Focus is a Key to Life and Look a Squirrel!

“Maybe we’re at war with Norway?” – The Thing

The Norwegians have the best parties – Fjord Fiestas, you could call them.

You’ve been there.

There’s a state where you experience full awareness.  But it’s full awareness of a very specific kind.  There is no past.  There is no future.  There is only now – the immediate now.  You cease to be aware of anything but what you are doing.

You have become a verb.  You are lost in the moment.  You are the moment.

This state transcends time.  Minutes, hours can pass.  It seems like an instant.

This state has a name.  It’s not tequila.

It’s focus.  But tequila is a close second.

When I was in athletics in high school, coaches would tell me to “focus.”  That was it.  I think they told me that because they knew focus was important, and or maybe because that was what they were told when they were in high school.  But they could see the impact that focus had on an athlete in a game, or a wrestler in a match.  The difference between a focused player and one that isn’t focused is . . . sorry, what was I saying?

Anyway.

Well, the string certainly looks alive when it’s on a bikini.

What advice did we get with the command to focus?  Well, in my case, none.  I was expected to figure it out.  I drilled takedowns in wrestling hundreds of times.  Tackling drills for football?  Again, at least hundreds of repetitions.  Sprints?  I think I did thousands of those, or at least it felt like thousands after practice was over.

How much time did they my coaches spend on teaching us focus and mental preparation?

Umm, I just told you.  They told us to be focused.  That’s it.

And I’m not complaining, some of the coaches were outstanding by any definition, and in one case objectively the best coach in the history of the state where I grew up in his sport.  I don’t know, maybe they all thought that focus was second nature to some people.  And maybe it is.  But not to me.  I get distracted by something as small as a bikini.  Heck, if I had a dollar for every time I got distracted, I wish I had a beer.

Gradually, I figured it out, or at least figured it out as best as I could.  Fast forward to this weekend:  I caught myself telling Pugsley to focus before a wrestling match.  I had a moment of epiphany.  What does focus even mean to a kid whose entire life has been distorted by the distraction of technology?  How do you even describe it?  Maybe, perhaps, I could help him figure it out after his batteries died.

How many Aztecs does it take to change a lightbulb?  None.  The Aztec Empire dissolved hundreds of years before the lightbulb was invented.  For some reason my kids don’t like my lightbulb jokes.

It’s true that in our lives, physical preparation in athletics or training for work often takes precedence for the mental preparation for what we do.  The physical preparation is easy to see.  It’s easy to objectively measure.  How many pushups can you do in one minute?  At work, the training for the job can be measured in certificates and completed coursework and compiled grades.  And don’t ask candidates to prove how many pushups they can do in one minute no matter how amusing you think that might be.  Have them do something like wax your car instead.

But mental preparation is tougher.  You can’t directly see it.  But yet it’s crucial to performance in nearly everything we do.

In athletics, the mind must be ready for the task at hand.  If you’re wrestling, you’re going to war.  You’re preparing to try to spend the next six minutes making the other guy regret he ever stepped on the mat with you.  A bad place to be is to focus on what can go wrong before a match.  A better place is to focus on the moment – to understand that no matter what happens, there is a way.

If I focus on what happens if I lose, I will wrestle not to lose.  If I live life focused on what could go wrong, I will live life not to lose.  My entire life would be spent in damage control, defending against failures that may not even exist.

Whoa!  This is most excellent and triumphant!

The solution is focus.  I wasn’t born with it.  But focus can be taught.  There’s even John Wilder’s Patented Focus List®, presented below with only limited commercial interruption thanks to a generous sponsorship by the MacArthur Foundation™ (hint, hint, I’m still waiting for my #GeniusGrant).

