The 2009 Power Word: Focus

FOCUS is my Power Word for 2009. Last year I had chosen EVOLVE and I do think that it worked for me. I arrived at Focus for a few reasons. I've been working on my focusing power for a few years now, ever since I noticed that I had the hardest time concentrating and staying concentrated on one project at a time. When I started doing the 8 minute meditation I could really see how our mind works. In meditation you're supposed to have a blank slate and either think of nothing or focus on one thing, like a sound or a vibration or your breathing. Try it. It's almost totally impossible in the beginning. Your mind races from one thought to the next, up twenty years, back ten. Fleeting childhood thoughts, what's for dinner and that time you were cut off in traffic. All this within a twenty second span. In my little 8 minute meditation I didn't learn to totally clean the slate, but I did learn how to continually bring my mind back to nothingness. The few times that I'm able to really meditate, think of nothing more than a minute or so, it's totally exhilarating.
This last year I recognized the same concentration problem when I work on projects or even do a simple cleaning of the house. I'll be writing a blog entry while I think that I shouldn't be doing that because I should actually be writing out a training schedule for someone. So I'll open up the schedule without finishing the blog entry and while I write out the schedule remember that I had to do a load of laundry. It's never ending. Like in meditation I'm learning to totally focus on one thing at a time. What brought it all together for me was Eckhart Tolle's book "The Power of Now". It's not an easy book to read and I'm not fully with him on what he's trying to convey. What I did finally understand was how my mind rarely lives in the present. Since acknowledging this I can observe myself and see what much I live situtations from the past, play out situations that never happened but might have happened, dwell upon people that I feel have wronged me, get anxious about situations that could come up in the future...But rarely, very rarely, do I focus 100% on what is happening right now in this moment. Except when I'm running or biking or exercising, which I've learned is the real reason I like to do those activities. They force me to be in the here and now. They make me focus.