Focus That Makes You Calmer - Episode: 131
You don’t have to choose between being present and building your future.
You’re home with your family and you want to enjoy it. But you’ve also got goals, a job, and a life you’re trying to create. Focus only on the present and nothing moves. Focus only on the future and you miss what’s right in front of you.
This episode breaks down how to hold both by being grateful for the future you’re creating, before it shows up.
Listen on your preferred platform:
In this episode:
- Tony Robbins’s three places to put your focus: the past, the present, and the future
- Why a client’s positive vision “felt fake,” and why his worst-case scenario was just as made up
- The question Tommy asked a CEO who studied meditation for years before returning to corporate life
- Joe Dispenza’s idea that gratitude is the ultimate state of receivership
- The study where only the grateful group chose to wait for the bigger reward
- How gratitude shows up as patience in your business and with your kids
Mentioned: Episode 22 (Clean Up Your Past so You Can Crush Your Future), Episode 23 (How to Better-Leverage Your Future), Episode 118 (You’re Busy, But Not Going Anywhere), and the Joshua Tree trip
Takeaways:
- Focusing on regret and second-guessing the past rarely brings the fulfillment you’re after.
- The present is where fulfillment and appreciation live.
- Your worst-case scenario is just as made up as your best-case one, so pick the one that helps.
- Feeling good didn’t make people more patient. Feeling grateful did.
- Write down what you’re grateful for right now, then what you want to create, and be grateful for that too.
Be grateful for where you are. Be grateful for where you’re going. Then notice how much less rushed you feel.
Why Focus Matters Today
SPEAKER_00 0:04
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, Tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community, and most importantly, your family. Alright, what's up? Episode 131. It is a Saturday morning, and I'm recording on a Saturday because our older daughter unexpectedly stayed home from school yesterday on Friday when I was supposed to record. So shifting, staying flexible. And if you're watching this on video, it looks like I'm in an interrogation room because I booked a focus room at our library. I have a different mic right now, so if the audio sounds a little weird or quiet, that's why that is, but I'm gonna try to fix it in the post editing. And the idea that I have for the podcast today came up from a post that was in the alumni group chat. The post was a Tony Robbins clip. If you don't know who Tony Robbins is, he's kind of the OG life coach and he talks like this. And this is probably not a good imitation, but I'm trying to give you the picture and sound of who Tony Robbins is. And the alumni chat is the group of guys that have gone on our hiking adventures and our adventure trips. Sometimes we throw out dad jokes or we talk about pizza places where people are traveling. Last week, you know, we also talk about the personal growth stuff, and this guy posted this clip and it turned into a pretty lively chat. So I thought I would bring it here to the podcast.
When The Past Becomes A Trap
SPEAKER_00 1:49
And the clip, Tony Robbins was talking about our focus and where do we put our focus? And he said there's three places we can put it. One is the past, one is the present, and one is the future. What I want to do is run through those three places we can put our focus and then also ask this question where are we supposed to put our focus? Because the framing doesn't always give a clear answer. First one, the past. When we're focused on the past, a lot of the times we're questioning decisions that we made or we're thinking about regrets that we have. Focusing on the past this way doesn't really bring us happiness, fulfillment that we're looking for in life. I've done podcast episodes on the past. One of them is clean up your past so you can create your future. And that was episode 22. So you can go back and listen to that to unpack your past so it's not as heavy and you can move into the future with a lighter pack on your back. So that's the
Being Present With Your Family
SPEAKER_00 2:57
past. The second place you can put your focus is the present. In this clip, Tony Robbins talks about when you focus on the present, that's when you bring fulfillment into your life and appreciation. I think of it as if you are home with your family, don't focus on the past, what happened at work that day. If we focus on that, that's usually gets us stressed out. But if we sit at home and we engage with our family, usually that brings more joy, fulfillment. We catch those little moments when our kids are doing cute things or we sit on the couch and we watch the same thing that our kids are watching and we don't have our phones with us, it can bring that sense of enjoyment. So when you focus on the present, that brings a sense of fulfillment, which is an awesome way to live life.
