What You Focus on Grows

Nurturing and caring for something or someone like a dog, child, family member or even the much loved annual vegetable garden can bring great joy to your life.  You focus so much attention on these things and to see them grow and develop in a healthy way is fulfilling and rewarding. The same is true for whatever you focus your attention on. Whenever you put energy toward something and focus on it you are never expecting or hoping for a bad outcome. When you focus on work or a project you are never hoping for it to go poorly but rather anticipating it to be good and hopefully even great. When you focus on a relationship you are expecting it to grow and be healthy. As humans we have an innate expectation that whatever we focus on and put energy toward will end up good and favorable for our life. Intellectually we know this yet, whenever a hardship or problem arises most people typically hyperfocus on the problem, how bad it is and how much worse it can/will get. We spend our thought life worrying about the worst-case scenario, fret, lose sleep over and agonize over the problem itself.  Over the years, many clients have come to me with difficulties that they wanted to overcome. I have discovered something very interesting when this is the case.  Only a few come into the session wanting to discuss possible solutions to their issues and eager to hear any ideas I might have that they have not already thought about and/or tried. The vast majority came in only wanting to talk about the problem and why it is so bad and how much worse it could get. The sessions are dominated by “what if’s” and “yeah but’s” and “if only’s”. Even in trying to guide the discussion toward coming up with solutions, often the client dismissed that prompting and goes back into the details of why it is so bad and how much worse it “could” get, thus focusing only on the problem. By the third session, what I have found is that 100% of the time when a client only wants to focus on the problem, a positive change nor problem resolution will happen. However, the few who come in wanting to focus on the solution, 100% find a way forward that is at least better or in forward motion toward improvement. My takeaway from all this is that what you focus on grows. If you focus on a solution, one will come. If you focus on the problem, the problem will grow. If you are struggling with a problem in your life, I encourage you to think about how much you are focusing and putting energy toward a solution verse how much you are just focused on the problem. If you discover that most of your thoughts are rooted in worry, that means you are focused on the problem. Make the decision to stop focusing on the problem and think more about what you have control of in your situation and work toward making changes that you personally can make. When you focus on a solution, you will find one.