• Know what you want. This is basic, but yet there are hundreds of people walking around who don’t know what they want out of life.  In sports, it’s easier – people want to win.  Some more than ever.  But we’ll talk more about that next Wednesday.
• Believe that it’s possible. I had a boss that was exceptional at this.  He often had more belief in me than I had in myself.  But if you don’t believe that what you’re doing can be done, you’ll find ways to make sure that you’re right.  Plus believing it’s not possible is one way of making an excuse for failure before you start.  Heck, most things are impossible, right up until someone does them.  But enough about me losing my virginity.
• Know every second counts. Clocks are unrelenting.  0:00 is coming.  Every second that passes without you taking action is a second that can never come back.
• Give everything, right from the start. Closely tied to using every second, is using every bit of you for every second.  It’s your force multiplied by your time that is your momentum.

See, it’s so simple a fifth grader could derive it.

• Prepare relentlessly. That means working through every detail you can, and as close to the real thing as possible.  I guarantee your opponent is.  Well, one of them is.  When his iPhone® battery is dead.
• Focus on winning, not losing. Reasons eloquently established above.

Too soon?

• Lock out distractions. Everyday life tends to intrude in your brain.  Push it back.  Like an ex-wife it will be there after you’re done.
• Avoid feeding your ego. Your ego, that part of you that holds all of your self-importance?  The ego that thinks that people remember silly mistakes you made?  It will fight with everything it has to be protected – it will sabotage you to prevent you doing your best.  Sure, in rare circumstances people will remember your silly mistake (putting hydrogen in that dirigible, for instance), but that’s not the norm.
• Have confidence in yourself.
• Have faith. I’ve been lucky time and time again.  I know the old saying that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” – but that was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who said that.  And where is Seneca, hmm?
• Remember why you’re here – not a specific way to win, but to win.
• Focus on now, not the next game. Nor the next match.  Nor the ride home.
• Use your tension to build focus. Being nervous is okay, and can, if used properly help your preparation.

• Use music. There is nothing that so impacts emotion and sets mood than music.  Good rock music helps a workout.  Appropriately aggressive music helps focus – Come Out And Play by the Offspring, or Electric Worry by Clutch or even Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC come to mind.  Please feel free to suggest your favorite music that psyches you up below.  I promise not to make too much fun of your choice, unless you pick something like Madonna or Justin Bieber.  Yes, that includes that odious little man, Phil Collins.  He knows what he did.

• Have a routine, once you get it right. Play the same songs every time.  Play them in the same order.  Spend the same amount of time warming up each time.
• Be ready physically. We’ve spent all this time getting your mind ready.  It would be a shame if your body weren’t ready, too.
• Have a strategy. Execute it.  Having a strategy is important.  Having the courage to execute it is important, too.  Will it have to be sufficiently broad to account for surprises?    But why do you have to bring broads into it?
• Don’t deviate from the strategy too soon. There may be a time to give up on your plan, but it’s not immediately.  Unless it is.  This is more of an art – there is absolutely a time when Plan A will fail, and you’re stuck with Plan B.  Or Plan C.

Okay, I never said it was a short list.

One other piece of advice:  Be as outcome independent as you can be.  The poem If by Rudyard Kipling makes this point well (The Chinese Farmer, Kipling, Marcus Aurelius, and You). Winning everything you try, every time you do it is impossible for everyone.  But after the victory or the loss, you will remain.  Yes, losing sucks.  But the outcome of any specific event in your life is much less important than the input that got you there, which is (more or less) something Seneca also said.

I swear, I got lost for 20 minutes looking at Bill and Ted related information while writing this post.  The Internet is the devil.

Yes, you read that right.  You can’t control every outcome.  But you can control your attitude.  You can control your effort.  You can control a large part of your preparations.  You can control the virtue of your actions.  If you do all that and still lose?

Winning is still better than losing.  Winning is always better than losing.  Losing sucks, and you should never really be proud of it – it will become a habit.  But look for the lessons you can pick up for next time.

More next Wednesday when we look at how this impacts the rest of your life.

(And don’t forget to leave your psyche up to be aggressive music suggestions in the comments.)