Focus…First Ask What’s My Target

Focus Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash


Focus is one of life’s mental mastery lessons that are all around us. It’s amazing how often the lessons from one thing spills over into everything else. I have seen the lessons repeated in karate, sword, archery, driving, and even the incredible passion of some that is golf. Is it any wonder that adherents of these skills and arts cannot help but draw life lessons from them that apply to so many other totally different fields and skills?

Same lesson from so many fields?

I have my own theory. We are all drawn to different interests by our choices or circumstances we have wandered into. The reason we wind up learning the same lesson is that we all possess a universal tool. Our minds and how it works is always the same. This is the reason so many masters have long held little difference between skills. Many masters do not see a change of skill as a change of mind. A Zen proverb says

“Shooting with an arrow and dancing, decorating with flowers and singing, drinking tea and fighting – it is all the same.”

The masters around the world have been on to something for a long time. We do not really master a given skill, rather we work deep into a skill to master ourselves. We do that by controlling the fears that plague our mind and prevents us from entering in to a natural flow. It is about how we approach our mental game. That mental game is focus.

What’s my target?

I was following along with another Chet Scott article today. He advised to begin each task by asking yourself “What’s my target?” to shift your mental game into gear. His article directed me to the classic on getting the golf mindset Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game – Dr. Gio Valiante.

I am always interested in any book that gives me a new perspective on how the mind works. Dr. Valinate a genius of the golf head game. Fortunately for everyone, the head game for writing is very much the same one that hunts down those who play golf.

So what is the head game for a golfer?

The golfer both average and pro fights the same critic when he adresses the ball that you and I face on the blank paper. That incessant voice that is filled with an infinite deluge of remarks and questions that drive us away from staying in the moment as we do our work, killing any chance of a natural flow. Killing our game. Destroying our focus.

Golf’s mind game…focus

Both minds are filled with fear based remarks, memories and questions. We are thinking about the wrong things. The solution master golfers use is to eliminate those questions in favor of a handful they continually repeat to draw them from their ego based mind to a mastery mindset.

Pro golfer Davis Love III changes his mindset from ego based concerns by focusing with the question “What is my target?”

Master questions

He is not alone. Mater golfers have just four questions they use throughout the game as a kind of rolling mantra to keep their mind focused on the work before them.

What is my target?
What is the best way to play this hole?
How do I want to hit this shot?
What sort of shot does this hole require?

These work well for golfers. Our mind responds visually to what we ask it and stays focused on hitting the target. That process eliminates the fear they face performing in front of a crowd.

The writer’s focus

The same thinking is going on in a writer’s head. The trouble for us is we don’t really know our target. After all the study and strategizing is done we finally create a plan. Then what happens? We BOMB. Bomb BIG.


What’s wrong? Where did we go wrong? We have our studies done and have a formed plan. The strategy is perfect. No step missed, yet…

We tripped up on the play itself because our lack of a focus was from our inner dialog’s failure to address the work before us. When we are not present, we are not in the flow. No flow means you no go… or rather you go, but not into the work.

Our mind was awash in various voices in our heads. You are back in the past with your planning and failures and successes or you are in the future with your hopes and dreams and idea endings. Our head is awash with questions on our mortality and that last critical review. We hear our teacher from years gone by announcing our D- in on the English exam with the words “See me after class.”

Clarity

Almost none of our thoughts are about our target. In fact if that voice is there, it’s weak and lost in the massive chorus of thoughts and ideas dancing about in our heads. We lack clarity. There is no focus.

It is hard to see things clearly when all you look at are the obstacles. Yes there is a time for that, but that was two steps back when we were planning. Now we must to use a Steven Pressfield concept, swing our swing. We must act without thinking about mechanics or other distractions to focus.

How do we get that vision?

We can start our work with a simple mantra “What’s my target?”

There is no endeavor in the entirety of humanity that does not at some point require complete focus of our minds. In fact our minds are totally built for this concept. We tend to only think of one thing at a time. We are good at it. Really good at working with just one thing, the problem is we are so good we can dance a million ideas through the CPUs of our minds at speeds that even the greatest quantum computer would have trouble rivaling.

The greatest advantage a quantum computer has over a human is that it lacks imagination. It can only work with the information it is given. It has automatic focus because it knows what the target is and is not distracted by unessential things. When the day comes that the computer has an imagination and with it an inner critic riding on its shoulder chattering away is the day that advantage will end.

Any kind of multi-tasking only makes the issue worse. Focus requires we not try to hit a handful of targets with just one arrow. It’s just not realistic. More often than not we will just aim in the general direction we think is right. Often this is a lesson in futility when we miss the actual target that will move us forward.

Game Plan

The game plan comes down to just one simple mantra. “What’s my target?” When you know what end result you want to hit, you will no longer be in a Hail Mary pass and pray kind of process. You will actually know where you want to hit. When you lose your arrow, you will know only know your target. It should even surprise you, much the same as the Kyudo archers when they sense the release of the perfect shot. You might even ask yourself, “Where did that come from?” That is how perfect your focus can become.

My focus target

Clarity and focus comes not from random work but the evaluation of aimed effort. We get that when we shift to the work away from the ego. “What’s my target?

Try this great article Mastery It’s Not What You Think

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash