Tuning In: How to Focus

Tuning In: How to Focus: by Art Nefsky

Obsessive? Who says I’m obsessive? I’m not obsessive! I prefer to think of myself as… focused.

Okay, so when I decided to plant my first vegetable garden and nourished each seedling as if they were my own children, I had no idea that I would wind up with enough produce to feed a three-block radius. And when I learned how to make pizza from scratch, I did have it every day for over three weeks until I got sick of it. It’s just that when I get interested in something I tend to hang on to it.

Actually, this article is not about obsessive behavior, but it eventually leads me into the point I’m trying to make.

Back in the late seventies and early eighties I was a huge Dallas fan – not the football team, but the TV series (you know, the one with J.R., Cliff Barnes, and the guy who divorced Pam to live with Suzanne Sommers). In those days we didn’t all own video recorders, so every Friday night between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. the answering machine was turned on, and the “do not disturb sign” went up. I refused to answer the phone, the door and anyone who happened to be in the room with me at the time. It was a gift that I gave myself, a one hour a week vacation away from the real world, the responsibilities and the stresses. It was simply my hour.

My commitment (not just to the show, but to that hour) was so strong that I found myself scheduling my work around it. Since I was working as an entertainer, Friday nights were often a difficult time to get to a television set. In the seventies when I was performing with my show band, I set it up so that my band would come on at nine at night, play a dance set for forty minutes, take a twenty-minute break and then I would come on at ten. That gave me time to watch the show from my hotel room. When I started acting in murder mysteries in the eighties, I arranged to have myself “killed off” in time to watch the show from a monitor in the restaurant kitchen.

But I knew I was hooked when I bought a five-inch black and white television set that I could plug into the cigarette lighter. I was on the road a lot and I could just pull off the highway and watch “my stories”. (Which brings me closer to the point of this article.)

One Friday night I was on my way to Thunder Bay and decided to pull off the highway somewhere between Blind River and Wawa, Ontario. It was almost nine and I didn’t want to miss anything. I turned on the set and got nothing but static and interference. After fumbling around with the antenna for a few minutes, I found that if I held the tip of the antenna with my left hand and bent it over while stretching my right arm straight out and touching the door lock with the tip of my index finger, I could still get unbelievably poor reception, (but it was better than no reception at all.) I could hear sounds coming from it, enough to figure out if it was a male or female voice, but the static was so loud that I couldn’t make out the words. The snow on the screen was terrible, but occasionally I could see forms and very distorted outlines. Sometimes the sounds would come out at the same time as the forms and I was actually able to guess who was saying what. And then something astonishing happened.

After twenty minutes of concentration, my mind was able to tune out the heavy static, allowing me to hear the dialogue. I was able to ignore the snow, and with the help of my imagination, translate those faint outlines into clear images. The reception was just as lousy, but after I stopped bitching about the interference and totally tuned it out, I was actually able to follow the show.

And so, here is the point I wanted to make.

All of us spend so much time in our lives focusing on the interference that we often end up missing the show. We’re so concerned with our problems that we tend to forget what we wanted in the first place. We’re brought up thinking “If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all.”

It’s no wonder that people are afraid of taking risks. We’re afraid of getting it wrong, afraid we might not live up to someone else’s expectations, afraid of pouring our hearts out on paper because someone might correct our spelling, afraid to sing because we might go off key or, afraid to dance because we might step on someone’s toe. But most of all we’re afraid that someone just won’t approve. So, if you don’t do anything, you can’t make mistakes, can you? But if we learn from our mistakes, why do people spend so much time trying to avoid them?

It’s easy to let obstacles get in the way of our dreams. We can always say that we tried, but don’t we spend too much time on the “how”, and not the “why”?

Now, you may not be a Dallas fan, but have you ever tried to watch the world series in a bar? Have you ever talked to a person you were extremely attracted to in a noisy disco. Have you ever had an important telephone conversation with the baby crying and your two-year-old tugging at your leg? Each of you has the ability to keep your eye on the dream while minimizing the annoying obstacles and excuses that stop you from achieving your creative best.

However, just reading about what to do and intellectualizing your way through it often has its limitations. All the stories and analogies in the world won’t help until you apply some kind of action to it.

So here are a few suggestions to help you get started:

1 – The next time you listen to a favorite song, focus in on just the bass player. If you concentrate hard enough, the rest of the music will sound like it’s in the background. Then try picking out another instrument and do it again.

2 – Make a list of twenty-five simple things that you do automatically and make a conscious decision to change it. For example, the next time you have your coffee, stir it in the other direction. Wash a cup with your other hand. Take another route to work. It may sound silly, but have you ever driven home and not remember turning the corner? Most of us spend a good portion of our lives walking around like zombies, going through the motions and doing everything on automatic. We have enough day to day decisions to make so we tend to zone out and repeat the trivial things. By choosing the exercise of consciously deciding to do something differently, you start to condition the brain into being open to change. If you can’t change the little things in life, how are you going to transform the big ones? It is important to choose to change things as they come along and not just decide on twenty-five things to do differently. Remember to keep them simple.

3 – Make a list of twenty-five wins. If you see an ant on the sidewalk, race it to the corner! You’ll win! The brain doesn’t know the difference between a big win and a small win. A win is a win. We spend too much time setting ourselves up to lose. The voices in our brain harp on what we can’t do (often before we even try it.) It says “You idiot…you’re stupid…you can’t do it…why are you even bothering?” We’re ready to lose before we even get started. It is not cheating to acknowledge all the little wins you give yourself, even if you have to set yourself up with them. If you saturate your mind with little victories (even getting out of bed could be one) then you will be able to handle the big loss. All your brain will say is “So what. Twenty-five out of twenty-six ain’t bad.”

We know that life doesn’t give us perfect reception. We all have to live and deal with interference every day. Just don’t miss the show.