Focus

Listen to me

Watch me

Let’s have a look today at how not being focused and having our minds clouded with issues of the past, worries, fears and insecurities can stop us from being the best version of ourselves. Being focused on anything we’re doing whether it be work or just a fun experience, will enable us to be better at it and enjoy the experience so much more. I am sure at one time or another we have had an experience or done something where we have been so engrossed that have simple forget about ourselves. These are the times we enjoy more than anything, because for that time nothing else matters but what we are doing? You might not have been aware, that this will also make your more successful with anything you experience in life, being in the moment clears your mind to embrace success.

We talked about this a little in the blog Still the use of implants in the brain to help with cognitive function and here is a very interesting experience that a Journalist from the New Scientist called Sally Adee had. Amazingly Sally was allowed to visit the sniper testing and training facility for the US army. In the American military, they have been testing trans-cranial direct current stimulators, which are helmets with mild electrical currents that produce weak electromagnetic fields directed at stimulating certain parts of the brain to inhibit certain activity and to still that part of the brain. These are being designed to research how to sharpen the focus and enhance the performance of soldier’s battlefield skills. This is still very new and inconclusive in its results but has indicated that the method can enhance the cognitive ability of drone operators, snipers, air traffic controllers and other personnel who need to be highly attentive for long periods of time in their role.

Sally got the chance to use the training facility, initially this was without the trans-cranial helmet, Sally was thrown into the deep end as she entered the training area where 20 masked men strapped with suicide bombs and rifles started charging at her. Sally wrote that as everyone I managed to shoot one dead, three more assailants just popped up from nowhere. The over whelming fear was instant and then the panic that Sally wasn’t shooting fast enough to keep up with the onslaught of assailants brought more fear and anxiety. The panic and anxiety made Sally feel completely incompetent and made her continuously jam her rifle up. Luckily, they weren’t real just video images projected on huge screens around her, but Sally did admit her disappointed she felt with her performance, ready to ditch the rifle and give up. Then Sally was wired up with the helmet, describing that she felt nothing unusual except for a slight tingle and a strange metallic taste on her tongue. This time using the stimulated test area was so different, she found that one by one she was picking off the virtual terrorists as easily as Rambo himself. Sally describe that she felt cool and calm with a clear methodical approach as she did this, none of the blind panic and fear was clouding her abilities this time. She even described it as being a tranquil assessment of the situation picking the closest assailants then moving onto the next one.

After what seemed like just a short amount of time the lights came on and the team removed the helmet, Sally described that she was so surprised at how quickly time had and passed and asked how many she had killed. The team told her she had got them and this was a shock for Sally, hard on levels to fully comprehend.  Sally describes the experiment as having changed her life and described it as a “near-spiritual experience”. What defined the experience was not feeling smarter or learning faster. But what made the earth drop from under her feet was that for the first time in her life Sally felt her inner mind chatter in her head had finally shut up, and it was her brain still but without all the normal self-doubt she had every day.  This silence in Sally head was just mind blowing for her and really all she wished for was for the helmet and electrodes to be back with her. 

The big turning point was for Sally to question that angry bitter messages that populated her mind, driving her to failure and often making Sally too scared to try to achieve things and where did they come from? They can come from many different things, if we have grown up in a strict or religious background and have then moved from that are we still carrying the feelings of being bad when we don’t conform to our childhood lessons. Are our parents, peers, teachers, siblings, bullies and societies voices still echoing in our head? Were they loving and supporting messages or were the messages negative, you’re not good enough, your sister is better than you, you’re ugly, you’re thick, you’re a bad boy, you’ll never be any good, you could have done better. Life is so competitive now this continual striving to be this academic super star, and it’s only a few percent or so that are the A star student. Where does this leave all the rest of us, often with a mixture of messages of not being the best or good enough. Myself with being an undiagnosed dyslexic at school and having early language and communication issues found it just like this. I was often called thick and lacking intelligence, it was predicted for me that I wouldn’t achieve anything on an academic level or in fact in life.  Are these the messages that keep playing out in our minds and are they the ones that Sally was talking about that stop you from having that stillness and focus in your mind. 

We won’t be walking around with cranial implants or trans-cranial stimulator helmets anytime soon as this is still in its infancy, but is this the way we want to go in our world? Or is it time to rewire our own minds? This is the time to take stock and beware of the background stories we carry, if we continue to listen and feel they are true then stopping them impacting us will be super hard. I do believe through that for many of us we do know these inner dialogues are not true be we can’t seem to turn it off, and over time it has weakened us so much we’re not 100% sure if it’s true or not. We then seek the reassurance to help you feel stronger, to get confirmation that this isn’t true and of course this then sends the messages of fear to our mind. If we seek continuous reassurance then we of course can’t be secure, this is the black and white process of our inner habitual minds. Over time and even years this can lead to those ever-decreasing circles of insecurity and fear which can at its worst leave us feeling debilitated with our lives.

Let’s rewrite the old story’s that run through our mind, hypnosis is great for this as those positive suggestions can start to be heard on a deeper level.  Use affirmations that you can read to yourself in the mirror everyday will also help rewrite the old limiting messages that filter through your mind. It’s time to strive to be the best version of yourself and doing this the messages need to stop, but change takes time don’t feed the messages and choose to live in the now. Working backwards is a good plan too, as we said at the start of this that being totally focused on something made us better at what we were doing and made life more fun. So, it’s time to strive every day to be in the moment, focus on the now and over time your mind will start forming these great habits of being present and in turn the old messages will keep becoming quieter until eventually you won’t be able to hear them at all.

Thanks for dropping by Sara x