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Focus: reaching our goals

There are no parts of life that focus is not needed.  It does not matter if we are playing a game or doing the specialized work of a doctor or scientist.  But in fact many of us have problems focusing on the task at hand as we think about all the other things going on in our lives.  

I would like to think for a few minutes about the things that really need our focus.  For each of us those things may be different, but I would think that it is possible that many of them may be the same.  Who would not say that focusing on our family and health are two of the most important.  Yet for many children today the average amount of time their parents spend with them alone without interruption from media and other distractions may only be 8 minutes per week.  

Our health is another area that we could all agree needs our focus.  Yet our eating habits and workout schedule may be pushed to the side due to us focusing on other matters.  So many times I have parents tell me how healthy they and their children eat, yet both parent and child are not at a healthy weight.  So what is it that you want to focus on?   What are the most important things in your life?  

One of the things that will help us focus on our ‘most important’ things is by setting goals.  With a goal that is specific and with a completion date our mind can focus to reach that goal.  General goals do not help us focus.  Specific goals however concentrate our energy on the stated goal.  

Goal setting, focus and commitment to them is something I work on all the time.  In fact I invite you to join with me in that regard.  I believe that having ‘teammates’ is an important part of keeping our focus and reaching our goals and holding us accountable.  I am here and ready to do that with anyone that wants the support.  Of course it will be a two way thing, as in any team, both of us will benefit. 

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Disaster in Gulf creates a challenge for us

All of us have been watching the disaster that is occurring in the Gulf with the oil spill.  I am not sure how anyone else feels, but I am literally sick to my stomach about this event and worried sick about what the long term effects are going to be on the environment and the people of these regions.

Since the first week I have asked myself, What can I do?  What could we as a school do to have some positive effect for the environment and the people involved.   I was paralyzed.  I not only did not know – but I was getting to a point that it was hard for me to watch one more minute of the reports.

Today though I came upon a group that all of us can help and I would like to propose that we find a way to do so.  Here is the website for you to look at. 

http://www.matteroftrust.org/

Which one of our students will step up and make a plan to get our school, city and county involved with some solutions to the problem.  Taking action is the right thing to do.  Sitting around and complaining about what others are not doing is not the way students at Balanced Life Skills want to react to challenges.  

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What to do when you get tired?

In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he’s tired. Everyone is. That’s not the point. The point is to run.

— Seth Godin

We all have our own races.  Today we tested students for some advanced belts and each of them had to learn how to put the “tired” away for later.  How we run the race and our determination to finish strong can be learned and practiced.  Our students are learning and practicing.



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Focus: this is our moment

All of us has had someone tell us that we need to focus.  It may have even been ourselves that we had a little self talk “Focus, Focus, Focus”.  So what is focus other than looking and listening with intensity.  This is what we teach our young children and for all of us it is really blocking out all of the distractions that keep us from focusing.

How do we direct our mind so that we can focus on our work, assignment or other things?  We must remember that the only thing that we have is this moment.  If we are washing the dishes then we need to be washing the dishes.  If we are talking to our child, then we need to be totally there with them.  This is the only moment that we have.  

All of the moments we had – are in the past and we cannot get them back.  There are no future moments that we are guaranteed – so NOW is all we have.  Still all of us have things that will be a distraction to us, so practicing being in this moment will take time.  

This week in our classes we will be talking about what distracts us and how we can keep ourselves focused.

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Anger management: #5 we need empathy

Depending on the age of the child, understanding the feelings of others may be difficult, if only due to developmental reasons.  A five year old has one emotional ability and a 12 year old another.  One thing though that does happen is that when they are angry no matter there age or training – they will be blinded to someone else’s feelings. 

Developing this empathy will help them to understand that all of us have feelings and just as we react to how others treat us, we too can react to how others feel.  Some children though who have had painful lives, may defend themselves by shutting down their sensitivity to others.  Or they may use intimidation and fear as a part of their defense.

Teaching empathy is a two fold.  First every child needs to understand feelings and they need adults around them whom they can trust.  With our younger children, increasing their “feelings vocabulary”, is very important to them identifying both their own and others feelings.

If we find older children are having difficulty with understanding the feelings of others, encourage them to write down stories in a journal.  If they have a problem get them to write or or talk about what happened – from the other persons point a view.

Finally as a parent or teacher, describing our own experiences and the emotions that we feel can be very helpful.  They can identify that you have faced difficult situations or may still be dealing with them, and they will learn to empathize.  

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Focus discussion: changing our results

The concept that we are focusing on this month is “Focus”.  Interesting is the fact that many of us focus on the things that we fear or the things that we do not want to happen.  I will give you an example that is very easy to relate to.  Have you ever driven down the road and had something on the side of the road grab your attention.  As you looked at it you were so intrigued that when you did look up you found that the car had moved toward that side of the road.   In fact many professional driving instructors will tell you that if you lose control of your car on the road – DO NOT look at the tree you want to avoid – you will surely hit it if you do.

Now there is an interesting place to begin.  If you focus on the things that you do want and the goals we want to reach it is just that much easier to reach them.  I know that is very hard to do.  One reason it is so hard is because of the amount of information we are bombarded with on a daily basis.  I recently read that we receive over 3000 marketing messages a day that we need to process. Did you know that is as many as our grandparents received in a whole year.  No wonder it is hard to do.  So how will we do this and just as important how will we teach our children to focus.  

Over the next month we will work on that here at Balanced Life Skills.  If you want to learn about this you will want to follow this blog.  In addition FOCUS is one of the concepts that we work on in our school every class.  Reinforce what you see us do in class at home and you will see improvement in your child’s focus.