1 Focus Concept – “Where you look is where you go”
Developing our focus “muscle” is a very useful skill to start mastering.
Focus is valuable. Not only to ourselves but also to others. If outside energy can command your focus for periods of time, let’s say in an ad, it can be very profitable for them. But if you can learn to control and pay attention to your focus you can use that energy to grow yourself.
So how do we begin to work on focus?
Try understanding what focus is or where it starts.
“There are a lot of things that will modulate your focus but they don’t mediate your sense of focus.” – Dr. Huberman
Modulate is anything exerting a modifying or controlling influence on. In the example above, the modulating factor is how successful the ad is at grabbing our attention.
Mediating in Dr. Huberman’s quote is used in the technical way meaning “to bring about a result.”
To make this simple,
Modulate = out of our control
Mediate = within our control
We want to start with things we can control – mediate. Later we’ll dive into the nuances of the things we can’t control and how we can influence in those areas.
The biggest thing you can do to start getting in control of and maintaining your focus is to get good sleep. This will vary from person to person. Good sleep often comes down to more of the quality of sleep we are getting vs the duration of your sleep.
The other aspect we want to start being aware of is that your brains focus follows your visual focus. Better put “where you look is where your mind goes.” When your eyes and head are up looking forward it triggers the brain to become more focused and alert.
A good example would be what happens when we are reading a good book or watching our favorite movie.
Like working out a new muscle, we can’t start lifting heavy right away, we need to work up to it. For now let’s work on:
- Getting good sleep as consistently as possible.
- Understand the difference between modulate and mediate within the realm of focus
- Observe where you’re looking, or where you are not, and how that impacts your thoughts or behavior.
1 Thought on fear – An untapped built-in feature?
Is fear built-in us as a way to get what we want out of life?
Think about it, how many times have you “had a bad feeling” about something and it turns out to be true? How many stories have you heard about how someone didn’t do something for “some reason” only to find out later following that “random” feeling benefited them?
Are we able to predict things before they happen?
Does it only work when it’s about something negative?
1 Perspective Shift – Simple & Easy
I’ve noticed that people often mix up the terms simple and easy. This can lead to a lot of confusion and bad expectation setting.
The concept of golf is simple – get this small ball into this larger cup. Seems easy! In actuality getting the ball in the cup is not easy whatsoever. For starters the cup is 500 yards away, there’s a bunch of water in front of the cup, and oh yeah you can’t touch the ball with your hands. Good luck!
How much of your energy is being spent looking for the easy way to do simple things? Is that helping you get to where you want to go?
Bonus Content – “Money & Fools”
This song came on while I was listening to a playlist this morning. I thought the messaging was very inline with what I want to help people with.
Give it a listen. (I have no connections to this artist or spotify)
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Wrapping up,
- Learn the areas you can control with your focus
- Is fear a feature built in us?
- Things may be simple, it doesn’t mean it will be easy.
Thats all for this week. I hope some of these concepts help you.
If you want me to cover a particular topic, have any questions, or want to say hello, please reach out to me here! I’ll be posting content there daily as well.
Thanks for reading & see you next week!