Focus

Life can throw many challenges, obstacles and distractions our way. In this episode Glenn explores how to maintain or if need be, to regain focus. This is a highly informative talk, that will motivate you to reclaim your power and undergo whatever endeavour you wish to achieve.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the podcast.

And today we are discussing focus.

Something that is desperately needed by us this morning,

I think.

No,

Because if we were to focus,

Then it would be ingenuine.

Yeah,

It wouldn't be our show.

No,

We are not focused at the moment,

But we will be by the end of this conversation.

I hope so.

Yes,

Focus,

Daniel-san.

So what we are talking about is we just started recording and I had to stop you immediately because I was in the wrong screen.

So it would have been side by side the whole time.

I don't want that.

Now,

Is that going to be recorded on the video version of this?

There is a video of that,

Yeah.

Oh yeah,

We will have to put that up.

Yeah,

Alright.

That is fun stuff.

Yeah,

And you can find all of that stuff at patreon.

Com slash Glenn Ambrose.

True,

True that.

For fun behind the scenes silly videos.

So yeah,

So we are going to talk about focus and we are going to try to hit it from a bunch of different angles.

So I was just reading,

I am re-reading The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer,

Which is phenomenal.

Definitely my top three books of all time.

He talks about it,

About focusing on consciousness really,

Coming into the moment,

Becoming the observer.

When I started,

Actually when I was re-reading this book,

It reminded me of something that I used to teach people in personal training,

Because you can actually divide your focus and sometimes you obviously don't want to do that.

Quite often,

Many times you don't want to do that.

But there are times when you do want to do that and I think it is good to do it anyway just as an experiment,

Just because you kind of learn to control your consciousness and understand that you have more control over it than you realize.

So like what I used to teach people in personal training was that like in the beginning when you are teaching somebody an exercise,

They have to really concentrate on that exercise and the movement of it.

But then after a while,

After you get used to the form,

You basically know what you are doing.

You know what is expected of them in that exercise.

So you can stop focusing on the form so much.

You can stop telling your arm to move a certain way over and over and having all your focus on the form of it and you can start focusing on other things like the muscle contraction and expansion and really just putting your attention on the muscle,

Doing the work and getting the most fatigue possible on that muscle.

I used to tell people,

You can take 10 to 25% of your consciousness and put it on the form so you don't completely forget about the form.

You don't completely,

And of course I am talking about exercises but you can try this in anything.

If you know how to do something,

You don't have to 100% have your consciousness on doing it.

You can just put a portion of your consciousness on doing it and then have the rest of your consciousness on other things.

We do it all the time.

When we are driving,

Half the time we are not paying attention to the fact that we are driving.

When we are cooking,

We are thinking of other things.

Our consciousness,

Our focus is divided into many areas.

Just becoming aware of that and learning how to control it and say,

Oh,

I am going to put more of my consciousness on this and less on this.

Just playing around with it really gives you the control that gives you access to the control that you already have.

You just don't know you have it.

What do you think about that,

Ben?

Take that,

Ben.

Ben Yeah.

I think that focus is a huge thing and being able to focus your consciousness on what you are doing.

Everybody is multitasking at all times.

I think that that is a problem that I have or an issue that I have definitely is maintaining focus and making sure that my focus is on the right thing and not spreading my focus too thin.

You know what I mean?

Right.

That is the problem most people have.

In hindsight,

I am very surprised that I came in that door because usually we are trying to get our focus more focused.

Here I am talking about how to disperse it.

I think it is a good way just to play around with it and start understanding that you have more control over this than you realize.

Once you stop playing around with it,

Then you are aware of it.

Right.

Once you are aware of it,

Then you can start focusing it when you want to.

That is really most of the time what we are going to want to do.

I have always been a pretty decent multitasker.

When you are doing plays and directing things and whatnot,

You have to spread your.

.

.

I am having a huge deja vu moment right now.

I think that I dreamed this conversation a couple of nights ago.

Anyway,

That does not usually happen to me,

But I just said that phrase and I went,

I have been here.

Wow.

This is weird.

Anyway,

Yeah.

So,

When you are directing a show,

You have to spread your focus a lot.

Especially during the shows.

When I was doing theater for high school,

I would pride myself on being the person on headset and being in the light booth and controlling everything.

Things would go wrong because it was high school theater.

These were high school kids doing it.

