because it's just you're not in alignment. It's gonna be like a much harder feat to get there if you're in that mental state. So you might as well just take a break, get in alignment, get back into it when you're better. Because manifestation is not magic. Like you can't just, be fucking pissed off and feel like shit and then be like, oh, well I'm just gonna say out loud, like, I believe I'm gonna get this. And then it's like, boom. It, it works. Like that's not how it works. It's about repetition, it's about consistency. It's about rising to what you repeatedly want to think about and want to be, because you do not rise to your goals. You rise to what you repeatedly think about, or you sink to what you repeatedly think about. So there is no rising to be Barack Obama just by your action, you have to rise to be Barack Obama by waking up every day and being like, how does Barack Obama think? How does Barack Obama start his day? How does he get out of bed? What does he do first? What does he think about? What does he focus on? Who does he talk to? What does he talk to them about? What does he talk to himself about? What does he eat for breakfast? What does he talk to his family about? Yeah, we're gonna go psychopathic serial killer stalker vibes on whoever it is that you are striving out to be like, and make sure that this person is a good example of whatever it is that you're striving to be, of course. But also remember that you know best for yourself and that you will always be able to determine the best path for yourself, even if you're using inspiration from others. So just because Barack Obama might start his day with a banana and a peanut butter toast and wake up at seven and do a workout with Michelle, doesn't mean that it would be wrong if you woke up and skipped breakfast for a couple of hours and went to go do a workout solo because you don't like to work out with your husband. Like it's, you know what I mean? There's, there's levels to this shit is what I'm trying to say. Again, all about repetition. If you move towards what feels familiar, think about it like this because you always will. That's, you know, your brain scans for safety. It wants to look for something safe, which is always something familiar. So if struggle feels familiar to you, if negativity and, you know, self-deprecation feels familiar to you, you are going to unconsciously repeat and recreate that on an ongoing basis. And if peace feels unfamiliar to you, you're gonna sabotage that. Been there, done that 8 million times. Who else can relate? Because literally I've self-sabotaged so many situations in so many different like areas of life and I don't have any regrets. Like everything happens for a reason, but it's just kind of crazy to look back'cause I'm like, wait, what the fuck? So let's pivot because instead of asking yourself how do I get there, which is like, I feel like a big overarching, like anxious, anxiety inducing question. You wanna ask yourself things that are like taking it down to the micro habit level or the daily disciplines level. That focus on what you're thinking about on a daily basis. So what am I focusing on daily? Is a good question to ask yourself and reflect on. Is this building the life that I say that I want and the person that I wanna be? Is another good one to reflect on. Because truly your future is built within those micro focus shifts. Like every time you get off path and you start spiraling and then you bring yourself back and you redirect your focus and you're like, no, I don't wanna do that, I don't want to spiral about that, I will not do that. It rewires your brain and it gets easier to not spiral. Another thing on that note too, when it, when I'm talking about your future being built in focus shifts, micro focus shifts, this goes for everything in your life, not just how you talk to yourself. This is about what you consume. Who you compare yourself to. You know the story that you tell yourself after you make a mistake. The thoughts that you think about before bed, the thoughts that you think about when you wake up. It's all of that. So just remembering that it's literally constant. It's a full-time job. It's a full-time gig, no days off, but it is the most valuable work that you'll ever do. I will say that. Alright. Now I wanna throw a little fun twist in here because I'm a cowgirl and I just have to, and I wanna talk about the horse perspective because I have been doing a lot of work with horses lately. I have a horse for those who don't know. And they are very, very intelligent beings and they teach you a lot about yourself. And if you show up to their space with any sort of wacko energy, they're gonna let you know about it and they're not gonna like it. And my horse in particular happens to be quite sensitive. He's a sweet, sweet boy, and he's quite sensitive to my energy and other people's energy. And so I have to be really cognizant of the energy that I bring to his space because I want us to have a good relationship and I don't want him to think of me as a person that comes and stresses him out. I've been learning a lot about that over the past you know, months that I've had him and I'm trying to learn more as I go on, which is why I wanna talk about it because I think it's helpful. The best way that I learn, or the easiest way that I learn, and sorry, I'm like literally picking something on my leg right now. The easiest way that I learn is by teaching others. We talked a little bit about this before too, but when it comes to like the perspective of horses surrounding regulation and focus, horses are very intuitive and they obviously don't respond to your words. They respond to your energy, your attention, and your vibes. So if your focus and your your energy is really scattered or anxious, or if you're like tripping over the future, they can literally feel that. They connect and sync up with our heartbeat. So it's actually kind of crazy because they can feel so much from us. And it's, I'm sure it's quite intense when we're like so aggravated or just like really struggling. But you can literally see it in horses, especially sensitive ones like mine. The shift when you come in hot with that energy. And then the shift, if your focus is grounded and present and embodied. Because they really soften and they really relax, which is beautiful. They truly, truly mirror the quality of your attention too, which is crazy and so does your life. So this is what I mean when I say like they teach us so much and I just think they're such valuable partners to have in this life. Because when you're present and you know regulated and living intentionally, you make different decisions. You start to set boundaries. Your standards for yourself change and improve, and that's how your future changes as well. Not from like forcing yourself to grind harder, but from focusing more intentionally and more cleanly. Okay, now let's talk about a practical way to