Readers Questions: How Much Focus Is Too Much?

In this Readers Questions video, I answer the question of how you know whether you are focusing and being persistent with your goal, or whether you are actually obsessing about it?

Obviously, persistence is a good thing, while obsessing is not so much. So, it’s important to be able to tell the difference.

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Topics Discussed

• [01:28] Question
• [03:01] The Universe Is Not a Computer
• [04:28] The Number of Thoughts Doesn’t Matter
• [07:23] How Do You Feel When You Think about It?
• [09:40] Your Energy Will Tell You

Transcript

Hey, everyone. This is Brandon Olivares from Co-Creation Coaching. I’m here today answering a reader’s question. Before I get into that question, however, I have a few announcements to make because we’re doing this a little bit differently today. I want to address that first. Number 1 is that I am doing this on Facebook Live today, which I am pretty excited about. This is the first time I’ve done it like this, so that’s exciting. If you are watching here live, feel free to leave a comment here on the page and let me know what you think. As I’m going through this, there is a question I’m answering today, but if you have any follow-up questions to what is being asked here today or to anything I say throughout this video, feel free to comment and let me know. I’d love for this to be a discussion we have together. I think that’d be really cool.

Number 2, I’m going to give what I here call “the blindness disclaimer.” That is just if you’re new to my stuff, I am visually impaired. When I’m doing videos like this, I literally cannot focus my eyes. If my eyes seem to be doing weird things, that is why. I can’t really do anything about that. Please be patient with that.

[01:28] Question

So, getting down to our question. Today we have a question from a reader who wants to know about the difference between focusing on their goals and being persistent and obsessing about your goals, which is obviously not such a good thing. We’ve talked about that before many times. She wants to know what the difference is, how you know if you’re being persistent or if you’re obsessing. With that, let me read her question, and we’ll get to the answer.

She asks:

Since it can be difficult to recognize for yourself when you are obsessing, could you give a brief discussion on how to know when you are focusing too hard on a goal? It’s easy to just think about a goal once or twice a day when it’s in its very early stages. But once you get to an action stage, the actions may require you to think a lot about the goal each day. Then it becomes less clear when you are obsessing and when you’re just being persistent. For example, if you want to be a doctor, you might focus lightly on the idea a couple times a day in the beginning, when you are applying to med school. Once you are in med school, you’re going to wind up thinking about your goal a lot more, maybe even hours a day. How do you make sure you don’t obsess too much then? Are obsession and persistence about the number of thoughts, or the cause of the thoughts, or a particular feeling that comes with the thoughts?

[03:01] The Universe Is Not a Computer

So that is our question today. I’m glad you asked it because actually, the answer is you’re allowed 31 thoughts a day about your goal and nothing more. No, just kidding. [laughs] It does go into something I want to discuss, though. Before I get to the real answer to your question, I do want to have a bit of a discussion about something. That is, I think people take this thing about the universe—some people say the universe is like a computer—a little too seriously. I know this is a little bit off topic, but people will talk about affirmations. They say you can’t use the word “don’t” or “not.” That’s something I’ve answered before in a Readers Question. There’s certain words you can use and certain words you can’t use and things like that. They think the universe is a super-exact computer that you have to know exactly how to deal with, and if you don’t deal with it in exactly the right way, then you’re not going to get your manifestation.

It’s just not like that at all, so I want to dispel that misconception right up front. I’m not saying you necessarily think that way consciously. It’s just something that can happen. I want to talk about that first. 

[04:28] The Number of Thoughts Doesn’t Matter

The universe is not looking to see, “How many thoughts did she have? What was the exact emotion behind the thoughts? Why exactly did that thought happen?” or that kind of thing. It’s not really looking at that. This is why I focus in my work on principles, not on exact techniques or exact rules or something like that. You just can’t have exact rules. It’s just not possible. The universe is  a dynamic thing. Yes, there are principles and laws, but it’s not down to how many thoughts you have in a day about that goal or how much you think about it. It’s not really like that at all, so I want to dispel that.

Getting to your question, though, when you’re focusing on your goal—you said, “What if you have to focus on it more because you’re actually taking action on it?”—it’s not at all about the number of thoughts that you have about that goal every day. As with most things, it comes down to your stance in regards to the goal. That’s the best way that I can put it. I know that’s a little general, but I’ll clarify. 

What I mean by that is that it depends on when you think about the goal, how are you thinking about it? Are you thinking about it in a way that is anxious, fearful, or not good? Or are you thinking about it in a way that feels good to you? Are you excited about it or really looking forward to it and that kind of thing? We’ve all had that thing where we’re going on vacation or something the next day. You can’t get it out of your mind. Even up to the vacation, you have a week or two weeks left. You’re counting down the days. You’re counting down the hours. I’ve had that before. Are you obsessing about that vacation because you’re so excited about it? No. You’re just excited about it, obviously. That’s not how it is at all.

