When we can’t focus or concentrate on the simplest task then we imagine and feel every other negative emotion piles on us with our defences laid down and vulnerability exposed.
I have no idea if I ever genuinely concentrate or not, on anything I do. I can’t even say for sure what concentration actually feels like in real life. I mean how does anyone ever really focus their mind? At times it can feel utterly incomprehensible as to what it must be like enjoying razor sharp focus.
So naturally we often don’t even try to figure it out. Maybe start to focus, make a determined promise to try to figure out how to concentrate but… well you know how it is…. 5 seconds after the starting pistol goes off. There’s something else lodged in the noggin. Distraction is more my natural state of mind than concentration could ever hope to be some days. I know I am not alone here am I? Yeah you too?
Modern day life, is a favourite excuse, with technology adding more distractions than ever to erase focus. The addictive need to check messages, social media likes and feeds, 24 hour rolling fake news and so on. But to be honest, I was getting distracted way before this became a convenient excuse. I was just as distracted with no internet and only 3 TV channels and a hula hoop.
Oh and as you read this, please be assured the content wasn’t written in one go flowing from the encyclopaedic mind, like a creative genius reeling off profound text.
There was a lot of daydreaming and NEEDING cheese in-between sentences, the occasional urgent desire to stock check sock numbers and the usual aimlessly wandering off into another room for no reason. More time was spent having to read over this text again to remind myself what I was actually writing.
I guess it’s a lot like one of those old-school computer platform games. Maybe like Donkey Kong, when you see the shiny coin spinning and go to pick it up yet then heavy wooden barrels drop on your head and big teeth fish turn up to gnaw at you and so you forget what was going on with the shiny coin in the first place.
That’s a dreadful analogy, I know. It started out as fitting but then as I got into the depth of the analogy, my mind got distracted of course and then I forgot the original point I was trying to make.
So now all I am thinking about is big teeth fish. Don’t google it, stay with me.
Talking about fish. There’s an old wives tale we were told as children about Goldfish swimming around their bowls thinking every view they have is brand new. That’s more about a poor memory thing of course (if its even true, I don’t know).
So here’s a new old wives tale I’ve just invented on the spot, as I am typing and should be concentrating on something else. Something I am basing on that previous unscientific and possibly non-factual statement – just imagine that certain fish with big teeth are well known to have dreadful concentration levels. I know people out there may feel it’s unfair to pick on the fish so lets say its a fictional fish with big teeth.
Maybe their teeth are so big they weigh down the part of their brain which is used for concentration. Maybe the chemicals they should use for concentration are being diverted as mouthwash or something. I don’t know, I am not a scientist and I am barely educated, so don’t pass this off as fact out there in the real world. (If you do. Kudos to you for being hilarious)
But what the whole fish distraction text above does highlight, is how easily distracted the mind can be even when working on a serious project and additionally how futile the excuses become for the distraction. There was no reason on earth for any of that diversion to happen and none of it made sense but that’s the reality of how the distracted mind needs feeding.
However. Even with the extreme focus deficiencies I face every moment of the day, I have to say that when I can find my way to beat a path to a clear and focused mind, really focused, then everything changes beyond belief.
For example whilst you are waiting to read something profound here, to help you with your concentration levels, I am, in the back of my mind writing a screen play for big teeth dumb fish. This situation hadn’t even entered my head until I decided to write something useful, which then naturally kick-started a scramble of distractions – just for the sake of it. My creative levels, thanks to concentration failure, are through the roof. Of course it will never be ‘Finding Nemo’ and of course the screenplay will never be finished. But the creative levels are through the roof, just impossible to harness like a game of buckaroo.
So you get the basis of the point here. And you can just insert your own distraction above, and the cycle described will work just the same for your process, word for word basically. So maybe in a sense the crazy tooth fish thing can be shoe horned into an analogy but I dare not Google how analogy works because I’ll go missing for hours.
