Philosophy of Mind: Focus

In this philosophy of mind text we focus on…… focus! We talk about focus, what is it and how we use it, as humans. In daily practice, we combine the term with attention. I will show that these are different facultaties and in which they discern. Moreover, how to apply this knowledge in daily life, to reach what we want.

Focus or Attention

Focus is as well simple as complex. It is simple, because when we direct our attention to a subject, we call it focus. It is complex, because it is hard to distinguish what the attention is, and what is the direction of the attention. The complication is near when we realize that the applying of focus is a tough job for very much people. Especially for people, gifted with ADHD.

Stay focused, read on, I am going to make it a bit more complicated, but at the end, everything is surprisingly lucid.

The complication is in the use (or misuse?) of focus people with ADHD. For a special practice of focus: hyperfocus.

Hyperfocus

Here we are: we see that focus is a mental capability, mostly used in the direction of attention. It is not the attention itself, we use it and need it to guide this. We, as people with ADHD have the ability to hyperfocus. We can be focused on one subject or activity, in a way that everything else around and inside is blocked. This has no entrance to our consciousness at that time.

What does this mean in daily life? We see that people who stay focused on a task or goal mostly finish it, or reach their goal. In this point of view, focus means something like “staying on track.” Distraction is not admitted.

Action

In my practice as coach – and in my life as businessperson – I see very much people struggle with focusing. To be honest, I must say that it is a struggle for me also. However, I realize that in the creation of a desired life, focus is as necessary as to know what we want and to do the action to get there.

How can we help ourselves to be focused? My way of improving focus is the use of affirmations. These are words or sentences to repeat in ourselves. The benefit of this is that the direction of attention is guided. Moreover, the content of these affirmations does its own work, in a magical way.

This is a good starting point to discover the power of affirmations.

One more comment:

In my homework for this publication, I discovered an article that attracts me. It is a publication of a philosopher and psychotherapist, Eugene Gendlin. The title of his book is… Focusing. He developed a special technique and method of applying focusing. Very interesting philosophy of mind!

Click here to find out more.

Philosophy of Mind: Another ingredient to Image FOCUS Action