How to refocus on yourself: 5 simple and effective steps

How to refocus on yourself

If you are going through a difficult time in your life, especially due to external events over which you have little control, I recommend that you read this article on how to refocus on yourself.

You will discover effective tips to start taking back control of your personal and professional future.

Before we get to the advice, here is my definition of refocusing on yourself.


What does it mean to refocus on yourself?


Refocusing on yourself is developing a deep understanding of your needs, motivations, and desires. In a nutshell, refocusing on oneself is learning to live in accordance with one’s values and uniqueness.

Let’s discover my tips now.

5 tips on how to refocus on yourself

1 – Focus on what is 100% up to you

The first step to refocusing on you is to focus on what is totally up to you.

You cannot control others and their decisions.

But you do have control over your choices and actions at all times.

Focusing on tasks that are entirely under your control will help you to regain responsibility for many aspects of your life.

You will no longer have to make excuses or find guilt because you know that everything depends on you.

On the other hand, avoid launching yourself on several projects at the same time.

It is preferable to concentrate all your energies on one objective at a time.

Doing this will allow you to maximize the effectiveness of your actions and your chances of success.

How to put this advice into practice?

Write a list of goals for which the accomplishment depends only on you.

Then, prioritize this list by putting a 1 in front of the most important goal, a 2 in front of the second most important, a 3 in front of the third most important, and so on.

Then, starting with goal 1:

  • identify the first action you can take to start moving toward your goal
  • plan this action in your to-do list and execute it
  • evaluate the effectiveness of this action and what you can improve in the near future

Now plan a second action and proceed as above.

If you experience a block, you may need to take advantage of the expertise of a life transition coach to understand if you have a belief that is limiting your actions.

2 – Act according to your most important values

Do you know your values?

Values are what each individual considers to be the most important in his or her life.

For some people, it is health, family, etc.

For others, it is money, work, etc.

Each person has their own values and prioritizes them differently.

Knowing your values is important and if you don’t know them, you may find yourself very unfulfilled even if you achieve your goals.

If your goals are aligned with your values, not only will you get what you want, but more importantly, you will have a successful life.

If you’ve ever experienced achieving a result while feeling empty and unfulfilled, you now know why this happened.

So the question to ask yourself is this:

Am I pursuing goals that are consistent with my values?

If the answer is yes, continue to do your best to achieve your goals.

If not, change your goal.

Regarding values, I have given you some examples of values but there are many others.

So don’t hesitate to do some research on the internet to identify and choose the ones that correspond to you the most.

How to implement this tip?

You can make a list of your 10 most important values. If necessary, you can go up to 15 but not more.

Now start ranking your values by putting a number at the beginning of each value.

This phase will require most of your time, especially for the first three values.

After ranking all the values in order of importance, check again to see if your prioritization works for you. If not, change it.

At this stage, you should not consider this exercise completely finished because you will come back to it from time to time in the following days, weeks, and months.

3 – Improve your well-being

You can’t refocus on yourself if you don’t invest quality time in improving your well-being.

This is often the main reason that led you to the challenges you are experiencing right now.

Improving your well-being means improving your time management by including activities that allow you to relax but also to strengthen your physical and mental energy.

Everyone is different and some activities that may be enjoyable for one person may not be for another.

Your responsibility is to create a list of tasks that contribute to your well-being and that you will include in your personal organization system.

If you really want to take back control of your life, you must consider that these activities are important.

If you find excuses for not planning and carrying them out, you may have the impression that you are making progress in the short term, but you will quickly lose all the benefits of your first actions if you do not transform these actions into new habits.

These are not minor activities, they are essential for your well-being as well as for your productivity.

How to implement this tip?

During the weekend, write down a list of activities that you like to do but that you don’t give yourself the opportunity to practice regularly.

You can add to this list other activities that you would like to try.

Start by planning one or two activities per week.

These can be very simple activities or more complex ones.

The important thing is that you make them your top priorities.

Depending on your level of commitment, try to devote even more time to these activities in the following weeks.

The goal is to transform these activities into a new habit that will become part of your lifestyle.

4 – Take back control of your emotions

The emotions we experience contain within them all the energy we need to refocus.

Pleasant emotions are often the most pleasant to feel and to use.

On the other hand, the most unpleasant emotions are not easy to manage.

Ignoring them in the short term is possible, but it is not a good strategy in the long run.

In order to recognize those moments when you avoid these emotions, all you have to do is think of one of your bad habits.

Often, these bad habits are a way to reduce the potential pain you might experience if you decide to deal with the emotion right away.

In other situations, you are not always aware of the emotions that influence us.

But when you perceive an emotion, it is better to recognize it and quickly understand what it is telling you.

At this stage, it is important to identify your automatic response and to modify it if needed with a more reasoned action.

To go further on this topic of emotions, I recommend you read my article on how to manage your emotions.

How to put this tip into practice?

Identify the situations that trigger strong emotional responses in you.

These are the events in front of which your rational mind seems to be almost absent.

Choose a situation that often gets you into trouble and prepare an alternative behavior that you can test next time you are in the same context.

Then, evaluate the effectiveness of this action by using the emotion you felt after taking the action and the result you got from the new action.

Do the same for other situations and you will notice that you can start to use your emotions better.

5 – Eliminate activities that are not essential

In my professional practice as a time management coach, one of the complaints I hear most often from my clients is that there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything they want to do.

It’s true, there isn’t enough time to do everything, but there’s always time to focus on what’s really important.

But how can you do that if you insist on spending your time on unimportant or unnecessary tasks?

You have several tools which can help you like the Eisenhower matrix, the ABCDE method, etc.

All these tools can help you to become more aware of how you use your time.

Another way to achieve the same goal is to measure the duration of all your professional or personal activities in a day.

This is an effective strategy to understand the gap between some of the goals you have set and your behavior.

In this phase, avoid judging yourself or minimizing your behavior.

See the facts as they present themselves to you and do your best to realign your actions with your goals.

You will find that if you eliminate what is not vital, you will have enough time to accomplish what really matters to you.

How to put this tip into practice?

As you go through your day, write down how many minutes you spend on each activity.

If it’s easier for you, measure at least two half-days during the week.

Try to identify the unimportant activities that are wasting the most time and energy.

But also ask yourself about the need that this activity allows you to satisfy.

Find a more productive way to meet that same need and eliminate that particular activity.

Conclusion on how to refocus on yourself

In this article, I have presented five tips on how to refocus on yourself.

To take advantage of the expertise of a coach, write to us using our contact form, call us at +33 6 69 46 03 79 or contact us on WhatsApp at +33 6 69 46 03 79.

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This article is also available in other languages

Français Comment se recentrer sur soi : 5 étapes simples et efficaces

ItalianoCome concentrarsi su se stessi: 5 passi semplici ed efficaci

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