How To Have More by Focusing On Less - A Talk

Common sense says the more we have in our life, the happier and more fulfilled we will be. However, my experience does not show that to be true.

Often the happiest people are those who focus on the few things that are important to them.

This is s short talk where I discuss three principles of having more and more of less and less. I'll also offer you some simple steps to start to realizing greater quality with less in your life today.

Sincerely,

Dr. Adam

Transcript

Hey there,

This is Dr.

Adam Bledsoe and thanks so much for joining me on this little talk that I call,

Less and Less is So Much More.

I find that the more you have in your life,

The more you spread out your focus and your attention.

The byproduct of this is that your presence gets watered down and you don't show up fully in your life like you'd want to.

You might have more,

But you don't really feel more.

You're busier,

You're not fulfilled,

And what you're doing isn't as meaningful.

I can certainly identify with this.

It's like being the jack of all trades,

But the master of none.

You're getting a lot done in your life,

But not feeling fulfilled or connected to it that much.

Our society and media and the expectations of others might push us to doing more,

Wanting more,

And having more.

But when we do that,

We're really not doing what we want.

Imagine showing up at your child's concert,

But not really experiencing it,

Or being in a conversation with someone,

But not really connecting,

Or bouncing your attention back and forth between a screen and a task and getting neither really fully done or giving your full attention to either one of them.

This talk is inspired by a mentor of mine that once said to me,

It's time to start focusing more and more on less and less.

This was suggesting that we narrow down our focus.

We start to pay attention to what's really important to us and what really matters.

It's taken me some time to process and put into action what they shared with me,

But it's been so worth it.

I'm calmer,

More grounded,

And more connected.

Now that I can accomplish this,

I do things of better quality,

I am far more meaningful in my work and to those that are around me that are important.

This talk is intended to give you three practices or three ideas that making having less and less will give you so much more and more in your life.

The first practice is gratitude.

Gratitude is the act of being appreciative of what you already have,

Despite what you don't have.

I find so often we can focus on what we want,

What we're shooting for,

What we're striving for.

And there's often a gap between where we are and where we wish we were.

And that gap equals dissatisfaction,

It equals loss,

Regret,

Remorse,

Frustration.

So we often can feel less good when we're striving for something that we don't already have.

I feel like we're missing out on so much when we don't notice the amazingness that's around us right now.

It might be as simple as the fact that your heart is still beating,

The wind is blowing,

Or you're having a coffee with someone,

Maybe even silently in the room with you.

Maybe we're missing who's surrounding us or what we're surrounded by,

What we've already collected and created in our life that's so wonderful,

That came from a former effort or a former time of striving to create exactly what we already have.

Embracing that and spending time to feel the accomplishment,

Spending time to feel how much we appreciate that can really fill us up.

And in such a way,

We need less and less to feel more and more.

Nurturing what's right in front of you will help you grow and help your life grow into something that's even more fulfilling.

Gratitude practice also has a way of balancing out the negative bias.

You may have heard of the phrase negative bias.

This is a normal state of the nervous system or the brain where it tends to see things from a negative perspective.

The brain's main operation is to protect you from threat.

So it tends to be constantly scanning for threat.

This means that we're really,

Really good at finding threat or finding the negative,

Finding what's wrong.

So when we live like this,

We can tend to live in a life of glass half empty.

We can tend to live in a life where we don't really feel good about what's going on because we're always noticing the negative.

And that can also be a bit of a bummer to be around because we're always criticizing or critiquing or judging others.

Instead,

When we practice gratitude by simply noticing,

Listing,

And feeling the great things that we already have,

We can start to balance out that negative bias and there can be a lot of contentment found right there.

I like to do my gratitude practice in the morning when I just simply notice and list three to five things that I really appreciate that I already have in my life.

So often I end up listing people,

I end up listing things that are already going on for me in my profession,

I list things,

Activities that I love to do every day that I realize I don't need more,

I just need what I already have and I can really find happiness and contentment right there.

So you might try listing what you're grateful for in the morning and then later on after work or in the evening as the night winds down,

You might even go ahead and list what you're grateful for that occurred today already for you.

What was so good about today?

And list three to five things for yourself,

Then spend a moment feeling that gratitude in your body and just reveling in it for a little bit.

Number two,

This one I call using your values filter.

When you're tending to do too much,

I'm willing to bet that you're not always doing your soul's work or your personal purpose or mission work.

You're probably attending to too many other people's missions and purpose,

In fact,

Other people's needs and wants.

When you start to tend to less things,

To more specific things,

The things that you are doing so good at grow and your life becomes so much more rich from following that one stream instead of following multiple angles and directions.

That doesn't mean that you won't have other influences in your life or other experiences that aren't of your mainstream,

But you may be invited into someone else's stream or you may be gifted opportunities,

Et cetera,

To experience those things.

But the things that you choose to pursue are those main values for you.

To help me with this,

I use what I call my values filter.

That's where I focus my time based on my top three to four values.

Whatever decision crossed my path,

Whatever opportunities come my way,

I make sure I pass them through my values filter,

Kind of like pouring sand through a sieve.

If they don't hit at least one of my values,

That's directly or indirectly,

I let it pass me by and I stay focused on what's most important for me now.

So let me ask you four questions and you can go ahead and make a note.

And then we can start to see if there's some commonalities so we can create your values filter.

This is a nice beginning.

The question one,

What do you surround yourself with?

So look around your life,

Look around your spaces and notice what are the top three things that you have in your space,

The most important things.

That might be,

There may be many of them.

In other words,

You have many,

Many books.

