Focus

This month’s guest blogger Dr Alex Concorde says:

Focus is the kingpin of life! It’s the fulcrum that turns dreams into reality, possibility into actuality. Focus is what turns the struggle into strength, the whispers within to wisdom. It’s where you find love beyond loneliness, choose light beyond darkness, see meaning over madness, and create magic within life’s otherwise most same-ful of moments.

The human mind is so perfect – but there’s no manual! It has one almighty design flaw: so much depends on focus. To have focus you have to focus on creating focus – well there’s a flaw right there!! Without true focus, so much potential and capability simply winds up under-used, unspent. Like ingredients without a recipe, chemicals without a catalyst, safety-boxed-cash without a code.

Yep, that’s how it is. All those years amassing readiness… Without focus, it’s gifts unwrapped. It’s the unsprung preparedness of a jack-in-the-box that never sees light, of the bud that never flowers, the poem never written, the songbird still unsung. All that un-materialized musing… Narnia unreached, Nirvana unreleased. All the unused happiness, the unknown health, the under-exploited chance for a Life Well-Lived, to be The One so beautifully loved. All for lack of focus.

Here is where I see the flaw. Most of the things that matter in life, and love, have meaning. They’re imbued with inflections, marinated with nuances. They’re rich with emotion, infused with passion. They’re abstract, elusive, weighted finely, and poignantly – with quality features that are beyond measure, and often beyond words. That whole treasure-chest of golden goodies is hunkered down in your innermost mind. And what frees it: is focus.

To know that, to have that, takes a dynamic uncertain relationship with the intangibles of your innermind. Far better, your soul. It takes chasing the essence of your very being, grappling with your deepest unthunk thoughts, wrestling with cloudlike landscapes of uncertain form. Knowing your inner most self… where your feelings rage real, your reactions are core, your aspirations raw. Knowing – true and untempered. Being – unfashioned, unfiltered. The transformation of that to form: needs focus. Without focus, the lynchpin of life, it can never be known.

On the receiving end of focus, it’s about where we put our attention and energy. Motivated and engaged, it’s how we signal the worth of what matters to us, how we relay our intent as individuals. It’s how we celebrate the value of what we cherish and those we relish, how we indicate our highest purpose.

So focus has a duality. On the one hand, it’s a function of knowing yourself, at your deepest and most sacred level…what you are about, who you are, and what you stand for… nuanced, exquisitely exposed, and raw… the liberated contents of your inner most mind. And on the other hand, it’s a fashioning of your most precious, meaningful and vital essence plus energy, into a communication of the most powerful form. Focus is what weaves beauty into drear, shine and sparkle into lacklustre. It creates the cross-stitch of relationships, and yields magical, golden embroidery in life. Who, but who doesn’t want that?!

But wait! Did you think focus was about sticking to something doggedly?! Aha! And therein lies the problem. In fact, two problems. One problem is about the extent to which we focus, the level at which we choose to live, to love. It’s about the fact that we, as humans, are weak, are cowardly, are lazy. We don’t interrogate our minds, our souls…what if we don’t like what we find there?! But only more focus, of the deeper-inner-focus-kind can save us from that! In succumbing to predictability over potential chaos, we shun creativity and raw humanness for better certainty, and, yes, also, for the sure recompense of persistent, robotic effort. And as whole societies, we place ridiculous emphasis on focus of the certain, automaton kind. Yes, we need to persevere. No that sort of focus does not enrich relationships, nor embroider lives. How could it?!

Problem two is that focus isn’t either about problem-solving – that’s a distraction, that’s just a way of reducing the obstacles to getting ahead. Taking on and disentangling bloopers is part of the creation of readiness; it’s not the outpouring, the realization, of whatever it is that an individual’s preparedness is for! Go up a few levels!! Yes, we need to persevere with fixing problems, otherwise they just get in the way. No that sort of focus does not either magically infuse our jaded lives.

So there we have it, the flaws of the humankind. Your inner mind is so NOT engaged when you set about fixing the functional problems of your day-to-day life. Most of what we do of a day involves different brain pathways. Not the soul centers, not the self centers, not the emotion and deep feeling centers. We have to stop thinking that, as we skillfully navigate our days, since our brains are so active, we’re really paying attention. No, all were doing is adeptly negotiating our days. No infusion there.

