It’s Friday, and I’m checking in! What am I noticing this week? I’m noticing more and more opportunities for distraction. And with an increase in opportunities for distraction comes more chances to lose focus in areas of our business and life that truly support our long-term success.

To counter this trend, today’s post is meant to help us focus and develop a consciously directed, positively engaged mind. We’ll start with a set of questions to warm up our “mental dashboard” and follow up with a concept to keep top of mind when it comes to “controlling our R.W.I.D.” — let’s begin!

• If you had to describe how your mindset has contributed to your success to someone you were mentoring, how would you describe it?
• What’s one belief you could adopt about yourself that would make you feel happier or more confident?
• What would you need to own or believe to make that true? On a scale of 1-10, how much do you believe that statement? If you went into tomorrow with that belief, how would you feel?
• Do you ever find yourself focusing too much time on negative thoughts or your faults?
• If so, when does this happen, and what are those thoughts and faults? How are they affecting you? (e.g., when you are tired, hungry — what happens to your energy?)
• What could you do to create a healthier, more positive psychology in your life? How could you make that a habit?

Now, let’s turn to one of the three actions I coach on within the Tenets of Psychological Mastery. This first tenet is to aim your mind and provide a fertile ground for developing a more engaged and consciously directed mind. For those of you who have been through my high-performance coaching, this will serve as a reminder!

CONTROL YOUR R.W.I.D.

R.W.I.D. stands for “Relative Weight of Importance and Duration.” The concept explains that for any given thought we have, we assign it a level of importance (e.g., whether to pay attention to it or not, whether to assign emotion to it or not) and we focus on it for a “given amount of time” (duration). The more importance we give a thought, and the longer we focus on it with importance, the more “real” it becomes in our minds, and the more our unconscious repeats that thought to us. The good news is, we can wield control over this process and choose to give empowering thoughts more importance and longer duration of contemplation.

Here are two prompts to effectively begin controlling your R.W.I.D. — this also mirrors what many of us have learned through ninja concepts: what you focus on expands.

1. The thoughts that deserve more importance on my “mental dashboard” today include…
2. The next time I spend too much time giving trivial or disempowering thoughts too much weight and time, I’m going to immediately…

While I suspect there will continue to be fertile ground for distraction and disempowering thoughts in the coming weeks, months and year as we navigate industry headlines, market factors, and our overall lives, I will continue to share tools from my Tenets of Psychological Mastery coaching session(s) to give you ideas to counter such distractions.

Congratulations on reading this post from top to bottom — you’ve chosen to focus on reducing the ever-present opportunity for distraction. Together, let’s focus on thoughts that deserve more importance — those that serve you.

⚡ With confidence in your potential – Laura