The 2^nd Law of Concentration; Focus Your Mind. This is the second lesson we teach kids and teens when they come in to learn Kung Fu for the first time. The first thing we teach is focus your eyes, learn how to look people in the eyes, and keep your eyes on what you’re doing and who you’re speaking with, something that’s lost for many young people, but I talked about that in a separate post, so today we’ll talk about the second, which is focus your mind; focusing your mind, thoughts, and intentions. For kids we teach that focusing your mind means being in the moment, paying attention to what’s going on around you, and if you can do that you can react very quickly to things, and that translates into discipline, when they learn that then they are taught to apply the same focus at home, for example if you’re mind is focused and you’re paying attention, and a parent asks you to clean your room, then you should be able to do it right away without being asked a second time, because you react quickly. So there are some fun ways to implement mind focus with kids that will actually have them helping out more around the house, but for adults mind focus can be applied a different way. So even if you don’t have kids you should give this a listen because you might find it valuable to all your experiences day to day. For adults this means being in the moment, being present. The late Zig Ziglar has a funny way of talking about this. Most people are always traveling, which causes a lot of stress. Not travelling as flying everywhere; what’s meant by that is they’re always mentally on the move; when they’re at work, trying to get tasks completed they’re thinking about being with their family or worried about how they’re not spending enough time with their family, and then when they’re with their family they’re worried about work and stressed that they missed deadlines or that they argued with a co-worker, etc. So what happens is an inadequate amount of thought is put into what they’re actually currently doing. Focus your mind means committing thought to where you are and what you are doing. 

Spending quality time with family is the only way to ensure a healthy relationship and ensure proper growth for our family members, but if we’re only there physically and not mentally, we’re not spending quality time with them, we’re just spending time, we’re just putting our meat suit in the same room, and then mentally checking out, so we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that’s the same thing and that it’s enough.  The same is true when we’re at work. Just because we park ours meat suit in an office chair for 8 to 10 hours doesn’t mean we’re really at work.

If we weren’t fully there with our family during family times we’re going to stress about it later at work, and if we’re worried about that at work, we won’t get work done and then we’ll stress about that later when we’re with family, so it’s a vicious cycle we need to break free from, and we can do that by making a conscious decision on what to focus on. As one of my favourite Author and speakers Brian Tracy says, work all the time you’re at work. Last I read up on the topic I remember learning that when distracted, it takes about 25 minutes to actually get re-focused on a task you were working on. That means every time you let a notification ding and steal your focus it has the potential to steal 25 minutes of your time. If you’re leaving your phone on and trying to get something done and you get 2 pings of some sort in an hour, that’s 50 minutes gone and only 10 minutes of actual productive creative work you can get done in that hour. No wonder everyone’s so stressed out all the time. So we need to keep ourselves in the moment, and if we can do that we can greatly enrich our experience, both in our work, and with our family, and one will affect the other in a positive cycle.

If we can get more focused work done at work, we can feel good and confident about it and not have to worry about it during dinner time or over the weekend when we’re camping or hiking, or what have you, so we can be more mentally present with our family which will lead to quality time, and fulfilling relationships. Then when you go back to work we can do so confidently because we spent quality time with family and can now be totally present at work, and therefore complete tasks we need to with full focus. That whole cycle starts with what we consciously decide to focus on. If that’s easier said than done for you and you find that you have a hard time focusing, there are very simple meditation techniques you can do to help with that that we teach in our kung fu program.

I’m going to make a follow up video soon describing them but if you don’t want to wait for that you can book a free private lesson now with one of our black sash instructors and one of us will go over it with you as well as teach you some techniques for reducing stress, improving posture, improving breathing, focus, and self confidence, and of course some really awesome self defence. 

You can take advantage of that by signing up below for a free 2 week trial, after which we’ll be in touch to book in your first free private lesson. Now because the first couple of classes we’re offering with this free trial are private they are kind of limited as far as how many people we can accept for the next couple of weeks. So once those spots are filled I’ll have to rip this offer down, so if you’re still seeing this then there are a few spots left, but don’t wait to snag them. Thanks for reading! ...If I don’t see you in class soon, I will see you in my next video on focused breathing.