Happy Life or Crappy Life

I wish I had learned about focus earlier in my life, but I'm grateful to have finally learned how vital it is.  Better late than never.  I certainly never learned about focus in school.  I didn't learn it at home from my parents.  I didn't read about it in the newspaper or see it on t.v.  Never read a book about it.  Never heard anyone talk about it in either casual or serious conversations.  I did hear a little about it in terms of dealing with attention deficit disorder since a big part of that disorder is an inability to focus.  But I just assumed that if you didn't have ADD, focus didn't need to be a concern.  And yet it turns out to be one of the most critical pieces of information I needed to create the life of my dreams.

I'm not a big fan of "goals" since so often they're artificial - based on what the culture tells us will give us the life of our dreams and they are largely unconscious.  I know that I just assumed that what I had picked up from the culture was correct - that I would be happy if I worked hard, followed the rules, made money, got married to a guy that was good-looking, smart and law abiding, had kids and raised them right, went to church and kept my hair combed, etc.  This illusion persisted long into my adulthood even though I was noticing as I went along that although I was working as hard as I possibly could to do what I'd been taught, I never felt like I was any closer to the life of my dreams.  I began to suspect there was something wrong somewhere. 

For a long time I thought that other people and the world in general were what stood between me and the life of my dreams.  The culture certainly told me that that was the problem.  Unexpected circumstances provided me with another perspective, though, and I began to realize that it was me that was the barrier.  Then I worked even harder at doing what I had been taught were the "right" things.  Still no feeling of getting closer to the life of my dreams.

Quite a few different experiences accidentally (accidents are God being anonymous) gave me information I needed.  I had a couple of jobs where I designed training materials and delivered the training.  I researched adult learning and found out that adults are not listening 90% of the time.  If you just tell people things they miss most of it and forget the majority of what they do hear.  So just talking is a big waste of time.  I learned to use visual aides, examples, group projects, repetition, pre and post tests, etc. to enhance participants' ability to remember.  Focus - that was what was missing.  People were paying attention to their thoughts rather than the training material.  Apparently that's what we're all doing all the time.  It's a wonder the world works at all!

I also have had the experience of practicing meditation.  It's in the steps of my recovery program.  It's a discipline I've practiced off an on over several years.  I don't really like doing it.  I have to pay attention (focus), and that's really hard.  What meditation has taught me is that my mind is just randomly running thoughts about this and that and none of it really means anything.  Before meditation I thought my thoughts were the same thing as me and that they were always right.  Really though, it's just my brain running on neutral with the purpose of scanning for any possible danger so it can alert me.  Most of the time any danger it comes up with is just so much baloney.  Plus my ego likes to make judgments about other people (which keeps me from thinking judging thoughts about myself) so I can have a pleasant feeling of self-righteousness.  That feels good for awhile and then starts feeling crappy.

I can't even remember how I ran into the concept that we tend to bring into being whatever we think about.  There are whole philosophies and branches of religion that focus on this as the central theme.  There's way more to say about this than this post can handle so I will just say whether you believe in this concept or not, wouldn't it be better to think about things that are positive and helpful rather than think about the negative, useless things we usually think about?  So...I eventually arrived at a place where I made it a central concept to my life to make decisions about what to think about and then work at the discipline of thinking helpful and positive thoughts.  It is true that our thoughts arise without our input, but utilizing focus changes those thoughts into helpful ones.  It's the hardest discipline I've ever tried to bring into being, but I am quite sure it's been the most beneficial!