Focus the Key to Clarity and Purpose
Focus comes before purpose, because you can only see what you want in life if you can hold your awareness on yourself long enough to reflect.
Asked in Munich why he starts with focus rather than purpose, Dandapani explains that focus is the ability to hold awareness on one thing for an extended period, and that self-reflection is impossible without it. Getting to know yourself works the same way as getting to know a friend, through repeated, undistracted time.
What this talk covers
- He defines focus as the ability to hold your awareness on one thing for an extended period of time.
- With focus you can stay in self-reflection long enough to look at yourself and see what you want, and without it awareness jumps from one thing to another and observes nothing.
- Getting to know yourself is like meeting a friend every Friday, where the conversation starts at the surface and only deepens with repeated time.
- From a Hindu perspective, more mature souls have greater clarity of purpose early, the way a seasoned entrepreneur has more clarity than a young one still trying many things.
- Focus leads to clarity, and clarity is what lets you synthesise your understanding into a statement of purpose.
Focus leads to clarity and to being able to articulate one's purpose in life.Dandapani
Questions
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Because purpose comes out of self-reflection, and self-reflection requires holding your awareness on yourself long enough to see something. If awareness keeps jumping, there is nothing to observe or conclude from.
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Dandapani defines it as the ability to hold your awareness on one thing for an extended period of time, without it wavering to something else.
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From the Hindu spiritual perspective he teaches, it is both yes and no. More mature souls tend to have clarity about their purpose early on, and younger souls tend to try many things while figuring it out.
Transcript
636 words · 3:09
I started the book with a story in Munich where I'm having a glass of wine with a friend of mine who's an entrepreneur. And he asked me, you know, if you always talk about purpose and how important it is, but then, so why don't you start with purpose instead of focus?
For me, when you're able to focus and defining focus as my ability to hold my awareness on one thing for an extended period of time, then I can stay in a state of self-reflection long enough to look at myself, reflect on myself, and see what it is I want in life. But if my awareness is perpetually jumping from one thing to another to another to another,
how can I see something? How can I observe data and information and process that information and data to form clear conclusions? If I wanted to get to know you and just say every Friday we got together for two hours
or a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. Initially, our conversations would be very surface level. It's not like, you know, what did you like about the one month you spent in Los Aran? You know, where do you live now?
And how do you feel about being a dad? And this and that. But as time went on, we'd get to know each other in a much deeper way. I know what drives you, what are your struggles.
You would know the same thing about me. But the only way I can get to know you is to spend time with you and be able to focus on you, listen to you, hear what you're saying, and learn. If we can't focus, how can I do the same thing with myself? And if I can't do
the same thing with myself, I can't understand me what I this I want and ultimately what my purpose in life is. Focus leads to clarity and to being able to articulate one's purpose in life. Do you think that the purpose is something that we come in with? Well, there's very different ways to give this answer. If
If I am giving it from a spiritual perspective, a Hindu spiritual perspective, I would say yes and no. More mature souls have greater clarity
of their purpose in life. Less mature souls, younger souls, probably don't. More mature souls have clarity early on what my life is about and what I'm here to do,
and that's their purpose. The clarity comes from maturity, right? Same like an entrepreneur. You know, a very seasoned entrepreneur
has greater clarity on things. A young entrepreneur tends to try many different things, figuring out what his or her path is. It's no different for a soul as well.
And the more time you spend with yourself, the better you understand you. And the better you understand you, the more clarity you have.
But it's hard to spend time with yourself if you struggle to focus, and that's why I start with focus all the time. I need to be able to sit with myself
for five minutes or 10 minutes and complete self-reflection and being able to look into my mind and really look at me and go like,
what is it do I want in life? And not after asking the question, I go like, oh, I wonder what are we gonna have for lunch today?
You know, I had that, some leftovers from last night. Last night, I thought it was good, maybe I'll have that. So what was I reflecting on again? You know, and you'd never find anything.
So we have to start with focus, and focus allows us to really understand something and be able to synthesize that into a statement of purpose.