Concentrate Your Energy So You Can Maintain Your Positive Outlook
A Mother's Story www.thoughts-about-god.com Twenty Seven Years Ago, My Mother made a promise that changed my life
Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all of your energies on a limited number of targets. Nido Qubein
To give you a visual image of this, imagine a page with scores of targets on it. It would be dizzying in its distraction, wouldn't it? If you put it right in front of you at your next personal planning session, see if you can focus at all. Think about taking a page like this to your staff meeting and sharing it so that everyone gets the idea that if they are dispersing their energy across too many targets, then they are asking for mayhem and hello?!, they are squandering precious resources.
This article's focus is on "Energy," as you might have guessed from the quote about 'concentrating all of your energies.' Let's acknowledge that just going through your day-to-day life, when there's no upheaval, no negativity, no illness, no clutter, no drama...still requires a fair amount of energy. Living is wonderful - and even when everything is going GREAT - it is not a cakewalk and it requires energy.
And then when there are people around us who are freaked out or when you or a close family member is sick or when your department's budget is slashed or when one of your best friends is laid off, well, then you really require energy. You want to have the most energy available that it's possible for you to muster, because you know that one or all of the various tough situations will be requiring additional energy. So, as we are staying positive in a freaked-out world - or working to keep ourselves in our positive place, it is important that we consider energy in this, our third session.
Here are some key concepts to consider:
- ROI stands for 'Return on Investment.' Originally, this was a financial term and was one that people would consider when they were thinking about putting their money in the stock market, in land, in mutual funds, in a savings account, or under their mattress. Many people carefully consider where they can get the best ROI, that is, return on investment. I am certainly not going to go into financial advice in this week's segment, but I wanted to start with the idea of ROI.
- Metaphorically, the concept of ROI is often used, for example, when you are involved in something and you need to consider whether it was worth investing in. You can ask, "What is the return on my investment?" The answer may have nothing whatsoever to do with money. A number of years ago, I was involved with a non-profit educational entity and was beating my head against the wall. Since I was donating time, money, political capital, intellectual capital, and so forth, I resigned because I knew that if I invested that same amount of time, money, political and intellectual capital somewhere else, there would be a return on the investment, whereas there was zero ROI for this particular venture (and in fact, one that I could easily argue metaphorically put me 'in the hole').
- So let's now extend this concept of ROI (Return on Investment) to ROE, which is "Return on Energy." We want to consider that particularly as it relates to our pursuit of PAWSitivity (I don't want you to forget our mascot, Paws), so just making a little reference to him.
In life, we need to be good stewards of whatever we have been given - of our wealth, our health, our relationships, our intellect, our emotional and spiritual selves, our potential for making a contribution...well, you get the idea, I hope.
Part of being a good steward is to invest your energy where it matters. Doing so helps you keep your positive attitude instead of feeling drained and exhausted.
You are certainly welcome to download a page of targets (which are horrible to look at!) (free) to use in conceptualizing this idea. Simply go to
Scientists estimate that we are subject to receiving one billion stimuli every second in our brains.[1] Of this amount, our brain manages to filter out most but there are still around 100 sensations kept for continued processing every second. And much of the stimuli received is in the form of noise. With all this bombardment, you can be forgiven for feeling easily distracted, ready to down tools and go for a little mind wander (or even a wander somewhere else totally).
When the bleep-bloop of someone's cellphone sears through you, the traffic hum and honking is blazing through your system and the chatter of others across the way is almost as bad as thunder to your concentration, what are you to do? Here are some suggestions to ease the cacophony and to hone in on good concentration.
How to Concentrate While There Are Background Noises
9 authors | 18 revisions | Last updated: August 9, 2012
When the bleep-bloop of someone's cellphone sears through you, the traffic hum and honking is blazing through your system and the chatter of others across the way is almost as bad as thunder to your concentration, what are you to do? Here are some suggestions to ease the cacophony and to hone in on good concentration.
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