I remember once we were doing Sweeney Todd and we had this gigantic classic Sweeney set piece that was like six feet tall and eight feet wide.

It was a huge box that turned into different set pieces and you could use the top and everything.

The wheels got stuck so we couldn't turn it anymore and that's the whole show.

Everybody was freaking out and I was telling the spotlight people what to do and talking to actors backstage and going,

Look,

I need you to go all the way stage right and we're going to follow you in spotlight.

Then meanwhile,

Telling other people backstage,

We need as many people as possible to get out there.

There's got to be a sharpie or something under that wheel.

Somebody has to go get it.

Everybody else has to turn.

Basically,

For a high school show,

You spend six weeks to three months blocking and doing everything meticulously because it's involved and it's a three-hour show and they really can't handle it mostly and then to change all of that on the fly.

That's tough.

It takes an incredible amount of focus on what you're doing and you're really spreading that thin.

I used to pride myself on that and now that it's been 15 years almost of doing that sort of stuff all the time and now we have multiple podcasts and video projects and trivia stuff,

And home stuff,

I'm like,

My brain is so scattered all the time thinking of different things.

That's how our lives get.

That's something that I struggle with a lot and something that I've talked to you about and Dave always tells me,

Man,

You're great.

You have a special mind,

But you need to find a way to focus it.

I think that a lot of it is just being conscious of what we're doing.

I think we lean towards the healthier ways of doing things more often than not,

Especially when we're exposed to it.

In this world,

We're exposed to multitasking,

So that's what we do,

But I think if we're exposed to other ways of doing things,

We'll lean in those directions more.

That was a good example of a situation where it's necessary to multitask because you need to multitask in that particular situation.

There's lots of situations where people need to multitask,

But a lot of situations we don't need to.

My life is there's a lot of multitasking because I have a lot of things going on,

But when I try not to lean in that direction,

I try not to do it as much as possible.

I think I do a decent job at that.

Honestly,

The only reason I say that,

Which is going to be funny,

Is because of failures that I've had.

Before I lived in Florida,

One time I was on vacation in Florida.

I'm somewhat familiar with the area,

But not completely.

I'm going through a drive-through with my son and trying to take directions from a friend where I'm going to meet somewhere.

I was just like,

I completely messed up everything because I couldn't drive,

Get the order,

Pay for it,

And take directions at the same time.

It was just a complete mess.

I think I messed up three out of the four things.

It was in its little situations like that where I noticed I'm really not that good at multitasking.

I can do it when I need to in my life,

But I think I'm not good at multitasking because I try not to be.

I try to focus on- You definitely try to focus on one thing.

I get that about you.

Yeah,

I focus on what I'm doing when I'm doing it.

That's the only thing.

If I lock on to something and I'm just going and I'm doing that,

I'm good.

When I start bringing in other pieces and meshing them all together and stuff,

It throws me off.

Not everybody's going to be the same.

Some people are going to be more like me.

Some people are going to be more like you.

Some people are going to be in between.

There's all different versions of it,

But I think if we keep in mind that if we're doing four things at one time,

We're putting 25% of our energy on four different things.

Absolutely.

It's literally impossible to do them as well as if you had 100% focus.

This entire conversation always brings me to.

.

.

I just want to apologize if people heard that or if they're watching the video and saw me just lean over.

There was a very weird noise outside of my window and we're getting a large pole and spring delivery at the moment.

I'm not sure if people are going to be able to hear that or not,

But it startled me.

Anyway,

This focus subject and what you were just talking about always brings me back to.

.

.

And specifically the thing that you were just talking about of if you're doing four things at once,

You're really only doing 25% of your ability to each of them.

It always reminds me of the thing that you talk about a lot,

Which is John Wooten and the UCLA men's basketball team.

You know what I'm talking about,

Obviously.

Yeah.

But their level of specific focus and dedication on whatever it was that they're doing at the moment,

Doing that to the best of your ability.

Right.

If you're dribbling the basketball,

Make each dribble the best dribble.

If you're tying your shoes.

Right.

He taught them how to tie their shoes the right way.

It was just,

But do it to the best of your ability.

He didn't worry about winning and losing.

He just worried about doing whatever you could at that particular moment to the best of your ability.

And then it would all string together.

If you were making a pass,

Make the best pass you could.

So he brought that consciousness focused right on to the act that they were performing at that particular moment.

Are we going to win the game?

If you do the best you can in every moment,

Then a lot.

