Several people recently mentioned to me that they’re having a hard time focusing, and I too have noticed that it’s taking more will to stay focused than it used to. I suspect this is affecting a lot of us, so I thought I’d share a few steps that can help you get your focus back.

1. Make a conscious decision to focus. When you want to unnecessarily reach for your phone, look at a website, click on a link, grab a snack, or any other activity that takes you away from what you’re trying to do, instead make a decision to not do it. When we have a conscious intent to not let our focus be scattered, it’s easier to stop behaviors that scatter our attention.
   
   
2. Meditate correctly. Don’t space out and don’t think about other people. When you space out while you’re meditating, you are training your mind to space out! Also when you space out, you go to dimensions that aren’t clear and make clarity and focus harder.
   
   When you think about other people when you meditate, you bring their energy into your aura. And you do not want other people’s thoughts, attitudes, and approaches in your mind! There are societal grooves you want to protect your mind from, and being scattered is one of them! You don’t want to align with the groove of phone scrolling, link clicking, and endless YouTube watching.
   
   
3. Get out of town regularly. When we work and sleep in the same place, we get enmeshed in the astral networks of our neighborhood, town, and work place, and get connected to their associated thoughts, worries, and addictions. Traveling out of the network breaks our connection to them. You need to get at least 100 miles away to feel the difference. 
   
   I’ve certainly felt the release of breaking these bubbles by getting out of town, but it was even more dramatic to watch it happen with some of my old students. One gal in particular was in such a funk, certain that nothing would ever work out again or be bright, and as we drove away and got about 100 miles away, it was like a bubble popped and she was happy and everything was just fine. She couldn’t believe how different she felt!
   
   
4. As a habit, unsubscribe from emails and remove apps from your phone, as needed. My story goes like this: I first removed Instagram. I was only following a few cool, high vibe accounts. There was no problem with the content, however I began to notice that I wanted to check it multiple times a day, so uninstall. Then later, same thing with the NY Times app. Not that I ever checked the news, but I loved the culture stuff, Social Qs, the Ethicist, Modern Love, etc, etc. Woof – uninstall. Then Substack. Argh. So many interesting newsletters! I found myself at work during the day wanting to check my personal email to see if there were any new email newsletters—totally interrupting my focus! Once again, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, whittle it down to a smaller set.
   
   I’m sure the things that sap your focus are different than mine, but the groove at this time is the same. There’s endless content to consume, and bringing your attention to it keeps you from being focused and doing what is important to you.
   
   
5. Focus on high stuff. There’s so much fun and interesting content that is not high. Be honest with yourself about how what you are consuming is impacting you. You’re going to feel more mundane and less clear when you consume a lot of human-vibe content.
   
   
6. Utilize to-do lists. I keep a work to-do list and a personal to-do list. Both track all the large and small things I need to do. In the morning at work, I prioritize what I need to do that day, and I reference it throughout the day. Sometimes there are so many distractions from chat, email and meetings, I forget what I should be working on, even if I looked at the list an hour before.
   
   I also create mini to-do lists when I want to punch through a lot of stuff quickly. I write down several small tasks that I want to do, for instance during lunch, and then punch through them quickly one after the other. (For example, call the vet, make a haircut appointment, check on the return from a vendor, change air filter.) Similarly, on the weekend, I create a short list pulled from my bigger list, of what I want to get done. For example, this weekend I prioritized doing a write-up on Focus. 😀

Lying, cheating or stealing for personal gain may give you a short-term feeling of happiness, but over the long run these actions will make you very unhappy. While these actions may not always hurt others, they will always hurt you. When you act without integrity, you end up spending an enormous amount of energy denying the actions were wrong—either by constantly pushing them out of your mind or by thinking things like, “They can afford it,” “She won’t really notice,” or “They deserve it.” The problem is when an action doesn’t have integrity, it will continually rise to the surface and niggle at you and prevent you from having a happy, peaceful mind.

Excerpted from the book How to Be Happy NOW…Even if Things Aren’t Going Your Way, available on Amazon.com or Amazon UK,  CA, FR , IT, ES and DE. © 2013 Sara Weston. A FREE excerpt of the book is available here.