Your Focus Needs More Focus by Malia

Most of us are seasoned enough to remember Ralph Machio in Karate Kid. "Wax on Wax Off" or "Paint the Fence." It was a continuation of the theme from Star Wars popularized by Yoda and Luke in the swamp, "Do or do not do. There is no try.”  Magic moments in movies like these instill in us concepts that are being underscored by the science of the brain now 🧠. 

Problem: If only we were up to date on the science, it might change everything.

Some of you may recall that nearly twenty years ago, during our town’s 4th of July parade, I was in the back seat of a modified 1920s model T Ford painted white with black spots like a Holstein cow ...with steer horns attached to the front hood. 🐮  This vehicle was modified to do two ways: 1) it bucked with its front tires in the air like a wild bronco, and 2) once the tires were in the air, the car would spin in circles in place. It was a parade showstopper, and I was sitting in the back seat when this bucking happened.

Back to Karate Kid. In the remake of Karate Kid with Will Smith’s Son, Jaden Smith, he is taught new principles by Mr. Han, played by Jackie Chan, the maintenance man-martial arts master in his new homeland.  Dre, Jaden Smith, is a spirited student with a lot of heart for learning the sport, but his mind is impatient with the progress he is making.

•  You see, Dre’s mind, like our mind, has a lizard brain component wired to get you what you focus on. This helps you most of the time to accomplish your goals with ease. However, it is also attached to your emotions. If you are in a hurry, afraid of something, or don’t want something in your life, this part of your brain also activates.  It delivers signals to another part of your brain to produce chemicals in your body that cause your heart rate to increase, your eyes to open wide, your digestion to shut down, and, to borrow a common phrase in our household, it could even cause your“blood to boil.” Many of us have felt this moment when we are angry or feel upset about something.  Or when there’s a loud bang from some unknown direction. Hyper vigilance is a sign of this part of the brain being engaged. Especially while watching fireworks.
•  These are symptoms of fight, flight or freeze in your body. You’ve probably heard of that part of your brain-body connection. It’s also called your sympathetic nervous system.
•  The problem with this mechanism, also known as the RAS (reticular activating system), is that unless you are aware of the connection consciously, you have no control over its impact on your life or the results you will experience next.
•  Does your life seem out of control? Does this sound familiar? To be clear, you may have tried some of the popular transformation techniques of affirmations in the mirror, or Mind Movies, or weaponizing yourself like a soldier like Goggins, or possibly you watched _The Secret_ movie, had an affair with _What the Bleep ??!_ for a week, or were told to start giving to some charity while you were at a Christian Rock Concert to activate the Law of Receiving, or maybe it’s simpler than that for you. Maybe you’ve just tried to stop being so angry, or stop yelling at your kids, or stop calling yourself fowl names, or just plain using fowl words when you make a mistake or stub your toe, or stop eating the whole plate of food because you heard that smaller plates actually trick the mind into being full, but you are at a restaurant and didn’t bring your diet plate with you—so no leftovers today. Better eat it all now. You could be so fired up about World Hunger that you actually do contribute to a good cause, but the resource hijacking disguised as a return to the colonial motherland of Russia is positively unfathomable because we’ve been killing people over resources for thousands of years prior to the convenience and speed of sharing food using trucks and airplanes that can deliver to far off lands prior to the food spoiling just like we learned in _All I Really Need to Know…_ about sharing, I learned in kindergarten. They probably did, too. You could be so angry and hurt about nothing being sacred in the current world—especially killing children over property disputes (also something we learned about in kindergarten) and then had a refresher on when our neighbor asked to build a wall for her garden on our joint property line and then proceeded to finish it with beautiful decorator stones on her side and left the bare bricks on our side because she might have skipped kindergarten before going to that super expensive college that was only for the generationally wealthy-connected kids prior to affirmative action and just plain common sense in a garden tells us that we need more variety in the world to expand the bounty of our harvest, viewpoints, and perspectives anyway.
•  Or maybe you’ve read that the Chinese have collected data that includes what type of dance moves you are focusing on while watching TikTok videos. At the same time, you might be in the camp that *your* government should have the only monopoly on that private information, even though your Rewards Card at the grocery store has been paying you fifty-cents-off to give your preferred toilet paper brand 🧻 data for years.
•  Yet you are likely the type of person who read and believed Gandhi's words: “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” and you might even own the mug to prove it.
•  Although currently, you cannot connect with a full day's worth of peace, let alone two minutes of peace while drinking your coffee and watching or reading the daily newsfeeds—go figure. Ironically, many of you report this as the most peaceful part of your day. Yet, the science shows that caffeine paired with a fine dose of lousy news jacks you up immediately and gives this part of your brain instructions to go haywire and change your focus to anything but peace.