.

.

And everybody's doing that on a team.

Most often you're going to win.

But even if you don't,

It doesn't really matter.

You did literally the best you were humanly capable of doing.

So you're going to get all upset that you lost.

It's completely out of your control.

There are situations that even if you're doing the best you can,

There might be a team that's just that much better that you can't beat them.

So getting upset over that isn't going to help anything.

Right.

That's something that.

.

.

So focus on what you can control.

That's something that when I was playing football in high school,

I did not realize the value of doing your job,

As Kovalevichek would put it.

I was a nose guard and I got a tackle one time that caused a fumble on a wide receiver.

And I was like,

That's amazing.

I caused a fumble and I think it set up a score for us.

And it was great.

It was a JV game.

And my coach came over and screamed at me.

I was like,

What?

He was like,

There is no world where a nose guard should be making the tackle on a wide receiver.

What were you doing?

How were you not in the middle of the line?

Yeah.

That's insane.

Yeah.

And it's true.

I think that the wide receiver was up the middle,

But why was I back that far?

You know what I mean?

Right.

And it was something that I did not realize the value of doing your job,

Which is what they.

.

.

Stay home is what they would always say in practice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean,

Team sports,

That's very.

.

.

That's one of the reasons why I like sports.

And of course,

You can get this in a lot of areas.

I grew up playing sports.

My son plays soccer.

So it worked out.

And he's still playing soccer at 17,

Almost 18.

So he's stuck with it a lot of years.

It worked out.

And I think that there's lots of good lessons that you can learn in sports.

But like I said,

I don't believe in putting the square peg in a round hole.

If there's a kid that doesn't like sports,

Don't put them in sports just for the lesson.

If they don't like it,

They don't like it.

They can learn these lessons elsewhere.

Because sports really does do a good job of teaching that.

You need to focus on your job,

Doing it to the best of your ability every play.

And if something happens that doesn't work to your benefit,

You need to let go of that.

And I mean,

I had a tough time in team sports,

Like I was around puberty,

But I had a tough time with everything around puberty.

That's when I was really getting an attitude and resisting the most.

And one of the things that I didn't like was like I played that I wasn't the most athletically talented,

But I had the most heart.

If there was going to be somebody trying hard,

It was going to be me.

I left it all on the field.

And there were other people that were more athletically talented than I was that didn't always do that.

And it frustrated me a lot.

And I see that in my son too.

And it's like now I can kind of,

And my whole life has been like this.

I learned lessons through him.

He kind of relives things.

And I see it now.

It's like if you're going to enjoy whatever you're doing for a job,

Anything in life,

If you're going to enjoy anything in life,

You need to stay focused on doing your best because you can't feel good about yourself and enjoy things if you're not doing your best.

You can't.

You can't do something half ass and then go sit home and just be like,

You know,

I really love myself.

I'm really,

You know,

I'm really applying myself to my life.

No,

You're not.

So you have to do your best at what you do to love yourself.

And you have to put your focus on that.

If your focus is on what everybody else is doing and whether they're doing it right or whether they're not doing it right,

Team sports is going to be difficult.

A lot of jobs are going to be difficult.

A lot of situations where there are other people impacting,

You know,

Your life.

That's how we go into victim mode is because our focus is half on what everybody else is doing and why it's screwing us up instead of what we're doing.

And we have no control over that.

Yeah.

You know,

If we stay focused on what we're doing,

Why we're doing it and giving our best at whatever we're doing,

We're going to rise to the top.

Is there going to be situations where somebody else might come along and who's vicious and,

You know,

At a job and undercut us and make us look like crap and then we get fired?

Could be.

It could happen.

But I guarantee you,

You're going to if you continue doing your best,

There's going to be other people that have seen that you're going to roll into something even better with a company that doesn't have people like that or,

You know,

You're going to continue to rise.

People don't do that.

That's the nature of the universe.

You don't do your best and,

You know,

Live ethically and really focused and moving forward and then end up last.

It doesn't happen.

Yes.

It certainly feels like that sometimes.

Trust me,

I've been there.

But at the end of the day,

The cream rises to the top,

You know.

And you know,

Obviously,

We relied heavy on some sports metaphors there.

But as you said,

Like so many other things can give you that same attention and teach you how to focus on things and to just focus on one part of something.

I mean,

I was fortunate enough to be involved in sports and the arts and performing arts and stuff.

