Focus

Today, we take a closer look at focus, which is the first of our core features of a high performance mindset. The others are calm, confidence, and trust. Along with optimism and grit, these interweave to form the underlying structure for optimal training, development, and performance.

At the core of focus is being present in a way that allows you to devote all of your mind to awareness of the relevant features of the present moment by liberating you from distracting thoughts and emotions so that you maximize performance. The key skill we most want to develop for being focused is mindfulness. We also want to increase our awareness of how we're speaking to ourselves with increasing clarity on how we want to speak to ourselves.

The word ‘mindfulness' has become very popular in recent years. The essence of mindfulness is awareness in the present moment without judgement; awareness of your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and surroundings. By training mindfulness, we increase our ability to be fully in the present moment. We need to be present and focused because all we really have is now. You can only take action in the present. If you’re not fully present, then ‘now’ gets done sub-optimally, which means you go into the next moment in a state that’s sub-optimal. Questioning whether you’ll be able to make it the next 40 miles or if you’ll be able to get through the massive mountain climb that’s to come later in the race given how you feel now is not skillful thinking and it distracts you from being able to take the best care of yourself and operate to the best of your abilities now, which really is the only thing you can do to give yourself the best chance of hammering that next 40 miles or climbing that mountain. When you practice mindfulness, you learn how to become aware more often of the thoughts that take you out of the present moment so that you can recommit your focus. Ironically, the more we practice mindful awareness in the present moment, the more often we’ll slip into flow-state, which is a sort of optimal, no-mind state where performance flows from within. This has also been called ‘being in the zone’

You can practice mindfulness as much as you like. Every moment of the day is an opportunity. I’ve spoken and written more about this process of recognizing that you’re having negative thoughts and emotions, identifying them, letting go of your attachments to wishing things were different and switching to what you need to do in the present moment, then executing on what needs to be and can be done.

A complete awareness or mindfulness practice is about learning to observe and know that you know what your mind is experiencing and doing, without judgement. The process of that practice is a practice of deep focus.

According to Joseph Goldstein, world-renowned expert on this subject, mindfulness is more than just being present. Dogs live almost exclusively in the present but are probably not always mindful. The difference according to Goldstein is the knowing that you’re aware and doing so without filters or judgements. You can know that you’re feeling anxious or proud or that you’re having angry or happy thoughts. That’s part of mindfulness but not the full nature of it. As the awareness arises, it should be without judgement or attachment. If you’re seeing those emotions or thoughts through a mindset that judges or is connected to it rather than seeing it solely as information, then you’ll be unable to let go of it. If you’re recognizing that you’re having the thoughts or emotions with a mind that is free of aversion, greed, wanting, desire, or judgements, then you're free from identifying with what’s going on in your mind. By being free from identifying with it, you see it as something that is happening but that is not who you are and you can therefore see it pass.

So, being present is not enough. The liberating power of mindfulness is that it separates our thoughts and emotions from the notion of self and therefore you don't identify with those thoughts or emotions.

For some of you this may resonate. For others, this may sound like a lot of ethereal mush. So, here’s a concrete example. You’re running along and enjoying a beautiful day connecting with your surroundings when you trip over a rock and fall. Your mind immediately feels embarrassed that you did this in front of other people, stupid because you’re always tripping ‘what’s wrong with you?’, questioning of why you even run on trails because you’re no good at it, etc. Because of your mindfulness training you’re able to immediately see those thoughts and emotions as a reaction that is happening as it arises and skillfully see it as if it’s simply data, not defining of you even for an instant. And without identifying, you’re able to see those thoughts and emotions pass, dust yourself off, and get back to enjoying your run. You may be more aware now of where your feet are landing and the terrain in front of you not because you have those thoughts or feelings any longer but simply because you got some information that it would be wise to do so. And now you’re able to get back to focusing on training your body and craft.

You generally don’t realize how carrying those little bags of thoughts and emotions with you into the next moments compound over time. Then you feel overwhelmed or overreact later in the day or week or race. In many ways, mindfulness helps you to not carry baggage from one moment to the next and to dissolve the non-useful reactions in the moment so that you can have total clarity in the present moment to act skillfully. That clarity is a prerequisite for deep focus, the first of our key features for a high performance mindset.