Future Goals Versus Worst Case Thinking
SPEAKER_00 3:45
Now there's also the future. And what this clip talked about was when you focus on your future, you're focusing on creating the life that you want, hitting goals that you want, getting clear on your vision, making sure your life's aligned with what's important to you. One of the things we have to look out for when we're focused on the future is focusing on the worst-case scenario or focusing on negative things that might happen. That creates worry in the present moment. I was just talking to a client last week about this. He was in this state of worry about AI and what that's going to do to his career and our kids' futures. And he was worried about money because he had some big expenses coming up. He was picturing this future in the worst case scenario, which is normal. It's something that the brain does looking out for damage. And it's not always very helpful. So when we were talking about focusing on the future that he wanted and the positive side of it, and he started to explore that, he said, this feels fake. It doesn't really feel real as I'm saying it. What I pointed out was the worry that he had, the net the worst case scenario he was thinking about, that's also fake. That's also made up. So what is more helpful? Is it focusing on the stuff that makes you worry or focusing on the stuff that brings some excitement and hope? So that's one thing to think about when you're focused on your future. I've talked about it on other podcasts. Episode 23 is one. Episode 118, more one of the more recent ones that was you're busy but not going anywhere. That talks about how to focus on your future. All right. So those are the three places we can put our focus: the past, the present, and the future. When you listen to that explanation, it kind of sounds like the answer is, all right, let's focus on the present because then we're fulfilled and then we feel appreciation and gratitude and a little more space and calmness. Yes, but we're not a Tibetan monk that's living on the side of a mountain meditating 20 hours a day. If we were there, we could probably live in that moment in peaceful fulfillment all the time. But we live in a world we've chose to have a family. We have a job, we have a house. So we do have to take action. And if we have to take action, we have to think about our future and the future that we want to create. So, how do you balance focusing on the future while being grateful for the present moment? And this is a this is a question that
The Real Balance Between Now And Next
SPEAKER_00 6:32
I've been thinking about for over a decade. When I was in the corporate world, I asked our CEO this. He was giving his story about his life and how it incorporates with his business and his journey. He took this hiatus where he studied meditation and Buddhism for a long time and then he came back into the corporate world. And I asked him, How do you balance that meditative present moment state with future goals working for a publicly traded company? And he said it's a balance and it's a balance that he's consistently working on. That's kind of how I've looked at putting attention on the present moment and putting attention on my future goals.
Gratitude For The Future You Want
SPEAKER_00 7:14
However, lately, what I've been working on is creating appreciation in the present moment for the future I want to create. And where I've gotten this idea is from Joe Dispenza, who goes pretty woo into the quantum world. I might have mentioned him on the podcast before. His methods aren't totally scientific based, but he's got some cool ideas. And one of them is that gratitude is the ultimate state of receivership. So if you want to create and receive from the world, you have to create some gratitude right now. As I was getting ready for the podcast, I was like, all right, is there any studies that show gratitude is gonna help you create the future that you want? And I found this one study that was done by this psychologist at Northeastern, and he ran an experiment with researchers at Harvard. And this is what it said they put people into one of three states, a grateful state, a happy state, or a neutral state. And then they offered these different groups a choice. Do you want $54 right now? No idea why it was $54 or $80 in 30 days. And the results was that the neutral group mostly took the money right now. So you think, oh, if I'm neutral in the moment, just give me the money now. The happy group also took the money right now. And what that showed was that feeling good didn't make anyone more patient. And I think patience is the result of being grateful for your future right now. The grateful group waited for the $80. And the more grateful someone felt, the longer they were willing to wait. That's what landed for me was that when I'm in this state of grateful for what I'm going to create in the future, I have more patience. I don't feel as rushed in my business to figure out every answer and figure out what the next program is. And at home, I'm don't need my kids to listen to me right away because I have more patience when I'm grateful for what I have and I'm grateful for the future I'm creating. It's this knowing that you're heading in the right direction. So you can think of it as like enjoying the ride. Okay, so what we've been talking about is where do you put your focus? And you can put your focus on the past, the present, or the future. And focusing on the present brings fulfillment, but you also have to focus on the future to create the life that you want. What is the balance between focusing on the present, focusing on the future? And the balance is when you focus on the future and create the positive vision that you want, you feel grateful for that in the moment. So if you're listening to this and it's a little confusing, it's not landing, that's okay. It was a new concept for me a couple years ago, and it's taken me a while to practice this and for it to really
A Simple Practice Plus Joshua Tree
SPEAKER_00 10:30
land. One thing that we did in that alumni WhatsApp chat with those guys is we just did a short-term exercise. What are you grateful for right now in your day that you're doing? And what's gonna happen what's gonna be happening this weekend that you want to create? When we're thinking big picture about our life, I think about the Joshua Tree trip that's coming up in February. There's gonna be a presence of hiking outside, working out, being in this really beautiful place. And then we're also gonna talk about where do we want to go from here? What do we want 2027 to look like? And on this trip, what we're gonna practice is being grateful. The stuff that we're talking about on this podcast today, we're gonna put it into play in a space like JoshuaTree. And we put it into play on the WhatsApp chat. You can do this short term, you can do this long term. Those are the steps to balance out focusing on the present and creating the future that you want. If you want to come to JoshuaTree and do that with us, we have a couple spots left on the trip. I released a bonus episode of the podcast last week to talk about the trip. So if you're interested, check that out. And if that's not in the cards for you right now and you're not in our alumni group because you haven't been on one of these trips, that's cool too. I just gave you the steps that you can take. Stop, write down what you're grateful for in this present moment, where you're sitting right now. Look at trees near you, listen to the sounds, think about the food that you're eating. That's all present gratitude. Then think about what you want to create in the next week. Some positive things that are gonna make you feel good, know that you're on the right track. Write those down or just come up with them in your mind, and then practice being grateful for those things. It takes a couple minutes and then see what happens. See if you feel less rushed and you have more patience. All right, that's what I got for you guys today. Have an awesome day, and I'll catch you next time.
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