Something that I think almost everyone can benefit from is reevaluating their focus.  This is a lesson I have never fully learned but am gaining some awareness about.  In the realm of fitness I think it is easy for people influenced by Crossfit (as I have been) to become unfocused.  Perhaps the most conventional example I saw when I was more involved in Crossfit was wanting to maintain high levels of conditioning and make gains in strength and skill.  Basically people want to preserve their fastest WOD (work out of the day for you non-crossfitters) times and feel like they are failing if they are slower or even if they avoid that type of workout all together.  I certainly experienced this because I am very greedy when it comes to results: I want it all.  Well who doesn’t?  The problem is that greediness can create a lack of focus if you are acquainted with all the cool things you can train you body to do.

One of the best things about Crossfit for me was that it opened my eyes to the wide world of what was possible in fitness.  Body comp change, lifting crazy weight, doing basic gymnastics (never planned on even trying that!) running fast, being able to endure what I never thought possible.  Those are all very cool things and it is an amazing contribution of Crossfit to have brought those different aspects together under the umbrella of fitness.  When you start training you get to have it all: for a while that is.  That is the best thing about starting out and it is a great irony that the beginner who so often derides himself or herself for not being able to perform at the level of a veteran is at the same time probably experiencing the fastest and broadest gains in fitness the they will EVER achieve.  The rate of adaptation for a beginner is staggering compared to an experienced athlete.

After the beginning period of gains is complete that is when the training really begins in that going hard after whatever you feel like doing on a given day is not going to keep giving you improvements and might not even maintain what you have achieved especially if we are talking about work capacity and you have been torching your endocrine system with too much intensity and not enough recovery.  At this point you need to step back and find your focus.

This has been a constant challenge for me personally as an athlete and as a coach.  I personally began a journey to fitness because I was overweight and sick.  It is hard for me to see any increase on the scale and around my middle as a failure, but I also want to be as strong as I was when I was 50-70lbs heavier.  For my clients who primarily want to see body comp change I want to show them that there are a lot of worthwhile milestones for them to achieve as they go through the long process of changing their body while making sure that we are maintaining focus on the top priority.

Of course this principle also applies in every facet of life.  If you are trying to get your finances in order you must stay focused on your goals.  If you are trying to change the way you spend you time or how you do your work focus will also be critical.  There are two key decisions for attaining focus and that is deciding what you are going to do and deciding what you will no longer do.  We are pretty good at deciding what we want to do and terrible at deciding what we are going to stop doing.  If you are busy and most of us are you must always stop doing something your are doing now in order to start doing something new.   It sounds so obvious but it really isn’t.  Focus is not about adding something onto the list of commitments, it is about taking other things OFF, not forever, but at least for a time.  These decisions to stop are the hardest but they are also the most powerful.  Good luck with attaining focus and let us know in the comments what you think about focus.