Focus and Performance
When you get up in the morning you have the same amount of time as everyone else. Why then some people are able to achieve a lot more than others and create a better life for themselves and their dear ones?
In this article I will expand on key techniques that have helped me prepare for professional exams, major job interviews and presentations, political debates or high stress situations, plus working from home for the last 25 years, way before Covid forced many to do so.
Some background information
Two months before reaching my 17th birthday, I moved from my hometown in Southern Italy to Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada (where I still live). What motivated me to leave home at such a young age and move to a country with a different climate, language and culture, was the need (motivation) to help my family of nine and a desire to see how the rest of the family in North America lived. It is fair to say then that desire and motivation are key factors in becoming disciplined enough to stay focused on achieving your goals.
While very important, are desire and motivation sufficient?
You may be expanding a lot of energies in the wrong way and not achieve the desired outcome. Stated another way, if you do not know where you are going it does not matter how you are going to get there as you may not even know where you are. Therefore, unless you are able to focus your attention and thus your energies, you may be wasting them unnecessarily. Case in point is the example of a magnifying glass that when properly used can focus the energy of the sun to light a fire.
Is time management the answer?
Since everyone has the same amount of time, we falsely believe that we can manage time, but time cannot be managed as invariably different people will get different results. In fact, the only thing you can control is where your attention goes, as that is where your energy flows.
I learned this the hard way during my early days of Karate training. In Kumite (pre-arranged techniques of attack and defense) we had to execute punches to the face and blocking a punch coming at you at high speed required maximum attention. The slightest error in timing would result in the punch coming through and likely for us, our Karate was non-contact, so the punch would stop a few inches (sometimes a lot less) from the nose or the chin.
Lessons from the Martial Arts
So, I had the desire and motivation to wanting to become a black belt but that required a lot of discipline, and when you are young, your attention is diverted in many different way. I also liked swimming and many other enjoyable sports that would have left little time for my karate training. So what would I prioritize? Eventually I was able to rationalize it this way. If I could only do one sport, which one would it be?
I was not going to give up dancing as those were the disco days, and it helped a lot with coordination, but karate offered something that I could not find anywhere else, and that is the complete integration of body-mind-spirit that would have enabled me to use in every aspect of life, be it personal or professional. So here we are, now sharing it with you and hopefully you can also use these lessons as a way to drastically improve your life at all levels.
Focus and performance
As we all know from having taken an exam, or been on a job interview where you had to really stay in the moment for optimum performance, focus is essential in achieving your goals and improve your quality of life. Successful athletes and performers know this and so do successful politicians and entrepreneurs, as well as anyone who manages themselves and others achieve their desired goals in life.
Single-tasking or multi-tasking
We have all heard that we need to be single-tasking and not multi-tasking to improve performance and there is a lot of truth to that. However, once I had reached a certain level of proficiency in Karate, I was able to stop the punch and quickly shift to a counterpunch to the solarplex of the opponent in front of me, then deliver a side kick to the attacker from my right or left side, and quickly pivot to sidestep an attack from the back. All of this in a couple of seconds and in control of my inner emotional state and physical balance. And there is the key. If you focused enough on the task at hand, you can complete your work efficiently enough to move to the next task seamlessly and effortlessly and appear to be multi-tasking.
Being in the flow
What I have described above is the state of energetic flow required for peak performance. We are not talking about breaking world records here, but just preparing your mind, body and spirit for that stressful job interview, presentation, exams or anything that requires your maximum focus and attention.
Like in any high-level stressful situation, being prepared really helps. Can you imagine going into a Karate competition and not being prepared? The tension in your muscles would basically paralyze you and even if you were in good shape, you would be out of breath in less than one minute as your lungs would constrict the proper flow of oxygen. What is different from an exam or other stressful events where the fight flight response kicks in? Not much!
How to prepare your body, mind and spirit to focus your energies for success?
The best thing you can do to prepare all three simultaneously is to learn on how to breathe properly. The Yogis do it and so do peak performers, the Navy Seals and any other secret service required to operate under extremely stressful conditions. Things like walking meditation, counting to 10 when breathing in and 10 breathing out as you walk (choose a pace where you can easily start with 5 counts and then progress gradually to 10), can bring just about anyone to a calm physiological state that can last hours.
Swimming is also a great way to naturally work all your muscles and joints, but more than anything else, it forces you to synch your breathing with your mind, and for that you need focus and attention unless you are just sitting there, and in that case you may as well go into the hot tub or sauna and enjoy your executive workout (just a good sweat and gentle water massaging your sore back and joints). The Roman senators used to do a lot of that and they were able to run the empire from the Roman baths, but that is another story…
Developing your Spirit
You may have trained and prepared diligently for that important day and event and still came up short when it mattered the most. Your mind was sharp and your knew your stuff. You have talents that the world needs but there is something in the back of your mind that still holds you back from fulfilling your true potential. In most cases, the missing part is a strong spirit, a belief in oneself so complete that there is no hesitation in every intent, word, move, action.
Lessons from the Dojo
Before entering the dojo (place of training) the Karate student would bow to the Sensei (teacher) and the class and utter the Japanese word OUSS. It would also do so when leaving and before starting practice. When we the students asked Sensei what it meant we were told that it was a word of “acknowledgement” of recognizing the life lesson that we were there to learn, and to show respect for our common purpose in being there.
It can also mean that we were there to try our best and be diligent in our purpose, motivation, attention and discipline as we would not only be training the body and mind but also the spirit as traditional Karate focuses first and foremost on developing character and then techniques.
Ultimately Karate-Do is a way of life as we need each other to learn life’s lessons. In fact, if we look at events and circumstances in life as happening for us and not to us, we shift the focus from mistakes to lessons, as no one wants to make decisions that are detrimental to themselves, but makes them with the best information available at any particular point in time.
Like Sensei Tsuruoka (the father of karate in Canada) told us students at the Kamikaze camp outside Toronto on that hot, humid August 1983 week of intense training, the secret of the word “OUSS” is the same as that of developing a strong spirit not only in the dojo but in life, to PERSEVERE, to never give up on your dreams.
