The benefits of focusing on your lane 🛣

Hey Bloomers! 🌼 As we go through our lives, we sometimes become distracted by what’s happening in other people’s lanes. These distractions make what would have been an otherwise bearable journey, absolutely difficult. I mean, how can you drive effectively in lane 3 when you’re concerned with what’s happening in lane 7? 

Although we do meet up and help each other along the way, we are all on separate journeys. This means that our successes and failures will not be identical. There are two main reasons why a person must focus on their lane. The first and most obvious one is so that they are efficient and effective. It’s so that they reach their destination with little distraction and pour all their energy and effort into what’s ahead of them. The second reason is because of a destructive practice called comparison. Comparison: the thief of joy. These reasons are linked and will be discussed simultaneously. 

The benefits of focusing on your lane

1. Comparison reduces effectiveness

To truly understand the depth of what this means, let’s define both comparison and effectiveness. Comparison is an examination of two or more items to establish similarities and dissimilarities. Effectiveness is the degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result. Being successful in achieving your desired result will be difficult if you spend your time examining the lives of other people and establishing similarities and differences. As earlier mentioned, we are all on different journeys. Let’s take a person starting a business as an example. It may take several months for that person to make their first big sale, and another person may have made multiple sales in that time. Instead of working on improving their own craft, this person may spend all their time unhappy and bothered by the other person who seems to be doing very well. Time that could have been spent working on the business is now being spent in an unproductive exercise namely comparison. This is why comparison reduces effectiveness.

2. Gratitude

This is definitely my favourite benefit of focusing on your own lane. Gratitude is the ability to give thanks. It’s the ability to give thanks for everything around you. We’re going to continue running with the example of the new business owner. If the second, “more successful” business owner didn’t exist, there would definitely have been more gratitude. There would have been thanks for that one sale that had been made in months. But, when you start looking at your blessings compared to those of others, you become ungrateful. You lose gratitude for the things that are going well in your life. Just because something bigger is happening in someone else’s life, doesn’t mean that great things aren’t happening in yours too. 

If you’re not grateful with the little that you receive, what makes you think that you’ll get more? Gratitude works with the law of attraction. You get out of the universe what you put into it. If you put out gratitude, you’ll reap the benefits of gratitude. When you are so focused on everything that you are grateful for, it seems as if even better things keep happening for you. That’s not a coincidence. It’s because you’re attracting them (Advice from Ruva). Focusing on your own lane and the amazing things that are happening in front of you allows you to be a thankful person. It allows you to be genuinely happy with your progress. 

3. Overall peace in your life

This is connected to gratitude. When you’re thankful and appreciative of the things that are happening in your lane, there’s overall peace in your life. Imagine a life where ✨you’re not worried about what anyone else is doing, you’re focused on doing well and improving your life, your only competition is your past self, and you’re thankful for all the things (big and small) that are happening for you✨. That’s called peace. Focusing on your own lane brings with it a peaceful life that has eliminated feelings of jealousy, bitterness and ungratefulness. 

However… Inspiration and help are still important 👫🏾

As much as focusing on your own lane is important, we sometimes need the help of other people. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, we’re on different journeys, but we do meet up and help each other along the way. Looking to other lanes can be utilised in a positive way. You can look at the successful people in other lanes and use that success as inspiration (instead of comparison). We can also aid each other to ensure that we all get to where we want to be. What’s important to understand is that we are all on different journeys, and we should concentrate on and be thankful for, the things in our own lanes. 

Thank you for reading to the end. If you’d like to continue the discussion, we can do so in the comments section below 💕