It’s a sad fact that over the years, and you may relate to this, we may have spent so much time questioning and comparing our focus and concentration with those around us. Imagining that they have it nailed down and we alone are the cloudy mess. And that doesn’t fill us with the confidence to believe we can find a way to steady the levels.
Eventually when you feel you will never be capable of functioning at the levels you would like to, and trying to find ways to improve seems a thankless task – none of the expensive books and courses you bought have remotely given you the head over-haul you think you need – you ask yourself – ‘Maybe it’s just what it is. I am what I am. Is this all that there is? There has to be a little more than this’
Now I’m no medical expert, as you can quite clearly see from my style and content, but I can offer my own vast experiences relating to that moment you flop down and feel its all a pointless exercise. ‘It’s hopeless. I will never change.’
The running theme, you will probably notice already, through all of my work, is my belief that there isn’t something as simple as a one stop answer that works for all, no button to press for immediate clarity in our ever wandering wondering noggins. And we get frustrated. When after years of chasing answers and devoting our time and energies to enlightenment we feel we are taking 2 steps forward and one step back. Still, this doesn’t mean the search is pointless, in fact the opposite. The search never ends and the work is never done. Growth is never stunted. And you know as well as I do the result and reward is never enough!
And those words above, which we all trot out during the flop down on the couch moment, sighing, without realizing that the answer lies within our frustration and maybe we are just emphasizing the situation in the wrong way. We are what we are and that’s OK. This isn’t all there is. There’s always more than this. There is always hope, there is always change. And all this can happen in a split second. It doesn’t have to be the complicated process we think we must endure, with a lorry load of focus and concentration. It doesn’t have to be a battle.
I was always told as a child to get my head out of the clouds, you’re such a dreamer, you’ll never amount to much with those silly dreams. Dreams don’t come true for people like you. Yet I don’t think I learned any lessons from those words of ‘encouragement‘. In fact, I’m an even more chronic day-dreamer these. Chronic in a good way if that’s possible. And I make no apologies for that. To be honest – its my favourite boast.
And my biggest personal torment ever, in the whole wide world, to infinity and beyond, in relation to focus and concentration is – I get distracted when I am daydreaming. What is that all about? I mean I am more than happy to be distracted when working or dealing with family or attempting home improvements but daydreaming is my time. This is not the time for consistency with mental health issues!
Also it may be the case that, even though I feel I have the greatest dreams I want to accomplish and I really feel and want and desire those dreams, I simply cant get started. That first step. I procrastinate myself out of focus and concentration until I have used all my energy up on meaningless lists of things to do instead of dreams to have. I maybe feel I am distracted but I am procrastinacted. Is that a word? It is now.
But and its a big colourful but – daydreaming is generally the way to harness the distractions because when you daydream all cards are on the table, nothing is out of bounds, so all of a sudden distractions become creative arrows firing at all kinds of bullseyes.
So the very thing they told me, was my problem, actually now appears to be one of my strengths. Maybe. If I’m not trying to convince myself!
Daydreaming is a big realization in these modern times with all the newly born ‘Gurus’ promoting big mind, to think big and bright and bold. If you think then it happens. Every creation started as a thought in the mind. If you ask and believe and see yourself in the dream state it is manifested and given. Believe in some God you can’t, see except for its aura inside yourself and they all of a sudden exist.
The ‘Gurus’ all say it but each with a slightly different twist. For brand reasons I assume. I just prefer my own simple and honest version which is I like to daydream, it makes me happy and then when I am happy I am more productive and when I am happy and more productive then lots of stuff comes to me. It’s all the same process. It works for me. So I keep my head in the clouds.
And… it all started by accepting myself for exactly who I am and who I want to be, instead of looking for that complete brain over-haul suggested by the mentors that didn’t even know how to over haul themselves. A brain exchange that only ever results in red flags and stop signs and asks more questions than it answers. Totally stops functioning because that task is so huge and impossible, with no obvious starting point and certainly no light at the end, that all you can do is stop and stare at the sky and say ‘what now? Is this all that there is?’