rewire yourself and take yourself back to focus if you're spiraling and you're going down a rabbit hole and you know you need to bring yourself back. So the first thing you need to do is catch the default channel in terms of like noticing what your mental home screen is, if you will. Like where do you, where do you land? Like where does your phone land when you open up your algorithm or like your Google browser? Like what is the automatic matic thoughts that just go through your head. Are they about fear? Are they about anger, self comparison, self-criticism? You know, planning for worst case scenarios? Things like that. We start with awareness, no shame, no judgment, just awareness. And then we go into step two, which is interrupt and redirect. So when you catch yourself in a spiraling thought. You obviously are gonna bring your self-awareness to it. You're gonna pause, you're gonna take one slow breath and ask yourself one of those questions that I mentioned earlier, such as, is this building the future that I want? If the answer to that question is no, then choose a different thought intentionally and start to go down a different pathway. This is not toxic positivity. This is not avoidance. This is just redirection. If the thoughts are not serving you, and you wanna still think about it, then redirect into a different thought process about the same subject. Number three is to curate your inputs. Your focus is really truly shaped by what you consume. I talked about this already, but this includes everything. Like you need to be really intentional about what you consume in every realm. Music, podcasts, social media, conversations. I have my phone on do not disturb literally 24/7, and I don't really understand how people don't use it more often. I think it's the most annoying thing for a phone to just be able to like pop up and notify you and like pull your focus away or distract you or stress you out, if you get a text from somebody that's like mean or weird or unexpected. I don't want any of that shit in my life. My phone stays on do not disturb permanently, and I love it that way. I do not like to feed my nervous system chaos, and I find that keeping my phone off of Do Not Disturb does exactly that. And I don't want to be disturbed. I wanna be focused. I wanna be intentional with my time. I wanna be intentional with what I think about. What I do. And it's already hard enough to do that without a bunch of shit popping up in your face with all these notifications. So that's where I'm at. I have no notifications on my phone whatsoever. It is so distracting. And again, if you're feeding your nervous system, chaos, you will focus on chaos. You will become chaos. So be ruthless and really, really strict about who and what gets access to your mind. Number four is to practice micro presence. So this is literally as simple as just like putting your phone down, turning all stimuli off for 10 minutes. Go outside. Touch grass. Feel your feet on the earth. Spend time with your animal. Regulate yourself, and then refocus and recalibrate. Because you cannot choose a calm, powerful thought process from a dysregulated, chaotic state. Okay, so I hope that's helpful. Couple last things I wanna leave you with. One is a reframe of this thought process'cause I always love to do this and I think it's really hard sometimes. This is not you being stuck. You are just focused on the wrong thing. So if you're struggling to reach a goal, if you're struggling to come up to a different milestone or whatever it may be, you are not behind, you are not messing things up, you're not incapable of getting there, you're not cursed, you're not a failure. You are most likely just rehearsing potentially the wrong narrative and not the empowering narrative. And I think the really important part about this that I wanna emphasize is that your focus is so trainable. Literally like a muscle, literally like your brain when it comes to, other things like it is so, so adaptable. Attention is literally a skillset. You can strengthen it, you can work on it, you can empower yourself and improve this. Your future doesn't have to be random and unpredictable and just like unplanned. It can be very directional and intentional based off of what you want, if you are willing to put in the work to be able to get there. You get to decide every single day, every single minute, every single second of every single day, what you focus on, what you think about, what you allow to consume your mind, what you allow in your life when it comes to people, habits, places, decisions, jobs, whatever it may be. You are in control, and that should be the most empowering feeling to you, to know that if somebody comes up to you and starts talking to you about something that you don't wanna talk about, you literally do not have to listen to them. You can walk away, you can mentally check out. I love doing that to people. I love just disassociating on the spot and just being like, ah, this fucking bitch. Like this shit again. You know? And it's like, I don't wanna talk about this shit. And I just literally disassociate and I'm like you cannot get access to me. My therapy or my therapist teaches me about basically building a mental bubble, if you will, where you just like think about having a bubble around you of, you know, space, protective space if you will, where it's like people energy things cannot infiltrate and get access to the bubble and they cannot get access to you. And I really love that because that's also very empowering to think like, arms spread wide, like on both sides. This is how far away I keep things that I don't want in my life and they stay that far away because I don't allow them. So just closing the loop here. If your focus builds your identity, and your identity builds the decisions that you make. And the decisions that you make build your life, then the smallest teeniest tiniest shift in your attention, today or any day, changes everything in your life long term. In one way or another. That's just the truth of it. So literally ask yourself right now, what thoughts am I rehearsing on a daily basis? What areas of my life am I strengthening and weakening based off of the thoughts that I think and the narrative that I tell myself and feed myself? Where does my attention go when I'm not monitoring it? Or where does it just go naturally on a daily basis? And is that where I want it to go? Is that where I want my life to go? Is this what I want? Is this who I want be? Is this what I want to think about? If no, then stop fucking thinking about it. Seriously, get that shit outta your head because if you can control your focus, you can control your future. And I stand by that. I love y'all so much. Thank you so much for listening. I am so happy to be here with you all, per usual. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day, night, week, whatever it is, and I can't wait to see you in my next episode. Bye.