As we zoom in and out of the garage, loading, unloading, offloading, reloading. As we exhaust our brainpower processing the gazillion-billion-trillion-things-coming-at-us with-not-much-chance of meaningful sorting. As we recite facts dressed up in glittery garb and serve them as food. All that time we’re just working on creating the shell without the priceless oyster. That’s not focus, that’s shell polishing.

It’s ironic, I know, that where we focus most, is when we focus least… Real focus flows from the place where we dream, from the seat of our deepest and most powerful desires, from the fountain of our passions. It’s the space in which all the hugest and most meaningful opportunities can be cooked up – from the precious powerhouse of all human possibility.

SO STOP!! Yep. I mean now. And every when. And ask yourself Big Questions!

Are you sitting in a sweet shop with your mouth zipped shut and your hands tied behind your back – so close, but yet so far? Have you believed that you’ve been focused just because you keep managing to get through the day?!

Are you one of the many people who uses pace, and stress, as some sort of barometer – as if the more frantic you are, the more you’re onto something, the richer you think your life is?! Ask yourself now – is it? And if not, how could you focus that true richness into existence?

Are you spending your days wrapping your head around so much stuff, hour after hour… aware, or worse, unaware, of how little of it really matters?! And if so, how can you discover, within you, the answers – your answers – as to what’s really meaningful, to give yourself the best chance of really important new beginnings?

How many of the greatest budding moments of your life could be lost? And how much of your dormant potential could go unrealized?! If the answer to that is ‘too much’, it may well be too much but it’s never too late! Start now! Focus! Get creating whatever will transform your world into a Life Well Lived!

Ask yourself what’re you cooking up – and whether it has your full, innermost attention! Have you got a load of focus – left unfocused. A lot of attention – left unattended. Is all the emphasis – in all the wrong places? Do you need to reconfigure? To ‘re-jiggle the juggling’?

Is your focus right now changing your life? Is it moving you closer to your highest intentions? Is what you’re creating true to the essence of you? If not – do it! Do it now!

Do you have dreams? Passions? Is your focus today changing the world? Is it change you are deeply proud of? What’s the difference that makes the difference in creating the best outcome on all these? Focus. Focusing in, then focusing back out. Getting the depth, finding the meaning, then refocusing, to reflect that knowing.

And perhaps most importantly – since people are so intrinsic to the ecology of being – do you focus, deeply, on whoever makes you happy? Infuse your live with love? Do those you love feel your heart, your gratitude? Does the love of your life know who you, deeply, are? Does the love of your life deeply know who they are, to you? If not – start immediately! Let everything you do and say, and everything you are, communicate that you’re glad that each of these prized persons exist, in your life, for you!

So! Focus is about the infusion of the stuff of magic into the actual fabric of your life – the stuff of our rawest and most audacious thoughts, the stuff of dreams, the stuff of deep growing feelings daring to rise spiritedly inside our souls. It takes courage to recognize when you keep walking away from the counter with the coins but not the bills. And a whole lot of self-regard to delve meaningfully into the stuff of our souls.

And, granted, self-love isn’t always lyrical – I know. Sometimes it takes huge focus to prevent yourself from hitting your own self-destruct buttons, or from running your own diatribe of nonsense. But often the focus of self-love would, should and could be to respect yourself enough, to cherish and relish yourself enough, to focus your mind out from a sleepwalk and into the light.

And remember! Remembering to focus takes focus. Motivation. Attention. Engagement. Awareness. Focus.

Focus is the kingpin of life. It’s magic! Can you spare yourself two minutes to focus in, and back out, in the knowing that it could change your life?!

Article written by Dr Alex Concorde

Dr Alex Concorde is the inventor of a new type of medicine that can fix health problems people think they’re stuck with, and a new psychology for people who want brain-change but aren’t quite sure how to get it! She works internationally, with minds and medicine, as a consultant/coach for people who really need something extraordinary to happen, fast.

SIGN UP now for her FREE 90-minute monthly ‘Candid CruXfest Conference’- a collision of tele-convo, group coaching and new ways of thinking… starting end July 2014. You can phone in from anywhere in the world – we guarantee it’ll blow your mind! Learn more at www.dralexconcorde.info.
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