Mindset - Focus

You are what you focus on.

This is a principle we’ve already explored with micro-goals and flipping the script.

If you focus on still having 14 hours left of your double-shift at the hospital, you’ll feel overwhelmed. If you just focus on caring for the next patient or completing the next task, you won’t feel overwhelmed at all.

If you focus on how the traffic jam is stupid and horrible, you’ll be frustrated and annoyed. If you focus on how the traffic jam is an opportunity to listen to a great audiobook or brainstorm creative ideas for your next date night, you'll feel calm and content.

One of the best leaders says:

“Your focus is the most important thing you have. If you point it at the right things, you’ll eliminate the challenge. If you point it at the wrong things, you’ll hurt yourself and everyone around you.”

During moments of adversity, the most important decision you can make is what you focus on. This decision will determine how you feel and how you perform.

During life’s challenges, you can choose to be mentally weak and focus on unproductive things that will harm your calmness, effectiveness, and happiness:

-        Self-pity and how unfair the situation is

-        Blaming others

-        Wishing you could go back and change things

-        Things outside your control

-        The unknown

-        Your own stress, discomfort, fatigue, pain, or suffering

-        How big and daunting the problem or task is

Or you can be mentally tough and focus on productive things that will boost the mood and performance of your teammates:

-        Solutions

-        Completing just the next small step (remember micro-goals)

-        Helping and encouraging your teammates

-        Silver linings

-        Factors inside your control

-        Visualizing the pride and accomplishment you’ll feel when you defeat the obstacle

-        Controlling your response to the event rather than the event itself

-        Performing with excellence

-        The reason why accomplishing this goal is so important to you and is worth the toil

Focus is the practice of focusing on these productive things during adversity rather than the many unproductive things we could focus on instead. Learning to master focus is so imperative for achieving world-class mental toughness and mental health because in life’s challenging moments – whether losing a job, preparing for final exams, or running around trying to get everyone to soccer games, violin practices, and sleepovers on time – what you choose to focus on is often the sole determinant of whether you calmly thrive or become an ineffective, defeated ball of stress.

Consider being a skydiver with a parachute malfunction. You need to quickly fix the problem, or you’ll end up becoming a lawn dart. When you have a parachute malfunction, thinking about unproductive and mentally weak things – like assigning blame (cursing the parachute packer), how you scary the situation is – won't help you at all in your goal of fixing the malfunction before you hit the ground. But, focusing on productive things – the next micro-goal (assessing the severity of the tangle), possible solutions (cutting away and deploying your reserve chute), and things inside your control (slowing your breathing so you can stop your stress response and think clearly) - will allow you to quickly remedy the situation and save your life.

The problem with focus is that most of us find that our brains naturally tend to focus on unproductive things when adversity strikes (like blaming others, and feeling sorry for ourselves, and wishing we could go back and change things). So, how do we reverse this? How do we train ourselves to be mentally tough and focus productively?

It just takes practice. With enough practice, your brain will automatically focus on productive things during challenges instead of getting lost in the abyss of negative, useless, and weak thoughts.

Today, let’s briefly discuss the first principle that will help you focus more productively:

Your brain can only pay attention to one thing at a time.

The brain has around 100 billion cells, called neurons. Each neuron is connected to about 10,000 other neurons. As physicist Michio Kaku put it, “sitting on our shoulders is the most advanced and complicated object in the known universe.”

Yet, despite the tremendous capabilities of our brain and all the processes that are funning in the background to help us breathe, balance, see, and just stay alive, our brains have stunningly little ability to consciously focus.

Our brains only have the processing power to consciously focus on one thing at a time. This is why it’s so difficult to read a book and listen to a podcast at the same time.

As a result, if you’re wondering, “how do I stop focusing on these unproductive things?”

The answer is: focus on something else instead.

Because the brain can only focus on one thing at a time, placing your focus on something productive literally renders your brain incapable of focusing on the unproductive thing that was causing you to be stressed, ineffective, and unhappy.

Let's say you really need to stop thinking about giraffes.

If you think: stop thinking about giraffes or I really need to stop thinking about giraffes, all you’ll be able to do is focus on giraffe.

Now picture a zebra.

There you go! Now you aren’t thinking about a giraffe.

The way you stop negative or unproductive thought isn’t to try really hard to make it go away. That often just makes it worse.

The way you stop the negative or unproductive thought is to think about something else instead. Because your brain can’t fully focus on two things at once, focusing on this new, productive thing removes your brain’s ability to focus on the old, unproductive thing.

The brain needs what is called a positive locus of focus. The brain needs something to focus on instead of something to not focus on.

Here’s your homework:

When you start to feel stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated, or angry:

1.     Pause.

2.     Check what you’re focusing on.

3.     If you’re focused on something unproductive, get rid of that focus not by willing the thought into oblivion but by simply picking something productive to focus on instead.

4.     Notice the immediate impact this has on your calmness, effectiveness, and happiness.

Treat your focus like a weapon. Be very deliberate where you point it.