The Power of Focus and Reward: What is focus, How do You Focus and Why Focus?
What is focus?
Focus is really what it sounds like it is. It's focus. But what is it you're focusing? People say that focus is focusing your mind, but that is a bit of a red herring. It doesn't really explain what you are doing when you focus. The answer is simple enough, your focusing your attention on one thing and that focuses the mind. To understand focus is to understand that you are really focusing your attention on something. What's more when you focus your attention you are also focusing your mind. This brings us to a principle that we will describe later. What you focus on is what you move toward. We can go into a lot of details about focus, primary focus, secondary focus and peripheral focus and all the rest. But that starts to get a bit complicated. What you really need to know about is how do you focus and why learning how to focus is so important.
How Do You Focus
The human mind can focus basically on three things simultaneously. The central focus, which is the thing your putting most of your attention on. The secondary focus which are the things that are immediately around it. Then there is peripheral focus. These are the things that are as the name implies on the outside or periphery of your attention field. Think of it as what happens when you focus a torch on something. Right in the center of the torchlight is the object that the beam is focused on. Then moving toward the edge of the light beam where the light is becoming weaker, you can see the things around the object but not quite so clearly these are the secondary foci. Finally on the edge of the on the very outside of the beam of light you can see things that you can't quite make out but you know are there this is your peripheral focus.
What's interesting is that even when you are focused on one thing with your central focus, your secondary focus and peripheral focus are operating so that when things change you will have your attention drawn toward them. This is both a benefit and a curse. If your someone who struggles with attention you might find yourself constantly being drawn away from the main point only to shift your attention to a secondary thing.
In order to focus you need to put all your attention on a central object. It could be something you are looking at, or it could be something that you are seeing in your imagination. If you don't center your focus the tendency is for the human mind to wander around looking for something to focus on. When we focus our minds, whether it is through doing a crossword puzzle or doing meditation, we are simply anchoring our attention on one central point and or thing. This is necessary so we can bring all of our minds power into the task of solving problems, or imagining solutions. The one thing that is always available to us is either sound or breathing. In meditation and visualization exercises we often use breathing to anchor our focus because it's always available and it is generally relaxing.
The Link Between The Mind and Body and Focus.
The body follows the mind and the mind follows what ever you focus your attention on. So think about this. Imagine you are at a horror movie and you are completely focused on the scene, your body is getting tense, as you wait, wondering if something scary is about to happen. Then when the evil character jumps out of the cupboard and kills the hero or heroine you jump in fear. Sounds pretty normal right. But have you ever thought why am I jumping when I know it's just a made up story, projected onto a digital screen, that it is just a bunch of flashing lights, performed by actors and it's not even real. Why does your body respond as if it is real? The answer is your body doesn't discriminate between and the not real. Your body just responds to what your mind is focused on. This highlights the principle I described earlier. The body doesn't think, it just reacts to what your mind is paying attention to whether that is real or not. The body follows the mind and the mind follows what ever you pay attention to.
This principle works whether you are deliberately focusing on something or your brain is just randomly choosing something to focus on. In other words, what your mind pays attention to, your body and emotions will react to for good or ill.
The Reason Why We Need Focus.
This has big implications. Think about this, what do anxious people focus on. You guessed it. They focus on threats and scary stuff. What do stressed people focus on. Simple they focus on worrying possibilities. What do depressed people focus on. That's simple, they focus on hopelessness. So what does this have to do with drug and alcohol use? Well that's simple enough. Users focus on the benefits of using and they never consider the down side until they are drowning in it. But it also works in the exact opposite direction. If you chose to focus on something better, then you will start to move toward it. So when it comes to drugs and alcohol learning to not focus on just the upside of drugs and alcohol and to focus on the whole story including the downside and the ugly side you will start to change inside.
So the take away here is what you focus on, changes the way you see and engage in the world. The short answer is, what you focus on you get. Which means if you have a drug or alcohol problem then you must be focusing on the benefits of D and A and not the downside. Because if you did focus on the down side you probably wouldn't do drugs and alcohol. So to kick it one of the exercises you need to follow is focusing on the upside of not drinking or taking drugs and focus on the down side of taking drugs and drinking. It will change you.
Exercise
Write a list of all the benefits of drugs and alcohol. Then write a list of all the problems caused by your use of drugs and alcohol. Then sit back and take it all in. Take in the reality. Focus on both the upside and the down side. I suspect you will likely be a bit shocked by this exercise.
Until next time.
Cheers