So that might be one of those things,

Or there might be something very important to you like your family,

Or you might have a hobby.

You might put a lot of,

You might have a lot of items related to a particular hobby.

So look around and find the three most potent and poignant things in your life that you keep in your space.

These would be items which are representative of where you put your energy.

And the next one is,

How do you spend your time?

Where are the top three places you spend your time?

Now you might write work,

Family,

Sleep.

If that's the case,

I'd like you to write down what those represent to you.

So you're not valuing work,

It's that work offers you something,

Where work is the means to achieve something.

What are the,

What do those three areas represent to you?

If we're lucky,

We do work that we find a value,

But sometimes our work is an indirect connection.

Sometimes our work is a means to create value.

So if you get the chance,

Write down what those times represent to you.

Family might represent connection or closeness or safety,

That kind of thing.

Work might represent service or growth or performance,

That kind of thing.

Let's look at the third question.

How do you spend your money?

Where do you tend to put your money and what does that represent to you?

What is it that you're valuing when you spend your money on something?

Write down the top three places you spend your money and then explain what those values are.

So at this point,

You have nine values written down.

You might start to see some connections between some of them.

The last one is what brings you joy?

What is fun for you?

What do you do for fun?

Watch movies,

Read books,

Play sports with friends,

Play games.

What do those represent?

So now you've got 12 value words written down based on those four questions.

Start to find the commonalities between those values.

Maybe a couple of them are different words,

But they might mean the same thing.

So you could choose what's the connecting term for those two words and you could find one sort of value in there.

Maybe a couple other are really important for you and those could become your second and third value.

Maybe there's a fourth one down there somewhere and a couple of the rest of them don't really matter so much.

And out of that,

You can summarize your top four values.

And now what you can realize is that you can use this as a values filter.

Whenever there's a choice to be made,

Does this choice move you closer or further away from these important things?

Might this choice indirectly improve your values or head you towards your values or does it not help you get towards your values at all?

So that's how I use my values filter to help me do more and more of less and less that's more meaningful to me.

The third one is just simply recognizing and working within what we call decision fatigue.

So here's the truth.

Your energy and your attention are only so abundant.

Your frontal lobe,

As meditators,

That's a part of your brain that we use to focus that does executive function that we help with choice and direction and motivation.

Your frontal lobe requires a lot of energy and when that energy dampens or reduces,

We fall very quickly into our pre-programmed habits and ways of working.

Because those habits are actually very efficient and they require very little energy.

So as soon as your frontal lobe runs out of gas,

Your old habits will kick in strongly.

This phenomenon is called decision fatigue.

In other words,

If we have to make lots of important decisions,

We can eventually fatigue out and we become exhausted and are unable to make better and new decisions.

So you might think of this as if we have a limited amount of decisions or decision making energy for any given day.

And once you've spent that energy,

It's gone.

So spending the energy on the most important things in your life and the associated actions for them is the best way for you to focus on less to have more.

So how do you do that?

I'd say you make your toughest decisions or your hardest tasks,

Your first priority.

You might do them first thing in the morning.

You might do them right when you get to work.

Or if it's a household task,

You do that right away when you get home or on the weekend.

That's when you have the most amount of decision making energy.

That decision making energy is also the decision to do the right thing when you don't really want to.

In other words,

Motivation.

If the most important thing for you is to set up for the party and that's you don't really want to do the setup,

But you want to enjoy the party,

Your decision making energy is going to help you do the hard thing,

Setting up for the party so that you can do the thing you really want,

The party.

So put them first on your to-do list and focus on them until they're done completely.

If there's something that doesn't pass your values filter,

This is where decision fatigue and values filter work together.

We don't want to spend energy on something that doesn't pass our values filter.

So if it does not pass your values filter,

I'd suggest you delegate it,

Give it to someone else because maybe it's important,

Just not important for you.

Or you decline it and just let it pass you by.

Or defer it,

Push it off until another time when maybe it becomes important or maybe there's extra resources or time to handle it,

But it's not worth your energy now.

So those are the three ways that I found that really helped me focus more and more on less and less so that I can have more in my life.

That's gratitude practice,

Making sure that I use my values filter,

And then working within my decision fatigue or my decision energy.

These ways have really helped me narrow my life down,

Live more fulfilling life and a more smooth,

Simple,

And easy life,

But very powerful.

I want to thank you so much for participating in this little talk with me.

My name is Dr.

Adam Bledsoe and I'll see you next time.

Reviews

Thank you, this gave me a lot to reflect on as we approach the new year. I will listen again now and make the notes 🙏

The architect Mies Van der Rohe once famously said:
Less is more.
Of course, a capitalist society is built on the notion that only more is more. More stuff, more experiences, more people, more accomplishments, more money, etc.
As I am now in my 70s, I have decided by new mantra is:
I want less to be more.
Thankfully, as my energy is lower than it was most of my life, and I don’t have a bucket list, it’s easier to consciously choose to make less more.
For example, in my neck of the woods this fall, the trees are not particularly beautiful. We didn’t have a lot of rain and many people believe that’s what most of the trees are still green. I have a maple that is vibrantly red right outside my bedroom window. That one tree can give me just as much joy as seeing a forest of changing colors. It’s simply a question of my deciding it can.
When we think of meditation, mindfulness throughout the day can sometimes be the most impactful form. By focusing on what’s right right now, and fully experiencing it with awareness, we squeeze more joy out of everything enjoyable.
Yes, we all have a negativity bias. One way to work wisely with it is to consciously think of everything that’s going right in your life, your relationships, body, work, finances, etc.

Excellent ideas & talk. I will listen and implement these into my life. Thank you very much
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