Episode Notes

Have you ever felt challenged to direct your focus? We are looking to check the weather APP one second, and all the pop-ups grab our attention. Pretty soon, we turned off our phone and remembered afterward that the one thing we needed and didn’t look up was the temperature. We have similar physical experiences. We enter a room to get something and forget what we needed in that room once there. Only to leave the room, remember, and then schlep back to get the forgotten item. Distraction is time-consuming and toxic. What if we could reverse the trend by learning to catch ourselves before getting distracted?

Today, I talk about directing attention. Focus is a skill set with four aspects: directing, sustaining, noticing, and relaxing attention. Directing attention is focusing on the right things at the right time. An ability to keep your focus, control impulses, and keep your mind from wandering directionless.

Because meditation can reduce lapses in attention and positively impact our work and relationships, I have prepared a 6-minute meditation exercise to help you direct your focus. After completing this meditation exercise, please share it with your leadership team, staff, and family. We can all learn this first aspect of focus: directing our attention. DOWNLOAD 

My inspiration for today’s topic and meditation came from a series I am doing through Healthy Minds Innovation and Healthy Minds @Work. I highly recommend the Healthy Minds APP to track your progress as you build a calm, clear, and stable mind. It is not unlike building muscles in other parts of the body. Repetitions, consistency, and intensity strengthen muscle tissue in different muscles groups building skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles over time.

A meditative state of mindful alertness all day. What would that be like? Try it and experience the energy surge as you direct your mind to what you want and need to focus on. I have found a consistent practice with the four aspects of focus helps me gain control of my mind, even when it is in its most distracted state. I know what has happened and can direct my attention back to the task at hand. My ability to sustain attention longer has increased with it. You can even begin to notice when your attention has been diverted and how it feels when attention is in a relaxed state, like in between daily tasks and projects.

Directing attention doesn’t do much good if we can’t sustain our attention, so next week I will empower you with a meditation practice you can do to sustain focus, a compliment to directing attention. DOWNLOAD

NEXT STEP after meditating: Challenge yourself and do the Conscious Attentive Leadership Mentoring (C.A.L.M.) Activities are below.