And,

You know,

Like Dave,

For example,

Who,

You know,

People probably know from the show and he's the other producer,

The edits and stuff,

Is a fantastic singer.

And I was in chorus with him when we were growing up.

And he was by far the best singer in the choir,

But he needed to learn how to blend.

You know what I mean?

And everybody else in the choir,

Like if you're an alto,

You have the worst part in the world usually,

You know.

It's like,

You know what I mean?

You're not singing the melody,

You're not singing the pretty part that the sopranos are,

But you have to really focus.

And musical theater is tough too,

Especially like I was talking about high school kids doing Sondheim earlier,

Which is insane.

The level of detail that you have to focus on and you have to not be distracted by the things going around you,

Especially when it comes to like music like that.

It's the more pretty things that are going around you,

But that's not your responsibility.

Right.

You know?

So there are,

And dance classes which I've taken,

I took at college and like,

You have to be uniform and with everybody and focused on yourself and focused on everybody else with your peripheral vision.

Right.

Like there is no limit to the amount of examples that you can look for if you're looking for it.

If you're focused on finding focus.

Yeah,

You'll see it.

And that's what it is.

You know,

It focuses,

I mean literally it's taking our consciousness,

Our attention and putting it on either several things or one thing,

You know,

And it's often they use the example of like a flashlight,

You know,

A flashlight with a broad,

You know,

Just spreading the light over a gigantic circle is one way and there's a benefit for that sometimes,

You know?

It's a lot more powerful if you,

You know,

Shrink that same amount of light into a very small focused area,

You know?

And I mean,

You know,

Then you can get a laser beam and cut through things.

I mean,

That's the difference.

And it's the same thing with our mental focus.

If our focus is spread over a bunch of things,

Sometimes it's necessary to pay attention to all these different things in certain scenarios.

But if you want the focused strength on one thing to really knock it out of the park,

Well then,

You know,

You really need to learn how to focus and playing around with your focus and putting the attention just knowing that you can do that,

I think is a big deal.

And it also,

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this was because it blends right into all the biggest teachings that are out there right now,

You know,

With Michael Singer and the Untethered Soul and the power of now with Eckhart Tolle.

And I mean,

And a lot of others,

It's a lot of it is really understanding our consciousness and kind of like becoming the observer.

You know,

One of the best things that we can do to bring peace into our lives is to lean away from whatever is going on.

Whenever there's something that happens that we don't like in our world,

Our focus goes flying right at it,

Right at the problem,

You know,

And it's like we're two inches away from the problem.

And that's all we can see.

And that's all we're focused on.

You know,

But if we lean back away from it and just put it into perspective,

And you know,

There's one of two things you can do.

You can kind of lean back and put your focus on being the observer of it.

Okay,

You know,

I'm me.

I'm safe.

I'm okay.

I'm back here.

There's a problem out there.

But I'm the observer of what's going on.

I'm not actually what's going on.

So I can just separate myself from what's going on a little bit and lean back and just become the observer and look at it for a second.

Then we kind of detach from the emotional trauma of the situation when we're too close to it.

And we can kind of lean back away from it a little bit and see what to do.

There's an autobiography or a collection of plays that has memoirs in it from Neil Simon,

The playwright who passed away recently.

And I read it a long time ago.

And I think like the opening forward in this particular book was the writer as the observer.

And he was talking about like getting into a fight with his wife over dinner or something and separating himself from himself having the fight and observing it and finding the comedy in it and whatever.

And that always stuck with me.

And then later,

Listening to like Eckhart Tolle talk about,

You know,

If I can't live with myself,

Who is the me that can't live with this?

And that whole observer situation really reminded me of that.

So yeah,

And that's it.

And that's what's cool about this.

You know,

That's what I always love about spirituality.

And I really try to bring it into this show.

It's spirituality.

It kind of sounds like this mystical woo woo like,

Holy crap,

Glenn's talking about dividing his consciousness and all this,

You know,

Ethoteric stuff and like just,

You know,

No,

It's,

You know,

People who have been successful have implemented this into their daily lives.

You know,

And it's just because it just works.

That's why,

You know,

And so that's what spirituality is about.

It's about understanding your life functioning in a better,

More successful and happier way within our lives.

You know,

That's what it's all about.

So if we can understand this stuff and understand how our consciousness works and understand that we can lean back and be the observer a little bit.

And it sounds a little weird until you try it.

