Focus

A discussion of the meaning and importance of focus for life endeavors-in and out of the gym.

By Joshua Miller

One characteristic gives life to the potential of all other characteristics—focus. Really, as I continue this series we will examine how many characteristics are so intimately entwined that they must exist in the presence of others for their existence to be meaningful at all. Over the next few installments of this series we will discuss how there are several characteristics which give life and meaning to others, and together build a web of personality traits which inherently exist together like organs in a body, all essential and serving their own purpose. Today the focus is focus.

Focus makes things matter. Focus shapes our perception of reality. An abundance of it grounds us, and a lack of it disorients us without our awareness of the disorientation. Focus allows us to complete tasks with a meaningful level of detail. Focus allows us to show our love for others in a meaningful way. Focus allows us to absorb and retain knowledge. In learning, the encoding phase is crucial, and although most information you have been exposed to is still in your brain somewhere, your ability to recall it is directly related to the level of focus and effort you put into paying attention when you were exposed to this information. Much of this is a decision, and like any deicison, the ease with which you execute it increases the more often you choose it. As such, many often mistake focus for a skill, but its really an intention, and the skill related to it is self control. Self control is essential to meaningful freedom, because without it you are simply a reactive and programmable meat robot. Your output will be overwhelmingly predictable based off the sum of your inputs, which one could argue is still true of those with self control, although if they control the inputs they accept, they also control the output, and therefore freedom is obtained. There are those who consistently choose to focus and therefore win, and there are those who choose to float or to selectively focus, and they never see the big picture and often do not even know they’re losing or bleeding resources from worldy to spiritual resources.

As we go through life, those of us who pay attention to our experiences and the lessons they offer grow to learn that every experience offers a lesson that can aid in our navigation of life. Once we have this realization that every interaction, conversation, situation and experience is a potential key to a future door, we are faced with several beautiful realities.

The first is that we can now not only justify being present and mindful and engaged in every interaction, but that it is also a potential neccesity for survival and success. As such, it is not only a luxury we can justify enjoying, but an ethical obligation to ourselves, our life mission, our loved ones, and at the end of the day serves to benefit both parties in the interaction as well. What a beautiful realization that taking time to “smell the roses” can not only be justified, but deemed essential so long as it is also completed with mindful intent. This is not an invitation to float, but rather an invitation to open your eyes as you swim so that you can not only appreciate the beauty of the journey, but gain knowledge which will aid in your journey.

The second beautiful reality that is derived from this acceptance of the importance of all the knowledge and wisdom we have an opportunity to gain is that these interactions now have a whole new value, with which comes gratitude. Becoming aware of, and accepting and participating in this philosophy of gaining all you can from every experience allows gratitude to replace grief. This allows one to move forward even during tough times, to apply the lessons they’ve learned without the weight of the same grief they would otherswise carry. This allows one to both better equip themselves, and reduce barriers at the same time. This is the equivalence of letting off the brake and stepping onto the gas in terms of how effectively you can move towards the destination of your choosing.

These beautiful realities are empowering to those who have had many, and or intense personal battles, hardships and have faced legitimate adversity. Realizing that there is reason to both value and be gracious for even the most tragic life experiences allows those who have sustained substantial trauma to not only reframe and reclaim those experiences in their mind, but to realize that this is a universal truth. Nobody accomplishes great things without experiencing something that hardens them enough to be capable of such an endeavor. Whether this hardening occurs in structured preparation, in the fires of life, or a combination of the two, no easy path has ever produced a great contributor to the world. Many who have experienced tragedy create a second tragedy that they were compelled, but not required to create— one of themselves. That is why some of the most inspirational people have overcame the most adversity in their climb to the top. Sure many people from priviledged positions hold these people up and say “see anyone can do it” with no real understanding of adversity. And sure many people from underpriviledged positions say “those people are outliers”, but what both of groups are missing is the growth mindset that allowed those being discussed to escape their conditions. The former party fails to understand due to lack of familiarity with adversity, and the latter party fails to understand because of lack of familiarity with hope. Both parties are doomed to their own chains, and neither is free. One is but a pet on a golden leash, and one is but a prisoner of the chains they were told exist. But with a focused approach to life they can both avoid excluding information that can free them from their chains.

Focus is not only a crucial part of information acquisition to prepare oneself, but also is crucial in the present. In the present, one must be focused not only to prepare for the future, but to react and behave appropriately in the present. One must maintain situational awareness so that adjustments and pivots to execution can be implemented in an effective and efficient way to avoid or minimize disruptions in execution of your mission. Focus allows you to acknowledge others may be on a different mission, or a different place in their journey, so that even as you learn from them you are not distracted from what you are doing by what they are doing. Focus allows you to complete tasks with a level of detail that makes it possible to meaningfully analyze and adjust moving forward.

Without focus, the time, energy, and resources that are spent are spent in vain. Oh how sad to see things you could have given to your loved ones or yourself or the world pissed away by a lack of focus. But don’t worry, if you won’t focus and win, someone else will. So if you lack focus, rejoice for those who beat you down, for they are reclaiming your waste with all they take from you, and although they may not share it with you and yours, be happy for them and theirs, because they’re not taking anything you were using, only that which you threw away.

In this way, the winners are the great recylers, and the great saviors of the world and society by reclaiming that which was wasted and by jolting those who are willing to be awakened by the pain of loss awake so that they may become winners too. You owe it to yourself and the world to be a winner. We all can be winners together, and the only side effect of such is that the cap on our collective potential would rise. In this sense, winners are those who truly embody being a student of life. There are many people who win many things who still fail to be winners in life. A winner can win consitently, in multiple endeavors, and cannot be kept down. Stay tuned for the rest of the series to learn about more characterstics that are crucial to being a winner.

Get out there and show the world you are NTBFW.