Not Hitting Your Target ? Why You Need to Manage Your Focus

Yes, it is about being good at what you do. But what happens when you have the skill set but you are still not getting where you want ? How do you pull it all together and create your ultimate goal ?

That was the big question I found myself asking back in 2000 after yet another year of getting nowhere diving. I was stuck at 121 meters and nothing I did really seemed to make a difference. I knew how to dive. I had practiced the skills over and over until they were unconscious reactions, yet somehow I could just not get that dive that would take me to the world record. I had to change something, because obviously what I was doing was not getting me where I wanted to go, but what ?

Hindsight being a wonderful thing I can now look back and see what I needed to let go of, what I was focusing on. For almost three years I was stuck because all I could see was how I wanted it to be. The more I wanted things to be the way I thought they should be, the more stuck I became. Let me put it another way – I was focused on the people around me and trying to get them to change. I was focused on the outcome, all things that I had no control of. What I needed to do was change my focus onto what I could control and what I could control was my skills and my choices.

This is where it can get tricky because you only have choices if you are able to accept what is, which means letting go of the word,‘should’. To do that I had to first become aware of how much time I spent bemoaning the fact that nothing was the way it should be. But here is the thing – things are what they are and wishing it is different will never change anything. The only way to create change is to use what you have and not wait for things to miraculously change.

I love this idea of changing my focus from the outcome which I can’t control, to myself and my actions all of which I can control. The moment I do that it feels like a huge load has suddenly been removed from my shoulders. I don’t have to control things anymore. I am not responsible and to blame for things I have no influence over! Now that my focus is on what I can do I feel more confident. It feels right because I am now the Master of my own Destiny!!!

The short and sweet summary

• Stop focusing on the outcome and focus on what you can control, which are your actions.
• Become aware of how often you expect the world to be the way it should be, which is not how it is and how that creates conflict and changes your behaviour

In case you were wondering what happened on my dive, well the moment I let go of forcing the world into the way I thought it should be and started to act on my own behalf, acting as if diving to world record depths was easy, as if I were already the deepest woman in the world, well, the moment I started that I went solo to 141 meters and that dive gave me full corporate sponsorship, an entire dive team and in the space of 6 months, my first world record dive attempt ( I reached 186 meters which would have been the Guinness record if an Italian diver had not made 211 meters the month before me).

I will blog about how to change your focus later this week, but until then, start practicing:

• Become AWARE of what you are focusing on.
• Do you focus exclusively on the outcome ?
• Are you using the word SHOULD a lot ?
• How aware are you of what ‘is’ ?

Start with something simple, like your golf game, but start!

How to NOT be Frustrated - A Beginners Guide

I don’t know about you, but living in today’s world is one non-stop frustration. If it isn’t traffic in the morning, it is queues to get anything done or irritating neighbours. The only time I am not irritated seems to be on those few and far between holidays…and even then something normally intrudes. Hardly an enlightened outlook and one that definitely does not fit into my stated objective this year of not letting other people and situations determine my responses and or emotional state of being ( a goal that I am not being wildly successful with), but as I have learnt over the years, the first step in changing a habit is becoming aware of how deeply entrenched that habit is. Gulp!

The more I pondered living an un-frustrated life the more I was reminded of a story from a story (The Inspector Shan series by Elliot Pattion, a really good series combining interested murder mystery in Tibet with a healthy dose of spirituality). Entrenched in this series is the life of the old monks in Chinese prison camps and how they still manage to keep who they are even under extreme physical stress. One of the quotes was how they see it as a challenge to their faith and serenity, the ultimate test if you will. That connected nicely to the concepts that Viktor Frankly talks about in his book , Man’s Search for Meaning (for those of you still exploring the book shelves who have not come across Viktor Frankl, he is an Auschwitz survivor) - here again is an example of a man who did not lose himself even though the people and circumstances around him insisted he should. What did they know that I did not ? How do you retain control over your emotional state of being regardless of who or what is around you ? Because that, that is the ultimate freedom.

Can you imagine not being controlled by the people and events around you ? Imagine how easy life would be if you could just be you, no matter what ?

One of my tricks when I face these challenges where I don’t want to be something is to imagine a situation that frustrates me (enter really irritating neighbours who live practically on my verandah and love loud music) and then imagining the situation the way I want it to be. Well my first guess on this is to remove the neighbours, but that is not something I control. Nor do I control the volume they play their music at, which brings me to what I can control (because if wishing my neighbours away and their music dead worked, we would not be having this conversation). If I took away the frustration I would be at peace with myself, I would be noticing everything BUT the thing that is frustrating me...what was that ?

I would be noticing everything BUT what was frustrating me! Hmmm! It made sense – when something irritates you the only thing you can focus on is that thing. It is instance. There I will be, quietly listening to TV, not noticing the neighbours at all…and then there is a quiet patch and now I can hear them…. End even when the show gets going again, all I can hear is them. I go from sane (well relatively J )…to insane in microseconds. My thoughts are fully hooked in.

But what if  I started to practice focusing on other things ?

What if the problem with anger or frustration (or any of the emotions that require active, consistent fuelling by thoughts and attention) is simply that I am focusing on what I don’t want, rather than what I want ?

Putting it into Practice:

1)      Know the rules :

-          You can’t create a negative, so what would replace the thing you don’t want ?

-          You can’t wish away things you can’t control, so stop focusing on them, on the people or the outcome and bring it back to yourself, what can you control ?

2)      Practice

3)      Give yourself permission to get it wrong. Change requires practice.

What would change if I started to focus on what is working in that situation ? Like the sound of the birds in the garden, the way the light reflects off the clouds, the warmth of the summer sun. To my surprise it worked. But it took effort to distract myself and unhook from those pesky thoughts.

It is indeed humbling to think that I have spent years blaming other people and events for my emotional state of being, only to discover, I had the power all along, but now that I know…. I will practice until I can spend a day at peace, no matter who or what is in my life. Could you ? Why not ?