But if you try it,

You know,

The stuff we're talking about is actually,

It's not that difficult because it's our natural way of being.

We're made to be able to do this.

It's who we are underneath.

We just,

Nobody's taught it to us.

We've forgotten how to do this.

You know,

So it's just,

If you play around with your consciousness,

If you have an open mind and just start playing around with leaning back,

Becoming the observer.

So basically putting your consciousness on you,

Watching things unfold and stuff like that and dividing your conscious attention and your focus and you just,

And then hyper focus on something and you play around with this stuff.

You'll figure out how to do it.

You know,

The words that I'm saying aren't going to teach you exactly how to do it.

You never,

Like,

I'm not going to use the exact right words,

Explain it perfectly.

And then you go,

Oh,

Okay,

Now I can do that.

That makes perfect sense.

I can do that.

And one of the best ways that I think,

At least that I,

You know,

I help get focus is meditation as a practice,

You know,

To gain focus as the person observing my thoughts.

So like I would recommend,

You know,

Oh,

What's it called?

Well,

Obviously Insight Timer is great and there's a ton of great guided meditations for that and Headspace is a great,

You know,

Just.

Just letting your,

You know,

Letting your thoughts fly by like clouds and there's blue sky above it.

Right.

Understanding that,

That you can be sitting there and a thought can come through and you can not attach to the thought.

You know,

The thought,

Oh,

I have to go grocery shopping later.

That can come in and you can just let it pass right by without trying to figure out what attaching to it,

Trying to figure out what time you need to go,

What you need to get,

You know,

All that stuff.

So it's,

You know,

It's your,

Your consciousness is there and then you just have a thought pass through.

That's all you just don't,

You just don't lock your focus onto that thought.

As soon as you do that,

You know,

Then you're lost in thought and you're not really in control of yourself.

But yeah,

The certainly meditation is one of the best ways to lean back and understanding that meditation doesn't necessarily mean absence of thoughts.

It just means absence of attaching to the thoughts,

You know,

Or not attaching to them to the best of your ability,

Knowing that sometimes you will.

But yeah,

Playing around with this type of stuff,

Even though you don't fully grasp it,

That's where you're going to find it.

You know,

That that's what you need to do.

Most people try to wait until they fully grasp it and understand it.

Like,

This isn't math,

You know,

I can't put two apples in front of you and bring in another two and show you that it equals four.

So it's,

You know,

We just,

It's difficult sometimes to explain spirituality because it's,

It's,

It's grander than just a group of words.

So these words are just pointers to it.

So take,

You know,

What you've heard,

And even though you might not fully grasp it or just play around with the things that we're discussing in your own way,

And it is in your nature to be able to do this.

So if you play around with it for a little bit,

You're going to fall in and you're going to be like,

Oh my God,

That's what he was talking about.

Oh,

I think I did it.

Oh,

You know,

Create a little adventure out of it.

It's exciting.

It's fun.

It absolutely is.

Yeah.

Holy crap.

I did it.

So that's,

That's about it for today.

I thought this was a great conversation.

As I said,

I thought it would be about focus and you know,

So if you want to,

If you want to get in touch with Glenn,

Obviously Glen Ambrose.

Com and if you want to support the show patreon.

Com slash Glenn Ambrose,

There's a ton of exclusive content and you can see a video version of this show with,

You know,

Glenn and I giving each other weird looks and blank stares,

Trying not to smile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

Yeah,

Check us out there and that'll do it for today.

So we'll talk at you soon.

Glenn is available for life coaching sessions.

To book an appointment or for more information,

Go to Glen Ambrose.

Com,

Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or click the link in the description of this episode.

Reviews

Thank you Glenn on for your Focus talk ,a lot of clarity.

Thank you for the reminder on The Untethered Soul 💜

Awesome as always!

Good fun with lots to think about 💜x

Shazzaaammm!! Another fantastic life lesson! My next mission is to focus on getting focused and try not to run into a wall while focusing on walking to the door. Hahaha

Thank youuuuu Glen&Ben! It was again deliciously entertaining (sometimes it feels as if I were a part of the whole discussion going on) and there were moments I had to keep still and feel the depth of what’s being just shared...
🙏🏼

Always good talk. Helped me realize meaning of focus & meaning of real meditation. 🙏🏼🌈🙏🏼

As always......information I needed to hear mixed with humor. That's why you guys WORK! THANKS!!