So, back to Jaden Smith, in a key part of the movie, Dre tells his martial arts teacher, Mr. Han, that he wants to learn the “Cobra thing.” Dre’s interpretation of the Cobra move is that it is how to control people. Mr. Han’s response is something we could all pay some attention to: “there’s only one person you need to learn how to control”.

Dre replies, “Who?” and doesn’t quite get what Mr. Han means, so Mr. Han starts asking him to empty his mind and follow the energy. Of course, this is Hollywood, so picture Mr. Han and Dre standing on a dock extending into a beautiful lake with green-thatched mountains rising up in the background. Mr. Han has attached one 5-foot-long bamboo pole to his wrist and he attaches the corresponding pole to Dre’s opposite wrist. They are now tied together, facing each other. When Mr. Han moves his right arm, Dre’s left arm moves, and then the opposite arms move until they are in a puppet-like dance with both arms moving synchronously.  Suddenly, they pivot into a joint spin that only a highly choreographed ballet duet could pull off or some high-level quick-quick, quick-quick Texas two-steppers.

The problem is that Dre is still thinking about the Cobra move in his mind, so his mind is not focused on the energy, and Mr. Han sees it and can feel it in the vibrating bamboo poles.

Back to the parade. I’m in the backseat of the aptly named “Buckin’ Ford,” minding my own business watching the parade goers waving their United States Flags and kids with puckered faces sucking on popsicles, when all of a sudden, the Bucking Ford stops in the middle of the parade. Next thing I know, the Ford jolts back on its hind quarters where I’m sitting, only, now I find myself in the air, no seat belts prior to Nader’s _Unsafe At Any Speed_, head bashing against the mental bar of the nonexistent Bimini top.

The next thing we know, we find Dre hanging face first two inches from the surface of the lake, arms at his sides supporting the weight of his body over the water. The only thing balancing his next move is Mr. Han's body leveraging backward at a 45 degree angle on the dock.

Mr. Han tells Dre, “Your focus needs more focus.”

In the back of that Buckin' Ford, as I came down from my airborne moment, everything in my life came into crisp, clear focus. As anyone in a traumatic moment can attest to: time slows down or seems to go non-existent.

You see, hear, and feel the present moment as if you are in a video on slow-motion playback, or maybe it’s a superhero moment like we see in the comic books. When I touched down at my seat, the look on my mom’s face and the energy with which she rallied someone in the crowd to give her ice out of their Blue Igloo cooler (this was BY) was as fast as a lightning strike. I could feel the intensity of the collision on my face, in my neck, and down to my flip-flops.

Tough way to learn the lesson, “Your focus needs more focus.”

Yet, this is what most of us do. We wait until a moment of impact instead of training like a well-seasoned martial artist.

I’m glad to report that both Dre's and my story have happy endings. 

I’ve told you all of this not to alarm you, but to say that whatever it is you truly want, reign in your focus. Work with your body-mind hardware and software package the way it was designed.

Be deliberate about what you focus on. If you are focused on feeling better, being kinder, or world peace (peas?), you just might get it. Your RAS can and will support you in whatever you focus on.

And if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, reach out to me or someone who knows something about the science of you. Being human is partly about your mind, partly about your body, and partly about your soul. Get curious about how you create results in your life using what you've got, where you are, with what you have.

Thank you to our statesmanlike father, Theodore Roosevelt, for that widely used quote and, more profoundly, for Yellowstone National Park, which is enjoyed by millions of people every year from every country around the world because we embraced the concept of kindness for the earth, people and nature in symbiosis, and the concept of sharing over 100 years ago.  Proof that it is possible to accomplish what you focus on when you choose to have more "Focus in your Focus."

One thing I know for sure, whether you are new to the science or you follow Oprah, focus is not what you think it is right now. It’s not what you feel it is right now. It’s not even where you are focused right now. Your Focus Needs More Focus.

What if your focus shifts from Impossible to I'm possible. Rhetorical, of course. Today, as I write this, I am nearly 19 years past the day I was told I could die any day sparked by a head injury. I'm possible, and so are you.