The journey never ends, and that’s OK because thankfully there’s plenty of goodness to enjoy along the way, an abundance of treats and highs and growth as the journey is always one of continual learning, expansion in all directions. Never to stop learning from all others, not to be the one who knows it all, but just to be you, who knows you best and wants what’s best for you. Whatever they call it now -self care – self love. Just be you.
For me personally, I found that distractions were useful many times. They stopped frustrations, which in turn stopped a complete melt down. For me, again, I found that procrastination wasn’t always the devils hand on the head but possibly my soul giving notice that I should purely consider whether or not it was the right time, or reason, for the task I was procrastinating about. We cry we are procrastinating and shower ourselves with guilt when we don’t perform but maybe we are just waiting for the right moment, the time we are at the right peak for the task. Maybe we are not adept at trusting ourselves to make these decisions and too quick to beat ourselves up when productivity slackens. Our souls would sure whisper to us quality over rushed quantity.
Again these are my own thoughts – focus and concentration doesn’t have to be a light that’s always on. That element of being hard on myself to always be ‘on it‘ could be the reason I couldn’t start a project or concentrate on it to a successful end. That this pressure to focus was counterproductive where as the pleasure of a daydreaming session, which then led to an unassuming first step being taken, to move even the snail paced inch towards that goal, would result in some way, on some day in a natural happy focus state. Possibly. This isn’t a button on a scientific calculator although I installed a button inside my noggin in any case.
One of the problems I continually encountered on this road to enlightenment, which I feel was snuggled in bed with lack of focus and concentration, was a belief and confidence that I could learn, and learn in a way which I needed to learn. Bear with me; that sounds a crazy way to outline this theory, but take for example meditation.
I mean meditation. That’s for Hollywood right? Orange tanned flesh and hour glass figures? It looks so clever and complicated and spiritual and the people doing it are so beautiful and amazing wearing yoga pants with perfectly sculpted legs poured into them. There is no way this is this for people like me?
Was I doing it right, because my legs ached when I sat lotus and I keep getting an itch flinging itself around my body, and the dog next door chooses the same moment each time, to bark loud, and my mind wanders after 30 seconds and my wrong emotions start to find the frontal lobes. And pretty much all of that happens, in a never ending furious cycle. Although to be honest some may say I do have the legs for yoga pants. Some may.
There’s a trust that needs to be developed deep inside as part of the love you start to give for yourself. If you’re going to be authentic. Trust it is… what it is for you, love that you are on your own yellow brick road, trust what needs to come to you will come to you and when this thought is held up against the alternative, of wasting the day, then… well its worth a go.
You’re distracted now as you read this. Of course you are, you may be reading this to engage in thoughts about improving your focus and concentration, but it’s also a distraction from something, somewhere, for you. These words may create a major change for you today or they may be a slow burning nugget that one day revisits in a light bulb moment. Who knows.
So many of the things I learned about myself came to me years after knowing them. Some times you don’t realise how much you store in your mind until one day when you need them, they are released like a swarm of bees, and you wonder where the hell that outburst came from? Now that’s focus you don’t even realise you hold.
Its the same watching a film for the 15th time, when you see something new and relevant having missed it 14 times before. Or learn more from a book or teacher even though you have studied every word meticulously for years. You are ready when you are ready. There is never a right or wrong time to judge yourself by and the road to self love and improvement grows every moment, never ending.
I’m trying to be clever now, like a Guru or an educator; and shoe horn the ugly tooth fish into this equation. Because somehow, it works, the analogy of seeing the fish swim round and round the tank, like it has done a billion times before and yet now, each time, as it swims, you notice a tooth you never noticed before, well doesn’t seem that relevant? Obviously you have to go into fiction daydream mode to even comprehend this paragraph, but well? Now do you see his teeth?
Well if nothing else its an image we can keep as a page turner as we move into part 2 of this session titled fear of missing out. Don’t miss out. Don’t be scared. But please don’t miss out on part 2.