Focus with balance: The recipe to follow when pursuing goals

I recently watched a compelling documentary film entitled The Weight of Gold. Narrated by swimming legend Michael Phelps, the film featured the mental health challenges faced by several American Olympians in various sports.

The common theme underlying the emotional difficulties of these athletes was the pressure they felt from focusing completely on their Olympic goals while having little balance from engaging in activities and relationships in other parts of their lives. This led me to consider the importance of combining focus on tasks to achieve one’s goals with having balance in the form of activities and relationships apart from these goals.

In the following sections, I will discuss why this combination of focus and balance is important both for fostering good mental health as well as making it more likely you can achieve your goals.

The importance of focus to pursuing goals

Focus is critical to achieving goals which you are pursuing. Most goals which are challenging enough to be attractive entail putting in consistent effort in an efficient manner over an extended period. This applies to goals in sports (such as making the Olympics or winning a medal or title); academics (such as completing a university degree or being accepted to medical/law school); music (such as learning to play an instrument or becoming a concert performer); politics (such as winning an election or becoming leader of one’s party); and business (such as starting a business or climbing the corporate ladder to an executive position with a company), to name a few examples.

Focusing on your goal usually means cutting back on or delaying participation in other enjoyable activities along with having less time in relationships with family, friends and dating/marriage partners. These other activities and relationships provide a break from focusing on your goals and make the pursuit of the goals more enjoyable and less stressful. In short, they provide much-needed balance in your life.

Too much focus, too little balance

Despite focus being necessary to achieve challenging goals, there can be too much focus when it leads to there being insufficient balance in one’s life. This theme pervaded The Weight of Gold among the athletes who struggled with mental health challenges. The pressure of having their identities and self-esteem tied solely to how they performed in their sports was intense.

For those athletes who did not meet expectations at the Olympics, the disappointment was devastating and the criticism they faced was unrelenting. With little balance in their lives, there was nothing to help cushion the blow and allow them to rebound from this adversity. With little counselling support available, these athletes succumbed to various mental health issues. For some, the anguish of going through such trying times without support became so unbearable that they took their own lives.

Even more shocking was that the complete focus on their sports with little balance had negative effects on those athletes who achieved their Olympic goals. Michael Phelps was the prime example of this. Despite his tremendous success in the pool, he admitted to feeling empty. He attributed this emptiness to not having an identity apart from that of an athlete. In other words, pursuing and achieving his goals was unfulfilling without balance in his life.

Striking the right balance between focus and balance

It is obviously every person’s choice regarding the extent to which they combine focusing on their goals with having balance from enjoyable activities and relationships when they are not focusing on their goals. Some people focus on their goals with little attention to balance. This does not seem to be a good choice from either a goal achievement or a mental health perspective.

Even if this focus-without-balance strategy leads to achieving one’s goals, Michael Phelps’s experience is one of many examples indicating that the enjoyment of one’s achievements is often lacking in such circumstances. However, even from a goal achievement perspective, focus without balance can lead to depression, stress and burnout issues which interfere with achieving one’s goals.

On the other hand, not enough focus on one’s goals combined with too much time spent on activities and relationships apart from those goals makes it harder to achieve said goals. In turn, this can have negative effects on one’s mood and self-esteem.

So, what is the right balance between focus and balance? I think focusing on goals in one or more areas is important to one’s mental health and happiness. However, I think this should be combined with balance in the form of activities and relationships which are not centered on those goals.

How much time is spent focusing on one’s goals versus spending time on balance activities and relationships may vary depending on circumstances. For example, an athlete who is approaching their peak in training leading up to their goal event may reasonably focus more on their goal and have less time for balance activities and relationships during that period. In turn, they may spend relatively more time on balance activities and relationships during lighter training periods including the time after one’s goal event. Many Olympic and professional athletes have the scales tilted toward focus on goals during their careers and shift toward more balance activities and relationships when they retire.

Having said that, I think it is always important to be mindful of the need to combine focusing on one’s goals with engaging in activities and relationships to provide balance in one’s life. I believe that if the intention to strike this balance between focus and balance is there, achieving it is more likely to be the result.

My experience in striving for focus with balance

Although I have not competed in the Olympics, I have pursued challenging athletic goals which require focus. These include having completed 25 marathons–including the Boston Marathon for which I had to qualify–three Ironman triathlons and an 11.8-kilometer swim. I have also achieved challenging academic goals including winning the gold medal in psychology in my university undergraduate program along with completing a doctoral degree from one of the top universities in Canada.

I can state categorically that focus was essential for me to achieve these goals. However, I can also state with certainty that having balance in my life with other enjoyable activities and relationship interactions was just as important as focus. It not only helped me to manage the stress inherent in pursuing challenging goals. It also made pursuing and achieving the goals enjoyable and fulfilling.

May you combine focus with balance when pursuing your goals,

-Dr. Pat