So it’s not about how many thoughts you have about that goal. It’s about the emotions. Here’s what you don’t want to do. When you’re thinking about a goal, you don’t want to feel neediness. You don’t want to feel impatience. You don’t want to feel, “This has to happen right now.” You don’t want to feel, “What if it doesn’t happen?” or things like that. You don’t want to feel these negative, stressful feelings in regards to the goal. Obviously, it’s going to happen. I’m just saying that’s not a sign of progress if you’re feeling those things.

[07:23] How Do You Feel When You Think about It?

That’s meaning, actually, that you are stressing about the goal and you are pushing against it. If you’re thinking about it and you’re feeling excited, really optimistic, or great about it, that’s exactly what you do want. That’s perfectly fine. If you’re going with the flow and that kind of thing, that’s okay.

So how do you know the difference? The best way for me to explain it is, “How are you thinking about it? How do you feel when you’re thinking about it?” Are you feeling like you need it right this second? If so, then you don’t want to do that. You gave the example of a doctor. If a doctor is in med school and thinking about being a doctor, do you think he’s thinking, “Oh my gosh, what if this doesn’t happen?” or “I need it right now” or things like that? It could be, but not likely. He’s mostly thinking about what he has to do to get to that goal. That’s not obsessing.

But if someone is trying to get a goal, and they don’t believe in themselves—they don’t believe it’s possible, and they worry about it and wonder what if it doesn’t happen—then that person is obsessing. I guess another criterion you could think of is “Do you have to think about it because you’re afraid of not thinking about it?” I think that’s a good qualifying question to ask. I know when we’re obsessing (this happens to me all the time) about it, it’s hard not to think about it. If you’re thinking about it out of excitement, yes, you want to think about it, but you can go and do something else, and it’s okay. You can go and distract yourself with something else and be excited about it later. 

But if it’s always in the back of your mind, and you’re always worrying about it and always thinking about it, then that is obsession. You don’t want to do that.

[09:40] Your Energy Will Tell You

It’s pretty simple. I don’t want to overcomplicate this. Right now I’m not seeing any follow-up questions, so I won’t drag this out too much longer, but again, basically, how are you feeling when you think about it? That’s really what it comes down to. I don’t want you to take it so literally that you think (that’s why I joked earlier about 31 thoughts a day) that the universe cares about exactly how you’re doing this. Basically what you’re looking at is your energy around this whole situation. That’s why I always encourage people to get good at tuning in to their energy around a goal or just in life in general. When you can do that, then you can know where your energy is in regards to that goal and how far you have to go to get there and what your next step is. You can focus on that sort of thing. If you don’t have that ability to tune into that, then it’s a lot harder, but not impossible. That’s why I think you get questions like these, because if you were able to tune in to that energy, you would know exactly if you were being persistent or whether you were obsessing. So I guess my final thought on this is “Learn to tune in to that energy, and then you won’t have any anxiety about whether you’re being persistent or obsessing.” It will be obvious. You will know exactly what you’re doing, whether good or bad. Lastly to this, if you have to ask the question, you’re probably obsessing. That’s just my thought. If you have to ask the question, you are probably obsessing. 

If you were just being persistent about it, it would feel good. You would know that everything was going in the right direction and everything was awesome. That would be fine. But if you’re asking this sort of question, it shows an insecurity about the goal, so you’re probably obsessing about it. Obviously, I can’t tell that for sure unless you tell me what you’re doing and how you’re feeling and that kind of thing. But just a guess, mostly if you’re asking this question, you’re probably obsessing about it and you want to back off a little bit. That’s what you want to be focusing on.

I hope this question helps. For those who are listening, I appreciate your watching this live. If you’re listening to the recording or watching the recording of this, also, thank you. If you want to ask your own question to be answered on one of these videos, you can go to darkascent.org/ask or feel free to leave it in a comment on here as well. That’s fine.

Depending how this goes and how this is received, I’m going to try to do this regularly like this in the live format and see how it works. I think it’s a lot of fun. I think it’s pretty cool. We’ll just see how that goes. Either way, it will be posted in a video format. If you want the transcript for this after it’s posted, it will be probably four or five days before it’s posted from this point. But once it is up, you can go to darkascent.org/rq12 and that will take you to where you can get the transcript. I hope that everyone enjoyed this video and that the answer helped you. Again, I am Brandon Olivares with Co-Creation Coaching. As always, anything is possible.

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Topics Discussed

• [01:28] Question
• [03:01] The Universe Is Not a Computer
• [04:28] The Number of Thoughts Doesn’t Matter
• [07:23] How Do You Feel When You Think about It?
• [09:40] Your Energy Will Tell You

Transcript

The transcript is for members only. If you’d like to get the transcript, please sign up below and you’ll get instant access.

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