The hardest part of mindfulness and developing the level of awareness that will help you become your ultra best is following through with a consistent and deliberate practice. The practice itself isn’t really very hard. You’ll put one to two hours a day into your physical training. You will get a big jump in the efficacy of your overall training program by adding ten minutes per day of mindfulness training. If you can’t afford any more time, then take every physical workout and chop 10 minutes off the end, do your mindfulness training then.

When you’re in a race, you’re more aware of your inner dialogue. But during the rest of our typical day, you’re still having a nearly continuous inner dialogue. There’s always self-talk going on. As you become more non-judgementally aware of your inner dialogue, you become more capable of regulating it so that, ironically, you can slip into a no-mind flow state where you're completely absorbed in the present moment, acting fluidly without distractions or negativity.

Ultra-endurance athletes often use fatigue, in part, to become more familiar of their inner dialogue. But, you can become more familiar with inner dialogue while sitting, eating, driving and even in the middle of a conversation.

You can’t regularly go out for extremely long runs where you can explore extreme fatigue and the inner dialogue that may come with it. There are other ways you can increase your awareness and familiarity with your dialogue. One is in harder and higher intensity workouts. Any time you make yourself uncomfortable, whether through running hard intervals or taking a cold shower or talking to that colleague you’re having an issue with, you create an opportunity to observe the inner dialogue that can impair your performance in all difficult and uncomfortable situations.

Your judgement and identification with outcomes can be damaging. Whether the outcome is poor performance or fabulous success, attachment to those and self-identification with a perceived value of those can be self-defeating. If someone is having a struggle with not getting what they want, they're probably focusing too much on the outcome rather than the things that are under their control. I’ve seen too many athletes plateau in physical training beginning soon after they started having persistent negative or pessimistic inner dialogues, whether those were initiated in training or at work or at home.

If you suffer from this pattern, try writing down three things that are in your control before a workout, a race, or any performance where you’re becoming focused on the outcome. Outcomes are nothing more than singular points of feedback on how the process came together in that moment of time. They don’t define you or label you, good or bad, in any way. As we talk about focus, it’s important to recognize and deeply appreciate that there is acute focus, being in the moment, and chronic or long-view focus. As you move along the path of becoming your ultra best, the long view has no outcomes, only the path. What we perceive as outcomes are only waypoints for feedback and information gathering to help us re-orient our trajectory. Rudyard Kipling wrote "Treat those two imposters [success and failure] as the same.” and I think that’s fitting advice.

We need to always remember that what’s most important is now. And the way to do your best right now is to gain clarity. Clarity allows focus and focus allows us to be in the present moment so that we can do our best at what needs to be done.

From focus with mindfulness, you can develop the other features of a high performance mindset: calm, confidence, optimism, and trust. Whether it’s being your best self in a conversation with a loved one, driving your car in heavy traffic, mowing the lawn, out on a training run, or in a race, focus is the basis of being present.

Your performance is always dominated by your mindset and your ability to work quickly and skillfully with your mind in the moments of performance. I hope that you can now see why deliberate practice at mindfulness gives you the ability to focus. And that you can only develop a deep ability to focus through practice. By practicing daily, you get faster and better at eliminating those distractions more quickly as they arise. You need a deliberate practice to develop this skill. Simply trying to stay focused all the time isn’t going to get you there.

I strongly recommend you learn more about ways of developing mindfulness. My favorite place to start is with Dan Harris’ book Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics. There are many, many other options and resources on the topic of mindfulness training on the internet including podcasts like Secular Buddhism and apps like 10% Happier and Calm.

You can take this practice into your running, which to me is more than just a recommendation, it’s a requirement for optimal performance. As you learn the techniques to practice from those resources, you’ll see how you can apply them while running. For example, you can practice by being focused only on your breath as you run, or only on the sound of your footsteps, or only the collage of images you see, or perhaps the entire soundscape around you. Those are potential objects of single point mindfulness practice. There is also a contemplative mindfulness practice that you’ll learn as you get deeper into those resources and it will be apparent how you can practice them deliberately to develop better focus in your running.

If you have any trouble or questions, reach out to me at my e-mail address shawn@scienceofultra.com