Now I See It, Now I Don't
Published on January 05, 2015
So much of the mystery of life centers around the discussion of the comparative of nature/nurture. "Is who I am today the result of birth or experience"? There is no question that certain aspects of life and behaviour are rooted in who we were when we drew our first breath but I expect the majority of what makes us who we are comes by way of the information we take in and what we experience. This morning opened my eyes to something quite remarkable and I heard one piece of the puzzle click in firmly with another. One topic I speak on often is focus. "How can it be improved and what is the process"? Gaining Dominion over the skill of focus presents incredible advantage and benefit both in relation to increased productivity at work and quality of life at home. "If you are on the floor with your kids, be on the floor". I now believe that there is a great misnomer about our children and what many believe is a lack of focus. "He has the attention span of a flashbulb,” many parents will say. If we believe this. If we accept the notion that children lack focus then it leads us to believe focus is something that only comes with age. It's quite the contrary. My son who is 10 had a few minutes after breakfast before school and was watching a cartoon on TV. When the time came to brush his teeth and get his shoes on I struggled to get his attention. "Jonah, come on buddy. Time to shut it off and get your shoes". Nothing. One more time, "Jonah, come on we're going to be late". Still nothing. After 3 more tries I reached into the parents handbag and pulled out the "Jonah, if you don't shut that off right now and get your shoes on there will be no TV for the next day". That finally got his attention. Driving to a session later I was thinking about it and realized how wrong I was to handle it that way. The truth was that he had amazing focus and was not ignoring me but simply focusing on his show. I realized that what we parents do over time is like what Pavlov did to his dogs. We train them over and over and over again that if they don't stop what they are doing and do what we want them to there will be negative consequences. In effect what we are doing is training them to trade their focus in exchange for distractions from others. Over the years we all end up being trained to let go of our own ability to focus and to acquiesce to every noise and demand and distraction. The world says, "If you don't stop doing what you are doing at this exact moment, (car horn, phone ring, e-mail notification, interruption or bark of a dog” you will pay the price. I now can see that the price we all pay is losing our ability to focus. There is two points to this. One, this is learned behaviour and anything learned can be unlearned. Two, we all have the option to do our best to not train our kids like Pavlov did his dogs. They were born with an incredible ability to focus. Lets do our part to nurture and protect it. If we don't they will see their ability to focus as we do. "Now I see it, now I don't". Have an excellent day. Be well, Randy Taylor